#strategy

Nike started acting like Shoe King instead of a Shoe Dog, and that is the problem....Go back to your Roots and begin again! Don't try to correct. Start with a fresh outlook with the same thrive and energy as PK and Bill Bowerman....Do not RESTART! Rather STOP and RESTART FRESH!

How far does the stock have to fall before someone realizes we have the wrong leadership? The Ferriswheel sold worldpay to FIS and then became CEO of FIS. Spun it as a great thing to jettison it. Wow! She really is amazing for her own net worth. While the shareholders and employees keep losing, she wins. Let me guess more cuts are coming because that is all she and her BFF can come up with when they catch heat. If McKinsey was public, it would have been a better investment than FIS. Meanwhile go tell the banks these are great changes for us. Look at the pretty dolphin.

Nike’s entire board ought to be scrubbed at this point too. Zero accountability for failings of successive leadership teams. Waiting on evidence they take their fiduciary duties to shareholders seriously at this point. Activist and buyout the best outcome at this point to break cycle of layoffs and restructuring to hide lack of real strategy and leadership…

One bad idea after a other - so many to list but let’s take MEC for example - we spent hundreds of millions to build - the “consultants” and internal Verizon lifers in leadership said it’s going to be revolutionary and make us billions.

Results …. Squat! Yet these 30yr veterans are still walking the hallways of basking ridge touting their accomplishments.

When will there be accountability ability to leadership and not just the people under them who executed the orders.

We need fresh leadership and new ideas - period!

How much is the Jordan brand, and by extension its ego and entourage, costing Nike?

Eventually, the absence of strategy and sound fundamentals comes due. And I won't even mention the unthinkable - a bold vision with a long-term payoff. Apparently that's just fantasyland.

Sorry, it never works.

Define the problem first. Not the "What number what you want" first.

Id--ts.

Oracle is making a major push into artificial intelligence, investing heavily across its cloud infrastructure, enterprise applications, and data platforms to position AI as a core part of its business strategy.

With stock price halved, Kyndryl is a very attractive options for Private Equities and India IT chop shops that would love to have the sticky managed services clients. What are your thoughts?

🎪 Step Right Up: The Traveling Fad Circus 🎪

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back—
where the lions are tired, the tricks are recycled,
and the real spectacle… is management chasing whatever just left town.

First act! The EV extravaganza!

Wall Street packs the tent, dims the lights,
and quietly slips out the back door.

The music stops.

The crowd is gone.

The confetti’s wet.

And just then—
right on cue—
Ford bursts through the curtain:

💥 “WE’RE ALL IN!” 💥

$20 BILLION (yes, with a B)
launched into a party that ended three quarters ago.

Fast forward—
the hangover hits. Hard.

Write-offs. Shrugs. “Market conditions.”

The trapeze artist misses the bar—
but don’t worry, folks…

Second act! The AI spectacular!

“Algorithms will save us!”
“Competitive advantage is now… vibes and compute!”

And again—perfect timing—
Wall Street starts backing away.

Quietly. Then quickly. Then all at once.

“Maybe… we overdid it on AI.”
“Maybe not every company needs to be a tech company.”
“Maybe… just maybe… build something that works.”

But the band keeps playing.

Because nothing says strategy
like arriving late, spending big,
and pivoting just in time to miss the next one too.

And off to the side, in a glowing crystal ball,
a cheerful voice reassures the crowd:

“Don’t worry—AI will be revolutionary!”
“Today!”
“…well, tomorrow.”
“Okay—next week.”
“Fine—next year.”
“Look, the point is—it’s definitely happening.”

Meanwhile, the acrobats are still falling,
the elephants are still expensive,
and the audience is starting to notice.

So stay seated, folks—
the show goes on.

New fad, new costume, same act.

🎪 Next performance: whatever just peaked. 🎪

Nike should be out of DJIA and don't mix with prima donnas.

Get out DJIA and start from bottom with hungry attitudes without worrying about trying to meet financial expectations of DJIA members.

Being in DJIA is hindrance to NIKE. Seems like Nike management is worried about it instead of strategic execution.

If layoffs were executed according to the following playbook Nike would almost certainly be better off.

Let go of employees at the Director level or above who:

1. Started at Nike post 2010
2. Have only worked for Nike
3. Were ‘promoted in place’ to receive their current title

While I’m sure there are a few good leaders that meet the above criteria, as a general rule this cadre of leaders are near useless in our current predicament.

Much like every stock investor is a genius in a bull market, leading when things are going well is easy. These folks have no experience managing through adversity - and it shows.

Nor do they have career experience outside of Nike to draw upon for other ideas. This means they will stick with the status quo: things that worked in the past at Nike that are no longer working now.

Lastly, because they received their titles without undergoing a competitive interviewing process, the scenario surrounding their original promotion bears little resemblance to the environment that they were re-orged into. Despite this, they retain the inflated title.

There must be a few hundred candidates that meet the above criteria, maybe more?

Louie’s first order of business is to unwind the purchase of Lexmark so that Lexmark can go on to have a great and successful history and not one that was ruined by Xerox.

The server business was always more sticky and now is hugely more strategic than storage.
Years of comp plans for lEMC sales focused on pushing unity, powerstore, powermax etc distracted from the real prize of owning the entire data centre. They never understood apps, infrastructure. Just boxes.
If they had focused on overall sales, share of wallet, Dell would have been even more of a powerhouse than today.
Servers were never as high margin as storage, but highly profitable and close enough to matter.

Meta, led by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, is continuing to shrink its workforce, like many of its peers in the tech industry. After laying off hundreds of employees earlier this week, a leaked document revealed the tech giant’s bizarre plan for several of its remaining staff as it shifts in a new direction.

https://www.thestreet.com/technology/leaked-meta-memo-reveals-companys-bizarre-plan-after-layoffs

How the company plans to address its mounting liabilities remains unclear. At this point, only a dramatic shift in strategy (or perhaps a moment of radical clarity fueled by either opi--ds or OK homegrown ayahuasca ) seems capable of turning things around.

???

Not layoff related so I apologize for that. But it is getting exceedingly difficult to see a winning strategy with this bold move, Cotton.

https://www.thestreet.com/retail/att-puts-loyalty-at-risk-with-stern-warning-to-customers

All in-house solutions, especially those in FPE, are no longer viable. Adoption solutions from the market is faster and allows the use of professional solutions, so adoption doesn't require as many engineers as building. Hence the reorg and layoffs.

No set date, but sometime in the next 6 months. The strategy bet is that if they think I’m leaving in the near future, they’ll be less likey to rif me now. The straws have been grasped at!

Oil is going up again, and that hits way more than gas. It drives up the cost of literally everything tied to construction. Steel, concrete, transportation, labor, all of it gets more expensive fast. It’s not crazy to see 25-50% increases when energy spikes.

And we’re in the middle of committing billions at peak pricing to a new HQ… right as commercial real estate is weakening and companies everywhere are cutting office space.

That’s the part that’s hard to ignore. This isn’t just a bad look, it’s bad timing. You’re locking into a massive, fixed-cost project while the market is moving the other way and the cost to build it is actively rising. (Again)

We could easily be talking about hundreds of millions more than originally expected just because of where energy and inflation are heading.

We’ve seen this pattern before. Big bets. Late timing. Expensive outcomes. Yet another blunder… It’s beyond being bad luck. This is an ongoing pattern of failure.

https://www.wsj.com/video/ibms-ai-strategy-tripling-entry-level-hires-to-drive-expansion/A21BEBCA-9DE3-4E2E-B32B-F7D9B66249B8

By: WSJ Leadership Institute
2 hours ago

While many companies use artificial intelligence to cut costs, Nickle LaMoreaux, IBM SVP and Chief Human Resources Officer, argues that deploying AI-augmented junior talent to reach new clients is the real key to corporate growth. Photo: WSJ Leadership Institute

As I understand, they lay off a bunch of technology teams/devs etc. that support apps and products. Who is then going to work on those? Do they purposefully want to ki-l those products and not offer them to clients anymore? Or do they really hope that a couple thousand new workers are going to be able to keep it up?

Heard about BCC from Sourcing town hall. Is this 3M saying they will hire and replace in these cheap labor markets? Is this the strategy, hire in OUS and EXPECT US government contracts and customers to ignore? Celebrating US250 this year, shouldn’t this be highlighted and treated accordingly? Maybe I don’t know 3M history well yet, but seems like a giant finger to US and its workers while trying to hide it and simply say they are global.

All hands on May 20. What will we learn?

How hard would it be to put together an actual strategy instead of just running the same play over and over - dispose of people, repeat.

Noticing Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s opening some stores on Easter this year… 👀

Makes you wonder—is this just a one-off based on location and demand, or are we slowly testing the waters for bigger holiday openings again?

Easter has always been a bit flexible in retail, unlike Thanksgiving and Christmas, which carry a lot more weight when it comes to staying closed. So this could simply be a strategic move—opening select stores where it makes sense without going all in.

Still… it does raise the question:
Are we looking at smart, targeted business decisions—or the beginning of a shift back toward opening on traditionally “off” holidays?

Time will tell. But it’s definitely something to keep an eye on.

Snowflake confirmed "targeted" staff cuts. These adjustments align teams with the company's long-term strategy. The cuts specifically affected its technical writing and documentation team. Snowflake aims for operational efficiency and more AI products. Other tech companies also made layoffs due to AI focus.

https://www.businessinsider.com/snowflake-layoffs-strategy-ai-growth-2026-3

Also-ran technology, trying to play catch-up to the market leaders, struggling to rank 5th or 6th on a field of 3. All the layoffs in the world won't save them.

Suppliers no longer expect market conditions to normalize. They are adapting operations for ongoing market instability. This follows tens of thousands of job cuts in 2025. Relentless regulatory uncertainty also prompted this change. This information comes from a recent S&P Global survey.

https://www.autonews.com/manufacturing/suppliers/ane-suppliers-survey-0317/

In a stunning display of visionary leadership, Clearlake has decided to let two complete rookies role‑play as CEO and CTO of One Identity.
Their first genius move? Try to fire the entire Identity Manager team and replace decades of hard‑won expertise with an army of low‑cost code monkeys offshore.
Nothing says “strategic innovation” quite like dismantling one of the company’s last profitable products. But hey—let’s just hope the next buyer doesn’t notice the smell of burning cash just yet.

After Thanksgiving Support your small business (Xerox) Sale.

Can anyone share the NN75 store list for 2026? Want to see which stores are being targeted for improvements this year. Hopefully more will be worked on the the southern stores.

Nothing they do makes any sense. How long have they been keeping us on edge with the reorg and layoffs now? And through it all, they keep making these "strategic" moves - strategic, apparently, to someone who hasn't glanced at the news.

That's the only move Oracle management knows, apparently.

It’s hard not to admire the confidence of DXC people who clearly don’t understand technology but are absolutely certain that adding an X to a name makes it cutting edge. Nothing screams utterly clueless than believing slapping an X on a decades-old ideas somehow makes them sellable.

The ironic part is DXC keeps selling “X-as-a-Service” like it’s the future, while every platform they hype shrinks their business. Software doesn’t need armies of consultants. It replaces them. Meanwhile, DXC leadership is too busy slapping Xs on sh‑t-tier legacy services to realize they’re selling their own business to extinction.

So Mike commented today that core consolidation has stopped? What’s this fuss all about. Why did they say core consolidation in the first place? Are they out of their mind?? Said such things such so Jack Henry and FIS can poach our clients?… just so weird. Can he shoot straight with the swaggering compensation package he currently gets?

I'm new to this site. I feel like i havent seen many comments from people in PVS under Tom Ap Simon. He was 100% in charge when I came on in 2020. In 2022, they hired a lady to take over PVS so Tom could focus on higher education. This lady was way more personable and professional than Tom in my opinion. She obviously had a vision, and part of that was to create a new department. She hired a black woman for that department who was very qualified based on previous work experience. Not even 2ish years into the role, this competent PVS leader departed. They did not replace her. They said Tommy boy would absorb and handle both Higher Ed and PVS. A few months after our original PVS VP left, our smaller dept head left abruptly. They did not replace her either and instead shoved our department into another that make 0 sense for half of the employees there.

PVS has a goal to increase enrollment by almost 50%. That is an insane metric and didn't even happen during Covid. On top of that, they so far have hired literally no one on the school facing side of things to support these schools/students. I thing they are eventually going to just sell PVS because it's obvious the powers that be don't understand the actual work that's needed to make this business line successful.

It will pause but not stop. Tweaks will continue as orgs/teams align to the new landscape. Larger ones pick up again next year as the Digital strategy and AI rollout continue to expand in these areas:

• customer service automation
• network optimization
• fraud detection
• sales personalization

Look for these types of roles to increase / hire in the coming year:

• AI network engineers
• data scientists
• cybersecurity specialists
• automation architects

Putting this up so it’s not lost in replies. OP: @e2+1kk9gpsf9

Smoke and mirrors to implement the old wing it by Windstream way is back. Uniti either loves losing customers or we are prepping to sell the whole company