#leadership

I'm still not convinced Dan is a bad thing for this place. I think it'll just take some time and pain to get where he needs to be to see the positives. I could be wrong, but I'd rather wait to make my judgement than make it right away and proceed to stress over things I can't change.

Elluott

My hopes and dreams of waking up to the news that GM has been fired are dwindling.

I’m starting to realize that GM most likely made a deal with Elliott Management to be a “bendover, yes sir can I have another, puppet stringed sellout”. If this is the most likely scenario then we are in for long, long dismal time at MDT.

Everything here is dictated by how leadership thinks analysts will react. We’re always responding, never setting a direction of our own, and it shows in every rushed decision. Instead of building something solid long term, we just keep sprinting after the next headline to keep Wall Street happy.

Happy New Year. Kraft Heinz is a case study in what happens when cost discipline outpaces reinvestment. Years of cost-cutting and leadership churn weakened execution and blurred ownership, opening the door for faster, nimbler competitors.

For Nike, the lesson is simple: efficiency matters, but without sustained investment in product, talent, and clear accountability, competitive advantage slowly erodes. Stop the random reorgs.

This feels uncomfortably close to home. The WSJ’s “ How Kraft Heinz Lost Its Lock on Mac and Cheese—and American Shoppers” is worth reading.
--Kraft Heinz and the Mac-and-Cheese Reckoning

Kraft Heinz has all but owned the supermarket macaroni-and-cheese aisle for decades. So when the first boxes of an upscale brand called Goodles landed on store shelves in 2022, the company wasn’t especially worried.

A call went out in the Chicago headquarters to try it out. Employees bought a few boxes, cooked up the gooey meals in a corporate kitchen and dug in. The verdict: Goodles “Cheddy Mac” tasted good. Other flavors, the testers decided, needed work. The noodle texture was a bit iffy.

Kraft Heinz employees said the market-leading product was due for an upgrade, but with $1 billion worth of it selling every year, executives weren’t in a hurry. Deliberations stretched on for years: More protein? New flavors? More cheese? Goodles has now gobbled up 6% of the U.S. mac-and-cheese market, while Kraft Mac & Cheese is down to 39%, from 45% in 2022, according to data from market-research firm Circana.

When Kraft and Heinz, two of the biggest names in American food, merged in 2015, the combined company was supposed to breathe new life into old brands. Instead, years of cost cutting, underinvestment and corporate chaos left Kraft Heinz’s $26 billion food empire — home to bedrock brands like Heinz’s Tomato Ketchup, Philadelphia Cream Cheese and Kool-Aid — vulnerable to both buzzier premium ones and cheaper supermarket knockoffs.

Kraft Heinz sales have dropped for eight straight quarters. In September, the company said it would split in two, undoing the 2015 deal. Tensions flared in the company’s upper ranks. Many employees were uncertain who was calling the shots and which company they would end up working for, sowing further chaos. On Jan. 1, the company replaced its chief executive, Carlos Abrams-Rivera, with veteran food-company executive Steve Cahillane.

Big food companies are under siege, buffeted in recent years by heightened scrutiny of processed foods, consumer anger over soaring grocery bills and the growing popularity of weight-loss dr-gs.

Kraft Heinz executives overseeing a sprawling portfolio of cheese, cold cuts, lunch kits and boxed dinners face a dilemma shared by other legacy food companies: Fiddle with flagship products and risk losing the loyal customers who made them category killers, or stick with old formulas that don’t interest younger shoppers.

Cahillane, the new CEO, said in mid-December that the industry “is clearly in a challenging moment,” and that Kraft Heinz “has to meet the moment.”

Bankable Brand

Kraft mac and cheese, first sold in 1937 for 19 cents a box, was the creation of Chicago cheese monger James L. Kraft, who got his start selling cheese from a horse-drawn wagon. Marketed as a meal for four, it caught on during World War II, eventually finding broad success as a quick and convenient dinner for families.

For decades, it was one of the most bankable brands in food. After Warren Buffett and Brazilian private-equity firm 3G teamed up to buy ketchup heavyweight Heinz in 2013, they orchestrated a merger with Kraft, creating the world’s fifth-largest food company.

Though Kraft mac and cheese still ruled store shelves, and the company’s Velveeta Shells & Cheese also was a top seller, consumer tastes were shifting away from such processed foods toward fresher, healthier fare. Competition was mounting, with General Mills in 2014 acquiring Annie’s, which made an organic mac and cheese.

In an earnings call after the merger, Kraft Heinz executives called mac and cheese a turnaround opportunity. The company revamped the recipe in 2016, replacing artificial dyes with colors derived from natural sources.

Kraft Heinz executives, many of them from 3G, used an aggressive cost-cutting measure called zero-based budgeting, under which all expenses had to be justified anew each year. The company closed plants and laid off thousands of workers, reducing annual spending by nearly $2 billion. It said greater efficiency would free up resources to reinvest in its brands.

Dividends to stockholders jumped to $3.6 billion in 2016, from $1.3 billion the year before. Kraft Heinz boasted the highest operating profit margin among food companies.

But former employees and Wall Street analysts said the company lost experienced leaders and marketing, research and sales prowess. “On multiple levels, they depleted the organization,” said Rob Moskow, an analyst at TD Cowen.

Kraft Heinz struggled to shift from cost-cutting to growth mode. Executives who excelled at trimming costs faltered when it came to building brands, according to former executives and other employees, often leaving junior employees to increase sales of struggling products on slim budgets. In 2019, poor sales and accounting errors prompted the company to write down the value of its assets by $17 billion.

The company brought in a new CEO, Miguel Patricio, who pledged to reinvest in areas like marketing. Less than a year into his tenure, the pandemic hit, and homebound consumers flocked to familiar brands like Kraft mac and cheese. The company expanded manufacturing capacity to pump out more blue-and-orange containers of its signature product and other key offerings.

Kraft Heinz sales climbed by 5% in 2020, boosted by booming online orders. “We have sold nearly 90 million pounds of mac and cheese alone this year, which is equal to the weight of 41 Statues of Liberty,” said Abrams-Rivera, then Kraft Heinz’s president of its U.S. business, during a presentation to investors.

Mac-and-Cheese Challenge

A year earlier, Paul Earle had been walking the aisles of Chicago grocery stores with a notebook and pen when he stopped in front of the familiar blue wall of Kraft boxes.

The veteran consumer-goods entrepreneur had been assistant brand manager for Kraft mac and cheese during a short stint at the food giant starting in the late 1990s. At the time, Earle recalled, he thought the product could be made more nutritious to satisfy Americans’ growing appetite for healthy fare.

Earle had left Kraft and later launched several companies, including ones selling whisk-y and shampoo. At the time of his Chicago store visit, he was hunting for a new project.

He purchased several brands of mac and cheese, brought them home and cooked them. His 10-year-old son, Earle said, spat out a healthier variety from a Kraft competitor. Kraft’s classic version still tasted good and brought back fond memories, Earle said, but it didn’t appear much healthier than it was when he worked there. “I knew there was a way to do it better,” he said.

Earle approached Jen Zeszut, who had run baby food startup Cerebelly. They agreed Kraft Heinz had left the door wide open for a mac-and-cheese challenge.

Goodles, led by Zeszut, pitched itself as a fun, healthier take on an old classic. The company infused its noodles with protein and nutrients from spinach, pumpkin and kale, and said its ingredients and flavors warrant a price that is more than twice what Kraft’s sells for.

While Kraft Heinz and General Mills tried to appeal to children with noodles shaped like SpongeBob and Disney characters, Goodles targeted a different group. Earle and Zeszut believed many young adults were secretly eating mac and cheese, and others would too if it could shed its dorm-food vibe.

The pair sought help from Wonder Woman. Several years earlier, Zeszut had discussed a different business venture with Gal Gadot, an Israeli movie star who has played the superheroine on screen. The actress had passed on the earlier investment, but signed on when Zeszut pitched Goodles.

Gadot became a Goodles ambassador, posting videos of herself cooking and tasting the product for her more than 100 million Instagram followers. She said mac and cheese was her favorite comfort food in childhood, but that established brands weren’t healthy enough for her own four children.

Goodles caught on with consumers. Zeszut said retailers earned a higher profit on Goodles, turning them into fans, too. “It’s a higher-income consumer, it’s a younger demographic,” she said. “It’s exactly who they are trying to lure back to the center store.”

Slow Reaction

Goodles hit store shelves during Kraft Heinz’s pandemic bo-m, when its sales grew for many consecutive quarters. Kraft Heinz executives weren’t overly concerned about the new competition at first, former employees said. Kraft mac and cheese was the category’s leading brand by far, selling more than a million boxes a day.

There were other problems demanding attention. Mac and cheese was losing shoppers to other quick foods such as ramen, and many Kraft mac and cheese buyers were turning to less expensive store brands like Walmart’s Great Value.

Market-share shift, 2022–2025 (through Nov. 2):

Kraft Macaroni & Cheese: –6 percentage points

Goodles: +5 percentage points

Velveeta Shells & Cheese, Private Label, Annie’s: remainder

In 2022, a Kraft Heinz team proposed grabbing shoppers’ attention with more promotions, new flavors and a high-protein variety. Employees put together a proposal for new mac-and-cheese products, including ones using premium cheeses like Gruyere, Gouda and Parmesan, and herbs and spices.

Under a “design to value” approach the company had adopted, those employees needed to find corresponding cost cuts. They experimented internally with reducing the amount of cheese, mac and cheese’s costliest component, checking the effect on taste, texture, mouthfeel, cheesiness and “cling.”

A year later, another team made similar recommendations to executives, presenting sales data and retailer intelligence about Gen Z and millennial shoppers, many of whom were springing for premium versions. Health-focused options and new flavors like truffle and cacio e pepe, they said, could help coax back younger shoppers.

Executives faced other big troubles. Frequent restructuring and churn among employees led to shifting priorities, stalled projects and frustration among retailers. Brands such as Oscar Mayer and Maxwell House posed even bigger challenges than macaroni and cheese.

Kraft Heinz sales started dropping in late 2023. Consumers were fed up with inflation and hunting for deals. Patricio stepped down as CEO, turning over the job to Abrams-Rivera.

Executives were frustrated with Kraft mac and cheese, which continued to lose market share. Unhappy retailers wanted a growth strategy from Kraft, their biggest mac-and-cheese supplier. Costco wanted healthier products. Kraft Heinz’s sales employees were frustrated too, believing their suggestions had fallen on deaf ears.

Abrams-Rivera acknowledged the mac-and-cheese challenges in an October 2024 earnings call. “We have quite a bit of work to do, and meaningful improvement will take some time,” he told investors.

Employees drew up plans for new flavors, box sizes and store promotions. Internally, they declared 2025 the “year of mac and cheese.”

The company launched limited-edition flavors such as pizza, garlic Parmesan and, recently, apple pie, and jalapeño and ranch as permanent additions.

As part of a major initiative to boost its brands, Kraft Heinz ran more mac-and-cheese taste tests with consumers. Some results were disappointing, and executives told employees to fix it.

Diana Frost, the company’s chief growth officer for North America, said one conclusion was that the product billed in the 1990s as “the cheesiest” could use more cheese.

The company dialed up the cheese. It also introduced a bigger box that it says can feed a family of five for $2, and it updated its packaging to note the product doesn’t contain artificial flavors, preservatives or dyes.

In the 40 weeks ended Nov. 2, Kraft mac and cheese sales declined 4% from the year-earlier period, according to Circana data shared by industry analysts.

Abrams-Rivera said in October that mac and cheese was partly to blame for a 4% sales decline in the largest division of Kraft Heinz’s North America grocery unit. More recently, the company said Kraft mac and cheese sales in the four weeks ended Nov. 16 were up 4% from the year-earlier period.

“We know our brands better than we’ve ever known them,” Frost said. “We are not happy with where results are, but we’re seeing progress.”

The company said it plans to spend more than $60 million to boost Kraft mac and cheese in 2026, including the rollout of a higher-protein, higher-fiber variety that it said will be more affordable than competitors’ versions. It is also working on a premium line featuring fancier cheeses and noodles and bolder flavors.

When Kraft Heinz announced its planned breakup in September, executives said the mac-and-cheese business would be part of the new company focused on sauces, spreads and seasonings, not the other one selling grocery staples such as sliced cheese and deli meat.

Wall Street analysts have questioned the plan for Kraft mac and cheese. Cahillane, the incoming CEO who is slated to lead the sauces business, has said he may reassess the plans for the brands, including mac and cheese.

There is a lot of internal chatter regarding the decision to have the CSTO lead LATAM Foods while maintaining the S&T lead. With a direct report structure of nearly 30 people already, many are asking how this serves the business rather than just consolidating power.

The Financial Questions

The S&T era under Athina’s direct leadership—along with Vikram and G-yatri—has seen a staggering level of spend.

• ROI Gap: Many within the org feel the billions spent on "transformation" haven't materialized into frontline efficiency.

• There is significant frustration over the lack of business justification for the heavy reliance on specific global tech and consulting partners.

The Offshore Oversight Issue

The "India and Mexico Hub" model - While local teams face budget freezes, we see:

• Lavish travel and spending from global hubs.

• A perceived lack of productivity, with local leads often picking up the slack for offshore teams working limited hours.

Culture & Leadership

Is the "PepsiCo Way" being applied at the top? The leadership style and treatment of partners during this spend-heavy era have been widely criticized internally. Instead of an audit into the financial results of S&T, we see a promotion to a CEO seat. How does this align with our goals of being a lean, accountable organization?

Happy new year everyone hope yall have a successful year getting out of OT and landing an actual job in a better / good company. I would say great but even good is better than OT. I will be interviewing over next two weeks. Good riddance OT. They don't know what's going to it them in next week or so. Good luck OT "leadership" trying to fix this.

I’ve been here for six years, moved laterally once, and my impression is that there are not many opportunities left to move upward. Even the people who try hard to stay visible with upper management do not seem to be getting anywhere. Why is this happening? You would think a company would want at least some percentage of skilled employees to progress, if only to keep them motivated and to ensure strong voices at the top. I know I may sound naive, but rationally this should be one of any company’s priorities.

It look a lot of Leadership, apathetic employees, meetings, PowerPoints, bad ideas and ineffective and incapable management to accomplish this ! # PEPPROUD

Just kidding! Stock up $2.01 YTD but DOWN $4.10 over the past 6 months. $4.10 × 7.2 billion shares ≈ $29.52 billion in value LOST.

I’ve watched a steady parade of senior leaders come and go, and after a while it hits you that there aren’t any truly new ideas. It’s the same playbook over and over, just repackaged with fresh buzzwords and a shiny new label. I can’t count how many times I’ve thought, we tried this five or ten years ago, they’re just calling it something different now. Once you’ve been around long enough, the pattern is impossible to ignore.

How’s it feel seeing in print our median employee pay went up 1% while Geoff jumped 16% and is the highest paid ceo in med tech?

Over a quarter if a million of personal use of the corporate jet while we get turned down for legitimate business travel between facilities.

Not to mention seeing greg smith get almost $9m to leave ops in total shambles…..

Happy new year, I guess, to us.

Employee Morale and Shareholder Value.

There are more employees across clinical and business operations leaving, most recently there has been many exits from HR.

One of the common themes during exit interviews is the lack of trust due to the the $30 million settlement award against Integris due to the cyber incident in Q4 of 2023.

Our Information Security department was turned into a paper factory due to the bad hire of VP CISO Stacy Stika. Stacy Stika has been given absolute decision-power over technical defenses, yet she have never built a system, cannot read code, and fundamentally does not understand how attacks work. What she does understand is spending time investing in media attention grabs such as submitting her own nomination backed by her friends to the Becker's Hospital Review. Becker's should have verified Stacy Stika could walk through, in technical detail, how she would contain a ransomware attack that bypassed endpoint protection AND was has no negligent breaches linked to her name.

Stacy's leadership has done the following since her arrival:

• Increased stress of clinicians due to mixed messages of security
• Institutionalized Dishonesty
• Taken the focus from care of those most vulnerable

We are tired of of the security glitches slowing us down. We have provided feedback however the people we provided this feedback to are no longer with the company. The Deputy CISO who fixed the problems from the 2023 hack left. We have frustrated clinicians who are the backbone of Integris leaving.

This is how 'layoffs' work here, leadership is restructuring healthcare services which is causing clinical staff turnover with no backfill. Also people are fired after the Glint my voice survey which claims anonymous feedback. If one is not fired for honest employee survey reviews then retaliation begins until the target quits. Worst of all, hiring in IT has more than tripled.

Copper prices: What next for the red metal as LME prices hit record https://share.google/bOYkJWt089UXJMs1w

Will they wait for May-June when the first carve out is announced?

Wells Fargo Technology was once a good place to work, but recent leadership changes have brought a cultural shift that has significantly altered the environment. The new mindset, especially the pressure placed on managers to deliver “inconsistently meets” ratings, has made the organization far less attractive to current and prospective employees.

People getting title promotions after being here 6 months. Many others that are dedicated people that have been here for decades and never getting a title promotion. Favorites and cronies get these promotions.

Is this really happening? Not that I don't think this leadership is capable of it, I just never witnessed it myself.

In the last couple of weeks, two senior managers on my floor have left voluntarily. Their departures weren't part of any announced layoff, and they both gave standard notice. The fact that senior-level people are choosing to leave so closely together has sent a wave of concern through our team. It makes you wonder what they might know about the company's future plans that hasn't been shared with the rest of us. Is this a sign of things to come?

Just make your best guess/bet. Where do you see Verizon 5-10 years from now?

Anybody remember thi
As of today, GM’s market cap is 150% of Ford’s $52 billion.
Why is Farley still employed?

Let me get this straight, Dan is Mr. AI, sits on multiple AI company boards, can clearly see in the the future so much that he slashes 13k jobs because AGI is 10 months away. But he only does email? Wait Mr. AI only does email a century old technology and doesn’t like slack a new technology with tons of AI functions. Yeah I don’t buy his little AI story. Hans was ousted by a coupe and Dan is trying to boost his pockets along with other prominent shareholders before Starlink takes ours and TMOs lunch.

Company's biggest downfall was implementing DEI in hiring/promotion.

This is what happens when you hire/promote incompetent people just because they are a particular race/ethnicity as opposed to hiring/promoting someone of their merit.

Verizon will be fined millions of $$$ for this and will continue to suffer as you have these people in top positions not knowing nor being qualified for the positions that they are in.

Message to the hire ups and decision makers of Verizon: Hire and promote those who earned it, not because their skin is darker.

Scratching my head on this one…. What kids dad got him a CEO job at Huntington? It shows.

Our IT manager let it slip today saying Leadership wants to cut 20% of low performers in Seattle. The performance improvement plans were created by HR to make them extremely difficult to pass.

What retailer will the Lambert man buy next just to pump n dump liquidate next since Sears and Kmart are almost extinct soon according to the nyc times magazine?

Yes. Next question.

Go figure out yourself. Jokers on this board have no creativities.

Anyone receiving ANY direction from their leaders since 11/20? Our organization has changed and our responsibilities are supposed to change but it's been over 30 days and nobody has provided an ounce of direction.

I am a former trustee and graduate of Johnson & Wales University (class of 1973). I served as a trustee for over seven years and during that time worked to be a proper fiduciary of the university. I applaud your June 23 article “The Rise and Fall of Johnson & Wales University.” The article fully captures my personal frustration with university leadership, most significantly Chancellor Mim L. Runey.

As a first-generation college graduate, I also established an endowed scholarship in my family’s name to benefit students coming from a background similar to mine, who are looking to get into a finance/business-professional role.

When I resigned my role as trustee and chair of the academic subcommittee a couple months ago, it came as a result of frustration not only about moving the academic needle and managing my endowed scholarship but about the loss of over 30 established academic leaders over the years. These leaders were not included in the recent staff/faculty terminations mentioned. These academic leaders were brought in to build and develop key programs not part of Culinary. Most lasted a year or more and then suddenly were no longer part of the university.

The root of the problem at Johnson & Wales is Chancellor Runey. People are afraid to challenge her for fear of retaliation and dismissal. Her friends thrive, but many are just afraid to challenge and speak up for fear of being ostracized. Many of these people have gone on to other colleges and universities to build very innovative programs. Just look at the recent promotion of Joe Greene to president. I have great respect for Joe in his financial leadership. But for Joe, JWU would have collapsed years ago. My point is that the university at the board’s direction should have used the opportunity to build an effective bench with some new talent who could possibly serve as a replacement for Chancellor Runey. The time for fresh talent and ideas is now.

It is a shame that proud graduates, like myself, are watching the collapse of what was a fine institution. The university led culinary arts for many years, only to then fall to a distant second or further behind the Culinary Institute of America and to two-year institutions popping up all over the country. They lost their way and bet it all on one-dimensional education, favoring Culinary and Hospitality. They have all but abandoned the very foundation of their business, education.

This is my first external outreach. I have written several letters expressing these issues to the board chair and vice chair but receive little if any response.

Thank you for caring enough to write this piece. We all hope that the university can find its way, but each day I become less and less certain they will without bold moves.

• Philip Renaud, Johnson & Wales University, Class of 1973

Looking forward to the earnings call. Can we reach 600k customers loss in a year? Blows my mind that failed leadership is not held accountable. Maybe we can have another Kevin Hart commercial where VZ leadership laughs at the competition who are taking all of our customers.

Leadership has bought into the AI hype hoping it will allow them to shed people.
AI is just another a tool...like a hammer.

"it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail." ~ Abraham Maslow

Management is handing everyone a hammer and telling them to go pound on everything the see.

Exactly what @bp+1kc37smg0 said.

https://nypost.com/2025/12/28/business/former-ibm-ceo-louis-gerstner-who-revitalized-big-blue-dead-at-83/

Anyone have a leader who requires cameras to be on in every meeting? How is this even enforceable?

Big internal programs like this almost always arrive wrapped in promise and land in phases, pilots, exceptions, “next wave.” Especially at Dell Technologies scale. Even when the intent is real, gravity is real too.

What tends to happen in practice:

Year 1: decks, roadmaps, leadership optimism

Year 2: partial tools, parallel systems, extra clicks

Year 3: the thing quietly becomes “how we’ve always done it,” just renamed

With Dan acknowledging our customer service is horrible, did customer experience execs (Ken lain, Suzanne Norton) keep their job or were they impacted with the RIF?

It's 2026 & ITS GO time ! GO= Results OR Get Out !Time to put $ & mouth together & stop the gaslighting & BS. Action+Results+Real "Digital Transformation." Clients & Employees want results from the Board & low producing Executives Who have no personality.

++Transparency~Publish Board Minutes & Agenda++employee, retiree, and client representation on board++
++Transparency~Publish Executive Compensation Packages++
++Transparency~Publish full financial & audit report in Annual Report
++Transparency~Publish full Rating Agencies reports on website++
++Transform Website++
++Transform Mobile App++
++Add Brokerage Accounts++
++Add Managed Accounts++
++Add Financial Plans++
++Add Retirement Score Calculator on Website++
++Reduce work loads for Client Relationship Managers & overworked and underpaid segments in Operations++
++New Leadership Over Operations, IT & Sales++
++Rebrand & change corporate name and hire a PR Firm to clean up poor external image++
++Automate all distributions & loans++eliminate paper like it was supposed to be done 15 yrs ago
++More CRM support & stop the wage theft working 60 hours per week++
++Change investments in 401k++
++Allow clients to communicate with Text & Chat++
++eliminate team CX as they SuCX. Use Mediallia to survey the F.u.CK out of participants
fire all non performers

• Streamline workloads for CRMs & Administrations Operations++new leaders needed !
  cut Executive Pay & 3 Year Special Pay Shares
  put laugh track of CFO on corporate website just for s.chits & giggles
• stop running behind competitors & get your as--s together w/system upgrades & legislation
  Implement associate solutions & stop paying consultants through the nose
  Eliminate 50 page performance review process & eliminate monthly webinars**
  ~~stop posting on Linkedin during company time & ban por.n during business hours
  fire heads of sales, it, admin ops, hr, call center, & all current execs & board mbers
  get Andrew cuomo, chris cuomo, & eric adams on board

Trying to get through the NEW yorker

"LBT achieved getting paid a lot of money by Intel. Also increased stock price from 20 to 40. Convinced Trump Intel was too big to fail and not only got him to donate money, got him to Arm twist nVidia to do so too. Also got Intel to donate to his startups. Wow! Increased margins by reducing headcount, either by outright layoffs or by giving employees BE and PIP thereby saving severance package. Increased productivity by telling employees to “laser focus” on working hard.

However, Intel is nowhere in AI. Anybody who is employable enough to find a job at some other company has done that by now."

"I am wondering how much he paid to the government officials to avoid his own layoff and even got the fund to bump up the stock. Remember INTC stock was kicked out the DOW earlier not too long ago and why it is suddenly bump up almost 100% in just a few months (?) Who is behind the manipulation order ?"

How long before intel's inflated stock plunges?

In 2017, I was sitting in a conference room in NYC when the "Digital Transformation" was announced. 9 yrs later, it turned into one of the worst colossal wrecks in recent corporate memory. From a 2023 interview with Life Accelerated, you be the judge if it was all smoke, lies, and video tape:

The Route 66 Failure - Digital Transformation 9 Yrs Later

Life Accelerated - Episode 27 - 2023

Transcript:
Anthony O'Donnell: I'm Anthony O'Donnell, and this is Life Accelerated, a podcast for life insurers striving to achieve digital transformation. Founded in 1945, Mutual of America Financial Group is a Fortune 1000 company providing annuities and retirement products and services. The company has dedicated itself to helping its customers build and preserve assets, not only with innovative products, but through high touch personalized service.
In 2017, the company embarked on a transformation initiative to scale its high touch service through high-tech. That's where the guest of this episode of Life Accelerated comes in. Jeff Donaldson, executive vice president, head of technology and chief digital officer at Mutual of America shares with us how the company identified four core areas crucial to that transformation. Its core record keeping system, CRM capabilities, new data management capabilities and artificial intelligence to improve both management of risk and customer experience.
Jeff also details Mutual of America's Route 66 strategy, which consists of six vital IT strategies paired with six guiding principles. Here's my conversation with Jeff. Jeff, tell us a little bit about Mutual of America, the company's history, its place in the market today, who the company's customers are and how the company has traditionally marketed and distributed its products.

Jeff Donaldson: Well, thank you Anthony, and thank you for the opportunity to join you today. Mutual of America, it's a leading provider of retirement services and investments to almost 6000 employers here in the United States and more than half a million plan participants. We deliver that through our 401K and 403B plans. We were founded 78 years ago back in 1945.
Our roots are in the nonprofit sector, though our client base is growing significantly among small to medium-sized for profit businesses. We've got about 30 billion in assets under administration. As I mentioned, we are here in the United States primarily with about 60 offices nationwide. And our 1000 employees are dedicated to providing high touch personal service to help our customers build and preserve assets for their financially secure futures.

Anthony O'Donnell: So I gather service is a tradition at Mutual of America, and it's always been a high touch kind of company. So we need to talk about what's changing when we address the digital transformation moment at the company. Why are you undertaking digital transformation? What are the company's plans and what is driving them?

Jeff Donaldson: Well, absolutely. As you mentioned, we are a high-tech, very personalized service-based company, and as we look at the next cycle of our growth and service, marrying high-tech to high touch or delivering our capabilities at scale is really where we're focused. And we took a look back in 2017 at really what the digital economy meant to us, our clients, to this industry.
And we started to create some awareness and education amongst our senior team with respect to how is it that we could be impacted or impact our products and services with respect to our long-term growth goals, maintaining those high levels of customer satisfaction and of course managing risk. So this all became part of our overall transformation. We embarked on that transformation knowing at the end of the day it would be not only about technology, it's really about our culture, our people, our organization, and of course the product that we deliver.
So I would say that for us doing this started probably six years ago at this point, what is true for us is that innovation has always been a guiding principle of the companies. And as long as we have been delivering these products and services, we have used technology in new and different ways. And we certainly said that we have to continue that part of our DNA and that part of our value proposition as part of our digital transformation.

Anthony O'Donnell: Jeff, let me bring you back to what you just said about an overall transformation. And we've spoken before, and we'll speak more today about the combination of technology and culture, but you're talking about an overall transformation of which technology is an important part. I think that generally, CIOs and other senior officers are talking about how you can never look at a technology transformation as such. It's also got to be a business transformation. So let's just get the context of the transformation and technologies placed within it.

Jeff Donaldson: Yeah, absolutely. So again, when we looked at our long-term strategy and we looked at growth and we looked at improving our customer experience and we looked at managing risk, we said to ourselves, we need to do this. We need to do it at scale, and we need to do this in a way that again, we preserve that caring for our customers, caring for our employees that we're noted for.
And it was really to say, what digital capabilities do we need to build? What new leadership capabilities do we need to build and what playbook do we need to build in order to support those goals to scale, to deliver that high touch? And I think that again, from an innovation perspective, we had to link it to the idea that what got us here today, what got us to this level of our client base, of assets under administration, served us well, but wouldn't necessarily serve us well going forward. So we needed to stop and rethink our process. We needed to rethink our product. We needed to rethink culturally how we do business. And again, we had to do that while preserving who we are and how it is that we service our customers.

Anthony O'Donnell: So we're preserving the perennial value proposition of Mutual of America, but in such a way that it can be scaled to a larger customer base?

Jeff Donaldson:Correct. Absolutely. And so we thought about building digital capabilities that really would lead to more compelling customer experiences. For example, both for our sponsors as well as our participants, and even our individual contract holders. We had to think a little bit about how we were going to leverage our core operations in marketing and corporate communications and our middle and back office and technical services. We had to think about enhancing our business model. Those were all the digital capabilities that we had to consider as we scoped our own digital transformation journey.

Anthony O'Donnell: So when look at this overall transformation, we're also talking about a complete reset of technology?

Jeff Donaldson: Correct. And for us, that really meant four core areas that we needed to address. And again, looking at it from a business perspective, first, our customer relationship management capability, what new tech, what new platforms, what new integrations, what new data would we require to satisfy that? Our core record keeping platform, which we had historically built and maintained in house for decades, what capacity, what capability would be needed? What would we need to accelerate modernization of that platform and how would we scale that efficiently?
We looked at enterprise data, how are we going to unlock that data which had existed to some degree in silos and really view that as a strategic asset? How are we going to deliver business intelligence and advanced analytic capabilities across the company? And then finally, our core four and fourth and final effort was to employ artificial intelligence specifically in the service area, but ultimately how we're going to improve that customer experience, how we're going to manage risk with respect to growth, how we're going to drive efficiencies.
And we started to look at machine learning, cognitive computing, natural language processing. So these four business-led IT initiatives really became the underpin to all of our technology investment. And I think like many insurance and financial services companies, we carried a certain amount of technical debt related to legacy systems. And so we had a significant decision to make and we asked ourselves, did we want to be a technology company that happened to deliver retirement products and services, or are we a retirement products and services company that employs and leverages technology?
And that led us to make some very significant changes in our environment that basically put us into the hybrid cloud computing world. That meant we were no longer going to exclusively build and maintain our own record keeping platform and technologies. It meant that we had to look at enterprise data and artificial intelligence in combination with third parties and partners. So this really was significant, significant culturally for us as well in terms of how we work together.

Anthony O'Donnell: It's kind of like a buy versus build conversation when all is said and done. And so the decision that you made was you're a retirement company, you're not a tech company, and you're relying on partners to do that.

Jeff Donaldson:Correct. But in doing that, to understand that we do have a shared responsibility model, at the end of the day, we are responsible to our clients, to our participants. And so very much vetting our partners and understanding their process and how we were going to work together to achieve that became something that was sort of part of that new playbook I mentioned.

Anthony O'Donnell: And you have multiple partners and the unity of how all this comes together is under your management, not theirs. But this is one of the classical questions that we've seen over the past couple of decades, and it's refreshing and encouraging to see a company say, no, our core competence is insurance, our core competence is retirement products rather than technology, while taking technology as the fundamental key to the transformation along with culture.
So that kind of raises the question of who you are and how you're the right guy that Mutual of America called upon to lead this digital transformation. So how did your career experience make you the right man for the job and how has your role developed since you arrived?

Jeff Donaldson: It's always great to start with a great team, and certainly I joined a great team. I think what I brought to the table was over 33 years of consulting, technology management, operations experience in financial services. And in doing so, I had an opportunity to be part of and/or consult to dozens of companies, which gave me a really great perspective on how they interacted with their customers, how they transacted with their customers, how they maintain those relationships and what worked quite honestly as a result.
And so taking that experience and being able to bring it to a company like Mutual of America provided some of that external input to help inform the process and to give some sense of, again, what was proven. And in doing so, I think clearly while my role was new for the company as a chief digital officer, the message was clearly what the company had been seeing and experiencing. And I think from that perspective, right time, right place to collaborate together. So very fortunate to have had this opportunity.

Anthony O'Donnell: When you arrived, you were chief digital officer. Maybe you can contrast your original responsibilities with where you sit today as a leader at the company.

Jeff Donaldson:Absolutely. So chief digital officer ostensibly looking for opportunities to grow the business and enhance the customer experience through digitization, obviously through the employment of new and emerging technologies. And that was very true and continues to be true. But in the process of collaborating, we worked basically to understand again, all those new digital capabilities that we needed to put in place and what kind of playbook we would need to run and how we would run it and work together.
And in that process over time, I became responsibility for our core information technology team and our information security group. We stood up new teams such as our customer experience team. And so my remit today really encompasses all of those areas. And in working of course with the rest of our senior executive team, I think what we have been able to model is just a new way of working together where a lot of the silos have been taken down between the business and technology.

Anthony O'Donnell: Maybe you could elaborate on that a little bit. We used to talk about the need to align business and technology, and today the conventional wisdom is that they need to be entirely integrated.

Jeff Donaldson:I would say that from that perspective in finding new ways to work together, obviously trust, understanding, prioritization, transparency, all of that had to come into play. And for us, that really meant looking at agile and making that full transformation to a shared business technology agile process. And from there starting to form product teams and a product management capability and getting away from that traditional project management thinking.
And so we went through substantive training, which involved all of our senior executive team on down to our newer associates. And frankly as we went through that and learned together and went through those exercises to appreciate old and new and what the deltas were, it became a fairly natural pivot. And I would say once we got to our product management overlay, it almost seemed like we had always been working together in this manner. So not without time, not without effort, but clearly those two things, agile product management allowed us to work in new and different ways.

Anthony O'Donnell: As we're speaking about your arrival and the evolution of your role and now the way you work between business and technology, you could say that we've glossed over one of the most daunting questions that are faced by Life Accelerated podcast listeners, which is how do you start a digital transformation? So maybe you could talk a little bit in the abstract first about how you were thinking before you arrived or once you knew you had the opportunity. And then talk a little bit about the particulars of the challenges of digital transformation at Mutual.

Jeff DonaldsonI think everybody comes to the table with a point of view of perspective, and I think the first thing that you need to do is both challenge your own and challenge others. And so for us, it was really a journey that started with education and awareness. And again, as I mentioned at the beginning of the show, we really started with our senior leadership teams understanding of the impact of digital economy on us in terms of our business model, our financials, our customer experiences, our operations and technology.
And from there, we then began to say, well, again, how could we build digital capabilities in support of our long-term plan and leadership capabilities alongside that, all fine and well, but then you need to sell that to the board, and that's what we needed to do. And so I will say, because we started with this educational and awareness step, our CEO was probably our biggest fu--ingcheerleader with respect to the need to do this and what it would take.
And I think that as I look back on this, there was a board meeting back in 2017 where he and I presented over what seemed to be a very long dinner. It seemed to be almost 20 courses by the time that I had finished my speech. But it's very clear that getting the support of the board of executive leadership is paramount to the amount of success, tantamount to the amount of success that you're going to have here.
But once we had that capability as we imagined again about thinking of our customers and how we were going to deliver this, then we had to get into those conversations around culture and behaviors and norms. And that is something that again, has to start from the top, but also needs to be modeled and demonstrated, and I think that's where we took a significant amount of time with our team to sort of reorient what that experience would look like.

Anthony O'Donnell: So, let's jump ahead into the work that you've done and talk about your Route 66 plan and the guiding principles that came with that.

Jeff Donaldson: Yeah, absolutely. So you have to have a catchy phrase with any roadmap and for us, that roadmap was Route 66 and as you mentioned, so six IT strategies that we pursued and six primary principles that we wanted to ensure that was threaded throughout our effort. Starting with the strategies, really first thing that we thought of was modernizing our core platform.
I mentioned our record keeping platform and associated applications, and then how we could extend and integrate those supporting applications. The second one we thought about was rationalizing and integrating non-record keeping applications. And I would say that while there was a significant amount of work here, it didn't always mean upending or throwing the baby out with the bath water. The third, IT service delivery excellence, of course excellence in everything that we did defining, implementing, measuring and improving our IT service processes.
Our fourth, standardizing infrastructure. We had one of everything, which of course in terms of consolidating and refreshing and standardizing presents a significant challenge. But of course, we did begin that journey into the cloud and managed services and clearly have gotten some of the benefits associated with it. Sixth and final strategy that we employed was really unlocking enterprise data. I mentioned enterprise data management as one of the core four initiatives we pursued.
We wanted to support and drive digitalization, automation and analytics driven business strategies. This is how we were going to do it by unlocking our enterprise data. So those six led to a number of initiatives, well over 40 different initiatives that we have tackled over the past several years.

Anthony O'Donnell: I wanted to raise a moment that you told me about in a previous conversation. You said, when it comes to rationalizing the record keeping core platform, you said it didn't always mean throwing the baby out with the bath water, but it sometimes did.

Jeff Donaldson:Correct. So I think when we had to make determinations, we put it up against a set of criteria, and of course one, as I mentioned before, whether or not this was really differentiating us, did we need to be in that business of building our own, supporting our own, maintaining our own? So that certainly became one of those criteria and filters as we looked at it, how much technology debt that we had associated with this, how secure of an environment of an application, of a system where we're talking about did we already have some measure of containerization, did we already have some measure of microservices associated with this?
Putting it through the funnel ultimately allowed us to be fairly judicious about what we wanted to retain and build around or extend or incorporate and what we felt that we absolutely needed to move away from. I can tell you that at the end of the day in replacing our record keeping platform and our associated supporting applications, we basically put the mainframe on alert that its days were numbered.
I have never participated in a party that included pushing the mainframe off of the loading dock onto a truck, but I'm proud to say that I have now attended that party and we thanked the mainframe for its service and I think it retired well again, in terms of how we got here and how we serviced our customers at this asset level. I will say the mainframe was a tremendous partner, but again, looking at what we're facing today, the challenges, the changes, and I think we have made the right determinations and of course that compute and that storage and that network power for us all resides in the cloud now.

Anthony O'Donnell: I almost picture rather than a loading dock, the side of an aircraft carrier and a 21 g-n salute as you dump it into the ocean. Anyway, let me bring you back then to the principles. You've talked about the six IT strategies. Now please talk to us about those six primary principles and why they were an important compliment to the strategies.

Jeff Donaldson: The first of the six was a no-brainer for us really, and that was to be customer driven, so we would be laser focused on all the key drivers and needs of the customer and how we, IT could drive results across these initiatives through closer business alignment, as I talked to you before, through certainly agile and product teams. Our second principle, we wanted to be an enterprise enabler.
I think that many organizations look at themselves in the mirror and ask themselves, am I a trusted business partner? Am I an enabler of key initiatives and goals in the enterprise? We certainly want to be viewed that way. We certainly want to be viewed as a core asset. I think there's always the question of can someone take what you're doing and deliver on it better, faster, cheaper? And we wanted to prove that we did provide a competitive advantage.
Our third was being capable, performing to high standards, measuring our value, communicating that. We wanted to be a high performing team. To do that, we also needed to be nimble, and that was our fourth guiding principle. So how could we, from a process perspective, from a people perspective, and importantly from an IT platform perspective, be flexible and react to the changing needs of the company.
I don't think that at any other time in our company's history have we seen so much change. Incidentally, I just wanted to share Anthony, I think it's fun to talk about transformations when you're in the middle of a global pandemic, which is where we found ourselves not too long ago. So trying to achieve these principles took on a whole new meaning as we were working remotely and in new and different ways. Our fifth was being transparent. We wanted a realistic view of IT performance and plans.
We wanted to make sure we understood how they impacted the company, and we wanted to make sure we were all in a collective understanding and agreement of where we were headed. And of course, our final guiding principle, I've mentioned a few times at this point, which is to be innovative, to have that as part of our DNA to continually test, learn and ultimately be able to meet those key business initiatives through industry leading solutions that frankly only can be done if we're constantly in a process of evaluating new and emerging technology. And for us, that is now too, part of our DNA. These

Anthony O'Donnell: Principles are quite inspiring, and this is great content from my perspective as an editor, but they also make one wonder about how the company went from one side of the transformation to the other. In terms of output, how does today's IT delivery compare with the past? You've spoken a lot about methodology, transparency, high performance.

Jeff Donaldson: It's much more predictable. I can certainly say that. I would also say that there are fewer false starts because we are better aligned at the beginning and at the end. The work product more closely mirrors the most critical features and functions as we put together in our user stories day one than it ever has.
I think that clearly we have less rework to do as a result, and we have some insights, I think some data driven insights that we did not have before. And so in terms of our efficiency, our effectiveness, our ability to measure the value, we have a whole new set of data points and metrics that we can use to communicate with each other. And so we've got a fairly regular or continuous feedback loop, which I think does differentiate us from where we work.

Anthony O'Donnell: A lot of people talk about having a more industrialized output and they talk about the information economy as being a new industrial revolution. It really sounds like that you've achieved that kind of an approach, repeatability, predictability, consistency.

Jeff Donaldson: And I think with most journeys, we recognize too, that we've reached a milestone, but certainly we haven't reached the end of the journey. And for us now, it's about maturing those capabilities. And I think, of course, at the end of the day, that's going to be measured by our clients. They're going to be the arbiters of how we're delivering our products and services. And so to that end too, this isn't just an internal view of performance, it's really engaging our customers in new and different ways, both directly and indirectly in terms of gathering that feedback, utilizing that feedback.
Our customer advisory panel, for example, which is relatively new, really had an out sized say in how we were going to basically present ourselves to them through our portals. And so I'm happy to report that that too is a maturing capability that we are significantly measuring and what's old is new, but everything from customer net promoter score to other forms of measurement of customer interactions and satisfaction's really driving our service blueprint, really helping us say, what's the next epic? What is the next set of user stories in that epic and what is most important to our clients?

Anthony O'Donnell: As a concluding observation, maybe you could talk about what kind of a company Mutual of America is today as a result of the digital transformation work.

Jeff Donaldson: I'd like to think that Mutual of America is poised to become an even better version of itself. We have long been a leader in the retirement services and investment space. Again, almost 80 years. We've had this reputation providing high quality innovative products, high-tech personalized, high touch personalized service, one that's rooted in our values, integrity and prudence, and reliability and excellence and social responsibilities.
And these new technology investments, these new process and people and cultural investments, I think for us is going to put us into a whole new light of what we can deliver, what we can do for our clients, for our participants, again, to help them secure that financial future.

Anthony O'Donnell: Something I especially enjoyed during this episode was Jeff's answer to one of the big questions our listeners have, how do you start a digital transformation? He was also emphatic on the importance of technology as a tool for business transformation and how any efforts to leverage technology successfully come down to the culture of an organization.
That principle was reflected in how Jeff described the influence of the sixth guiding principle of the Route 66 strategy, which is to make innovation part of the company's DNA. By doing that, he says, Mutual of America will stay competitive by constantly evaluating new and innovative technology. Thank you for joining us for the Life Accelerated podcast. For more relevant content to help you achieve digital transformation, visit equisoft.com/lifeaccelerated.
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Jeff Donaldson, SEVP and Chief Digital Officer of Mutual of America Financial Group, is responsible for leading the company's digital strategy and initiatives, he played a crucial role in driving technological innovation and enhancing customer experiences within the organization. roup is today as a result of its digital transformation work.

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