#leadership

having jana partners onboard is a excellent choice. the though decisions will finally be made. non critical assets will be sold. the staff bloat will be addressed and all of these satellite offices will be consolidated. and the ceo gets to play the good guy. this thing might actually turn around

Maybe this is me but the concept of announcing several executive level promotions and simultaneously telling the workforce that there will be layoffs to offset inflation, shows a total lack of humanity and civilized behavior. Is that what we have become?

I think it's worth simplifying the story what is actually being investigated by the SEC. Basically, in March 2025 Gotham City Research accused Kyndryl and namely CEO & chairman Martin Schroeter of major issues surrounding cash flow. Firstly, it is important to note that Martin, as chairman, created a pay package for himself based mostly on the metric of free cash. Over 50% of his compensation is based on free cash. Since the report came out almost a year ago, Martin cannot claim ignorance.

So, what is free cash? Free cash is essentially the extra spending money a business has. So, they are free to use it as they please.

Now, the issues are that Kyndryl was sure doing a lot of gymnastics to inflate this number.

One allegation is that Kyndryl sold receivables to the bank and called that "revenue". Receivables are essentially IOUs for one-time payments. Kyndryl sold those to the bank and made it look like these loans are recurring revenue.

The allegations that the SEC are investigating also stem from the Gotham City report. This allegation says Kyndryl aggressively timed vendor payments to increase cash holdings and called that cash "free". This is like showing your spouse how much "spending money" you have in your bank account but failing to tell them you have that money because you missed your house payments. They have admitted to abnormalities in delaying vendor payments between quarters, which means they were punting expenses into away to call the cash to pay those expenses "free cash". That is clearly fraud.

Recently, Kyndryl, upon disclosing this information fired their CFO and general counsel, while claiming these two executives were not transparent with the CEO or the board. However, Kyndryl has decided NOT to let CEO Martin Schroeter lead any remediation plan, which will instead be led by the brand new interim CFO and interim general counsel. This is an obvious break showing they don't think shareholders trust Martin anymore.

Basically, if these allegations prove true, Martin will have to argue in court that he was an oblivious id--t instead of a criminal.

Is one of the reasons morale is so low having to do with no trust in leadership? Above a certain level?

I’ve only been here for a few years, but it seems we have a disproportionate amount of leaders ousted under suspicious circumstances.

Is it normal to have so many leaders in the news? Class actions. Federal investigations. S-xual misconduct.

Doesn’t feel normal.

Asurion is supposedly trying to expand service offerings and improve culture but internally we are hearing that they are planning to hire Andrew Brady from Verizon. He was let go from Verizon fie being unscrupulous in his sales practices and treating employees like trash. If that's the new direction at Asurion , Guru should be ashamed

Isn't this the 3rd new Optum CA president in less than a year??? Or am I getting confused?

Come on leaders. Make it happen! We are out here waiting!

Sabre’s operational trajectory reveals a profound leadership failure to translate a $323 million five-year investment in software development into genuine innovation, as these funds have served primarily as defensive "keep-the-lights-on" expenditure rather than a catalyst for non-linear revenue or structural cost efficiency. This stagnation is starkly evidenced by an efficiency paradox where the company shed 38% of its workforce—collapsing from approximately 7,500 employees in 2022 to 4,650 in 2025—while simultaneously handling 21% higher booking volumes, exposing a staggering level of historical dead weight and persistent resource mismanagement. The reality is that Sabre’s "transformation" is fueled not by software-driven productivity, but by an aggressive cycle of layoffs; nearly 100% of the $70 million in technology expense reductions in 2025 came from labor and professional service cuts, while cloud migration contributed a mere $18 million in hosting savings. With leadership planning to sink another $65 million into restructuring and further layoffs for 2026, it is clear the primary strategy remains shrinking for survival, confirming that half a decade of massive capital outlays has yielded no meaningful innovation-driven value or digital scale for the enterprise.

She basically came on saying no questions at the end of this All PCS team call. They are getting eaten alive and are trying to avoid questions now.

Company meeting, a year on and JT is still giggling about the "Difficult conversations" around taking away AEGs

Yep. Writing was on the wall. But it finally hit home. I'm actually happy I got RIFD. It's the push I needed to get out of a company that under pays and never Values you as a person. Corporate leadership just gets more money. And the company declines. They will sell or close there doors. Watch. 👀

Can we hope to finally see those MDs who made the poor decisions to expose the company to the risk around Russia (a country on the US-sanction list since 2014 and its illegal invasion so hardly a case of "how could we have known?") finally held accountable for their poor decision-making?
There are Ds and MDs in my area who recruited 100s in Russia and completely messed up our org in the process. Despite showing shockingly poor judgement and poor management skills they are still at Citi.

How did people get exec roles in Humana Digital yet have no leadership, experience, accountability or vision/plan to deliver Humana Digital products or create a solid organization to deliver / support? They must have been great talkers during interviews - but the Board and C-Suite need to bring in leaders for Digital! Who is in place there now are awful - what were you thinking??

I just heared they let go of two more Engineers and one of the leaders. After having a good year last year...

Humana has no leadership - they do have lots and lots of layers of useful management, just no leadership! They have no vision or plan at all - hence, can't put together a strategy. It cracks me up that they keep hiring upper management but continue to let go of the people who actually do work.

I could never recommend anyone take a job at Humana, nor would I recommend anyone be a customer. They have very few execs / managers that can deliver! Those that cared about the company and its customers are being let go. They are told they complain but in reality they are bringing up real problems and issues that if not addressed will have huge negative impact. The execs / managers don't complain because someone will then say "what are you going to do about that" and they will have no response since they let go of anyone with ideas or that cared!

https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/finance/unitedhealth-ceo-privately-invested-in-potential-competitors-wall-street-journal/

The 1st question Elon Musk will ask Erica Dhawan is what product did you create?

Please please do not hire those people.. They are just good at talking instead of doing.

In AI world, we need someone can actually create something

Professional meeting attender.

Calendar always appears full.

Spreadsheet-centric, for everything.

Meets with entire team 2-3 times weekly, each meeting 1+ hour, overly repetitive and negative tone.

Has weekly 1-on-1 with each direct, only focusing on what they can do more of.

Shows up, but provides no value during partner interactions.

Takes everything personally.

Distrusts everyone, even top performers.

Provides no praise, just do more mentality.

Takes credit when no credit is due.

Track record of micromanagement and employee attrition.

Makes you feel small during every interaction.

Has horrible breath.

BY Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic

Integrity, understood as a disposition to behave in prosocial, ethical, and principled ways rather than corrupt or self-serving ones, is among the strongest and most consistent predictors of job performance and leadership effectiveness. The reason is far from mysterious. Leadership, whatever its context, is a collective enterprise. No meaningful goal, from building empires to running companies, has ever been achieved alone.

Across history, not just in humans but also other animals, cooperation has depended less on raw power than on trust. Ancient trading societies flourished precisely because reputation constrained behavior: Merchants in Phoenician city-states, medieval guilds, and Silk Road networks relied on repeated interactions and informal enforcement mechanisms to ensure that partners honored their commitments. Those who cheated were excluded, not merely judged. Trust, in effect, functioned as an early mechanism for coordination and enforcement.

The same logic applies in modern organizations. Teams perform better when members believe that leaders will act fairly, keep promises, and avoid exploiting asymmetries of information or power, or are so focused on their personal gain that they have little concern in harming the group. In line, research shows that leaders perceived as lacking integrity struggle to attract talent, elicit discretionary effort, or sustain collaboration over time. Conversely, leaders known for ethical consistency benefit from faster coordination, lower monitoring costs, and greater willingness among others to take risks on their behalf.

Given a choice, people prefer to collaborate with those they trust not because they are naive, but because distrust is expensive. Working with unreliable or unethical partners increases the likelihood of failure, conflict, and reputational damage. In business, this may mean backing leaders who misrepresent performance or shift blame. In politics, it can mean empowering those who erode institutions for personal gain. In both cases, the costs are borne not only by the followers but by the system as a whole.

This is why chronic corruption is one of the most reliable markers of institutional breakdown. As documented year after year by Transparency International in its Corruption Perceptions Index, countries that score lowest on integrity and trust tend to share familiar pathologies: weak rule of law, politicized institutions, capital flight, and persistent underinvestment, generally caused by parasitic governments and destructive leadership. By contrast, countries that consistently rank at the top of integrity and trust measures benefit from stronger institutions, more predictable governance, and higher levels of social and economic cooperation. To be sure, these societies are not free of self-interest or ambition; rather, they have succeeded in aligning incentives so that ethical behavior is rewarded and corruption is costly, censoring selfish short-term individual gains in favor of collective long-term benefits.

Measuring integrity
So, how can we tell whether a person has integrity, or gauge someone’s moral reliability?

The question is especially consequential when applied to leaders, whose decisions shape the success, welfare, and future prospects of others. Fortunately, behavioral science offers several useful insights, even if it stops short of perfect certainty.

First, integrity is not directly observable. Unlike physical attributes such as height or hair color, it cannot be seen or measured at a glance. Instead, it is inferred or deducted from patterns of behavior, consistency over time, and alignment between words and deeds. Integrity is therefore an attribution rather than a trait we can observe directly, which makes assessment inherently probabilistic rather than definitive.

Second, short-term interactions are often misleading. Because appearing ethical brings clear benefits (trust, influence, reduced scrutiny, and access to resources) people are incentivized to signal integrity even when they lack it. This helps explain why superficially ethical environments can sometimes attract parasitic actors who exploit the goodwill and assumptions of others. In contrast, in persistently corrupt settings, distrust becomes the default, and even well-intentioned individuals are treated with suspicion. Context shapes both behavior and perception.

A parallel and increasingly robust line of evidence comes from research on the so-called dark traits: narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism. Although conceptually distinct, these traits share a common core of low empathy, emotional coldness, and a tendency to instrumentalize others. From an integrity standpoint, this combination is toxic. Individuals high on these traits are less constrained by guilt or concern for others, more willing to bend or ignore rules, and more likely to justify unethical behavior as necessary, deserved, or clever rather than wrong.

Psychopathy is most directly linked to callousness and fearlessness, reducing sensitivity to punishment and moral emotion. Machiavellianism predicts strategic deception, cynicism about human motives, and a belief that ends justify means. Narcissism, especially in its more grandiose forms, adds entitlement and moral exceptionalism, the belief that normal rules apply to others but not to oneself.

Together, these traits reliably predict counterproductive work behaviors, ethical transgressions, and integrity failures, particularly in roles that confer power, discretion, and weak oversight.

Crucially, this is not because such individuals lack intelligence or self-control, but because their motivational architecture is misaligned with prosocial norms. Where integrity depends on empathy, respect for authority, and an internalized concern for collective outcomes, dark traits tilt decision-making toward self-interest, dominance, and short term gain, making them among the strongest dispositional red flags for integrity risk in organizational life.

Third, while integrity cannot be measured perfectly, it can be assessed meaningfully. Research shows that peer ratings are among the most reliable indicators, precisely because integrity is reputational: It reveals itself in how people behave when others depend on them. Longitudinal data, such as 360-degree feedback, is especially informative. Personality traits like conscientiousness, altruism, and self-control (including the capacity to self-edit) also predict ethical conduct, as does past behavior. Self-reports are often dismissed, but well-designed measures still differentiate reliably between individuals with higher and lower integrity. Track records matter, even if they do not render anyone immune to temptation. As Warren Buffett famously observed, reputation takes a lifetime to build and a moment to destroy.

Finally, the environment matters. Ethical failures are not only the result of “bad apples,” but also of “rotten barrels.” Weak governance, misaligned incentives, and tolerance for small transgressions can erode integrity even among otherwise decent individuals, while well-designed systems can reinforce ethical behavior by making misconduct costly and transparency unavoidable.

Sapping growth
Taken together, these points suggest that integrity is neither inscrutable nor guaranteed. Whether in governments, firms, or teams, integrity functions as an enabling condition for coordination and progress. When trust erodes, actors devote more effort to monitoring, hedging, and self-protection, leaving less energy for innovation or growth. In this sense, integrity is not merely a moral ideal, but a form of social infrastructure: largely invisible when it works, and painfully obvious when it does not.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic is the chief science officer at Russell Reynolds Associates, a professor of business psychology at University College London and Columbia University, co-founder of deepersignals.com, and an associate at Harvard’s Entrepreneurial Finance Lab

https://www.fastcompany.com/91490509/3-science-backed-ways-to-measure-integrity

I am a grade 14 remote employee and have been working my tail off to move to a 15 in my same role. Can any leaders share if this is even possible now?

Ever since RC got let go, the morale has been at an all time low, AM who is the DM now has made everyone miserable

There’s been a lot of talk about potential cuts and ongoing disruption again within One PEP Media EMEA... Has anyone heard anything concrete?

Between the uncertainty, shifting priorities, and general workload, many people seem pretty exhausted. I know that most of the chaos is caused by Josep Hernandez being unable to support his team, but there's a lot of uncertainty.

Corporate real estate is under pressure nationwide. Companies are downsizing footprints, unloading space, writing down office valuations. The market is screaming that centralized office demand has structurally changed.

And we’re committing billions to a brand-new headquarters tied to a five-day RTO mandate that the workforce has overwhelmingly pushed back on.

This isn’t vision. It’s denial.

When capital is expensive and the market is shifting toward flexibility, you don’t double down on fixed costs and hope behavior bends to your preference. That’s not leadership. That’s forcing reality to conform to ego.

We’ve already lived through massive strategic swings that were sold as bold and transformative, only to require years of cleanup. At some point, repeating the same pattern stops being bad luck and starts being a decision-making problem.

You can’t build the future of work by anchoring yourself to the past. You can’t demand innovation while ignoring market signals. And you definitely can’t call it culture when the people you’re trying to attract are openly telling you they don’t want it.

Has anyone heard about regional changes coming up, with possible trimming of the leadership and NPMs and PMs?

Facts I find interesting.
We didnt have a CEO between March 28th and Oct 21st that yr.
Yet Net Income
Q1 $5.86B
Q2 $6.21B
Q3 $4.61B incl a 1.6B litigation so really $6.2B

We didnt even have a CEO. Q1 Tim Sloan even handed everyone in the company 30 shares, gave extra %sfor 401k matching over the yrs. Today Charlie has laid off 80k people, offices state side look like india... and he has worse financial numbers. Look at the pathetic number of shares he gave folks, you have to be here till mid 2028 as well. The problem with Chalie is he thinks Win/Lose, not Win/Win, and that's no way to operate a business, cheating employees to make numbers is the route to failure.

You can’t “create culture” in a building no one wants to be in. You can’t force innovation with badge scans. You can’t build the future of work by dragging people backward into an office they explicitly said they don’t want.

The survey feedback was not complicated. It wasn’t “please give us a shinier office.” It wasn’t “add more collaboration pods.” It wasn’t “install more cold brew taps.” The message was simple, we want flexibility. We don’t want five days in an office. We don’t want forced presence. We don’t want performative collaboration.

Instead of listening, leadership built a monument to denial. A new office filled with aesthetic distractions and useless junk doesn’t solve the actual problem. It just proves the feedback was either ignored or rewritten to fit a predetermined decision.

You can’t gaslight thousands of employees into believing they asked for this. Culture isn’t furniture. It isn’t square footage. It isn’t proximity. It’s trust. And when you ignore the one thing people clearly said they wanted, you don’t build culture — you burn it down.

You can’t build the future in an office your workforce is actively trying to escape.

John is the ultimate salesman. Let's wait to see how many promises he made in today's video about HQ actually sound true. They make it sound like a Mecca for those in Dallas. I've heard this story before.

What is tomorrow's townhall going to be all about? It's terrible fearing ELT meetings because I used to look forward to them. Fear is probably the new norm after what we all went through last year.

It's so lame both leaders are not even making eye contact. RA doesn't want to talk about his demotion. Hopefully, they are finding a replacement to consolidate all compliance departments.

Surprise OPW & New England management consolidation coming up. Get ready for the next round of leadership confusion!

CPO seems to just share LinkedIn articles on how AI is coming for our jobs instead of setting any actual strategy. This whole company is a mess.

While we are spinning our wheels.

Who, on the exec side, is responsible for this?

The company value is decreasing - steady.
Now Dxc is worth only 2.2 B$.

When will the next CEO come bring his cronies?

No conflict of interest at all, right?

Right?

Bro has money poisoning.

My favorite quote: "Directors of companies registered in Delaware, as UnitedHealth is, have a “duty of loyalty”—an obligation to put the company’s interests ahead of their own. A director who invests personally in a startup in the same industry without first clearing it with his company could be breaching that duty, legal experts say."

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/unitedhealth-chief-made-private-side-bets-on-healthcare-startups/ar-AA1Wucr8

The board has toppled Hans the ringmaster. Without his costume and whip in hand the Tiger gets run of the show. What a welcome turn of events.

Don’t think if you don’t hear today that you’re in the clear. I’m told all 2/17 announcements were pushed to 2/18 because leadership didn't want John to have to field questions at his Open Mic today. So, announcements go out tomorrow, 2/18. Last day on payroll 3/4.

New leaders will come up with a aligned strategy to transform this organization. That also means coming up metrics that can be measured consistently and monitored. Next six months are critical for the company. I assume there might be further reductions due to realignment but time will tell.

Today, I just expect them to introduce department leaders and vision & mission for each department.

We all have to contribute tremendously to turn this company around. If we don’t then there is a risk that we wont have the “W” near our house.

What you can do to save yourself from layoff is to make their strategy successful.
You can work hard but working smart and being strategic is more important.

He has done such a great job at Ford, he has been anointed into the BoD at McDonalds.

The guy is a "1" performer.

BILLIONS and BILLIONS of losses in the last few years with this EV bullsh-t and what? Here at Ford, its nothing but applause.

Belk has resorted to hiring managers with no real skills or management power, it seems like they regurgitate what is said in emails or conference calls yet make no effort to follow up on any issues in the store. Many employees have complained that their store managers are lacking skills, knowledge, and motivation to successfully run their store, some sales team managers, merch team managers, leads, and key holders have voiced concern that they are the ones running the stores, yet the store manager is taking credit and being compensated for their hard work. The question is who is hiring these ineffective store managers ? and why? It’s of great concern when the leads, associates, and floor managers care more and know more about their store than the actual store manager.

I'm hearing the APAC teams are really struggling under the new leader. From all reports the previous "interim" chief was bad but the new guy and his posse are driving the culture into the ground. Anyone hearing the same?