Months after my team was affected by layoffs, I'm still the one doing most of the work of those who were shown the door, with no extra compensation. If I'd been laid off, at least I'd have severance to live on while I looked for something else. This feels like a much worse outcome.
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@f8 Oh, I know exactly who you’re talking about. That has to be KH in the Innovation Development team. If there were an Olympic event for corporate doublespeak, she’d be standing on the podium with a gold medal. Every meeting came with a fresh serving of buzzwords, revisionist history, and enough management theater to fill a Netflix series. She embodies everything people complain about in corporate bureaucracy: endless politics, zero accountability, and an uncanny ability to leave everyone else cleaning up the mess. If Nike ever wanted a mascot for how innovation dies under layers of performative leadership, they’d already have one.
I recently heard a story about a leader in innovation that perfectly captures the kind of management people lose faith in. The type who tells you, "I'm your biggest advocate" and "Keep doing what you're doing," right up until protecting their own position becomes more important than protecting their team.
If that's true, it's not leadership—it's self-preservation. And it's exactly the kind of behavior that destroys trust, morale, and organizations from the inside out.
Some managers are simply ineffective. The worst ones make everyone around them feel disposable.
But they get to work with the Accenture idoits !!
I believe you. I was laid off in April and am fortunate to be 3 weeks into my new job with an awesome company. I connected with a former coworker last week who survived the layoff carnage and after that conversation I feel very, very lucky. He made it sound like a horribly disorganized place to work. Best of luck to you and all of the ‘survivors’. Unless consumers decide Nike is the ‘in’ thing again, the company will never be what it once was.
And management has gotten douchier