Whatever happened to this, aggressively touted by senior management back in 2019? Is this still something they keep pushing, to justify their management culture from the neanderthal age? Some of the fiercest advocates of this self-defeating tactic appear to be no longer in the company.
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All useless aphorisms from the bloated mouth of the corporate cultists ... content-free garbage that fooled a generation.
Sounds similiar to the once touted Flawless Launch that was rolled quite hastily with but had no lasting benefits other than getting more people running in circles and rummaging thru' long forgotten artifacts on how it was properly only to be dissapointed when it couldn't be replicated. I know some people still utter the Flawless Launch theme time and again to prove their existence but with less enthusiasm for they'd lose their job if it would die off like the sunset if they didn't.
Its a waste of money, resources, time and many other things running this ridiculous program when just sticking with the old formula would have done pretty much the same if Honeywell egg heads didn't k–l all the talent and decided to ship all that work to India where all they do is talk without substance.
burn baby BURN! nothing will make the rifees happier.
People pulse was a consulting group pull in to try and measure engagement and morale under a former aero VP. The truth hurt too much and a good guy ended up quitting to restore his own work life balance. The abysmal feedback from “people pulse” was used to launch the “engineering reboot” under advise from McKinsey and the cartoonishly buzzword filled iManage training program.
This really was nothing more than an American Idol type audition for managers to keep their jobs or not. There were going to be major cuts, and this was the manner chosen to make those cuts. Brutal. This was the last straw for me to leave Honeywell before my audition.
When your job is to put out leadership fires all day you realize Honeywell is the burning platform. Grab a Kit Kat before you jump.
The troglodytes of the Welch era destroyed many of the bulwarks of the American economy, cheered on by a gang of self-serving bootlickers and stooges.
What ever happened to "people pulse" ?
"You had to put on a 5 min burning platform show in front of 2 VPs that you never met before, and in those 5 minutes they determine if you stay or goes. The sad thing was that those targeted managers were the ones trying their hardest to make a difference. " They did that to my manager Steve in Clearwater, he was let go and they placed the whole reliability group under a manager in PR. Steve was a good guy with technical knowledge, but the rumor was they only wanted people managers. He even tried to apply for a technical position but they said no and kicked out of company after 30 yrs.
@rip+1a47QOta - Metrics = the land of make believe. Scheme any reason to populate the slide with what they want to hear.
The only Randian concept that applies to Honeywell is how leadership corruption inevitably destroys the golden goose. Honeywell proves the theory that an organization that punishes its brightest minds, those who created the ship and kept it afloat, while rewarding quarter-focused butt kissers is doomed. This is because the brightest will eventually jump ship (ie go on strike) leaving only the butt kissing incompetent to watch in disbelief as the ship goes down.
Honestly, I believe it was just a way to justify laying off managers that didn't fit the mold but had really good metrics. You had to put on a 5 min burning platform show in front of 2 VPs that you never met before, and in those 5 minutes they determine if you stay or goes. The sad thing was that those targeted managers were the ones trying their hardest to make a difference.
Due to its timing, might have been a pretext to quickly get rid of some layers of management without facing lawsuits. Justification being that laid off individuals did not advocate their platform well enough, without having to show any prior substandard performance. Let's just say it did not solve the problem :(.
ALT told a bunch of cynical engineers that garmin/spacex/Boeing/whoever was going to sink the Honeywell ship so ACT QUICKLY !
They did. The smartest 8% of aero immediately found jobs elsewhere even if they had to be the VP of electronics at a company that makes seat covers.
ALT followed this by firing the T5 leaders, promoting all other managers to “Senior Manager” and launching the buzzword bingo fueled iManage training. At the same time all the managers got promoted ALT slashed the band four technical ranks to pay for all those professional huggers.
Seems like somebody is starting to have a bit of McKinsey and Co buyers remorse. Seeing a lot of surveys and skip levels asking if these changes helped. Consensus being we turned up the dial on warm hugs and completely forgot that we make complicated things that peoples lives depend upon. Quality down, cost up, stupid through the roof.
I do think our managers deserve to be “senior”.
Heck let’s call them “Super Managers” instead
and give them a cape.
Like most of these initiatives, we get asked for updates in AERO so leadership can populate some metrics and a dashboard, then disappears for a quarter until the next mandated update. Never about real difference makers, just some metric and dashboard for a checkmark.
For those who are unaware of the phrase "Burning Platform", a tutorial:
In the 1980's, an oil platform exploded and burned because the owners had saved money by not doing routine maintenance on safety valves. The workers on the platform had two choices, stay and wait for rescue (accept the status quo), or jump and possibly die (take risks/action). The only survivors were the ones who took a risk and ended up jumping off the platform.
The company used this as an analogy to act with urgency and do something. Another way to look at it is that they set themselves on fire with some money saving actions (failing to reinvest, outsourcing too much, moving production offshore with inexperience workers, and destroying the morale of its workforce). These actions have resulted in delivery issues, quality problems, partners turning into competitors, and longtime customers looking elsewhere for new products as we continued to offer older ones. Meanwhile, the executives "met their goals" of paying ever higher dividends by bleeding the company and the employees. As reward, Dave and his gang paid themselves like rock stars and kicked the can down the road.
The business is now at risk of burning down, so to speak. The years of short term financial decisions to maximize profit lit the fire. HON used to own the marketplace, now it is struggling to catch up and compete. It is close to panic mode in management as those remaining must also make the jump to "become a software company". Hash tag slogans, continued divestitures, hub consolidation strategy, continuous layoffs, and pushing the remaining workforce even harder seem to be the only levers left to pull. There are a few new products, but only due to some firefighting heroics by some dedicated folks.
Perhaps the company has stopped using the term as many have discovered their survival is being away from the platform and are jumping off instead of trying to put out a fire that is beyond their control. I did.
https://opexsociety.org/body-of-knowledge/real-leaders-never-say-burning-platform/
Seems like they pulled a version of it out of their bag of tricks to support the deep cuts due to the pandemic.
The platform burned to the ground. Most of the Randian sycophants who endorsed this nonsense have been discredited.