Ursula was hell bent on putting Kevin Warren in the CEO role upon her exit. She fought hard to make this happen. She failed. Kevin was p-ss-d and held a bitter grudge. So much so that he sabatoged Jeff Jacobson every chance he could. Kevin has since left Xerox to join UPS, but before he departed he made sure his destructive actions were beyond repair. Kevin stabbed Jeff in the back.
6 replies (most recent on top)
I was too junior at the time to interact with Ursula much. I did interact with Jeff a bit and when I was at HQ, met him several times. While he seemed to struggle greatly with the weight of trying to figure out how to save Xerox as its core industry is dying, he seemed to be generally a nice guy and cared about his employees. His biggest mistake was butting heads with Icahn's people from almost day 1 and with Deason already after Xerox, well...
I met the new CEO a few times and while I will not make it personal here, it was clear whose his master was and that he would have no qualm throwing every person present from a secretary to a SVP out the window to appease his master and/or to make an extra buck. That's how it can be sometimes.
I’m curious as well. There is no detail here.
The board must approve the CEO, so if Ursula wanted Kevin and she didn’t have the board backing, whose fault is that?
Kevin had stint in US, then ran Canada. He was given a strategic transformational role in his return to the US, but let’s be frank the US Direct Salesforce was already 5 percent of its size 15 years prior. Many accounts moved to GIS and massive RIFs had already taken place. So, I’m struggling to see how Kevin was sticking it to Jeff. If Jeff didn’t like Kevin, he could have fired him rather easily.
For the record, I didn’t like Ursula or Kevin or Jeff’s decision making but I didn’t mind Kevin or Jeff at all as a person.
If its a vote, I would have to go with Deason. He's been out to get all of Xerox since the day Xerox acquired ACS in 2009. He found a friend in Icahn in 2018. I still remember him gloating on TV maybe a day or two after Jacobson resigned (the second time) to announce he was going to auction Xerox immediately (whoops!).
Typical response. I asked a serious question as a 20 year and current employee yet the only answer I received was a thumbs down with no answer. Again, please tell me what our origininal Strategic visionaries did that differed from the new? Soft services and admin cancelled, transferred, sold etc how is that different from the new? Tell me how any new or old (last 10 years) were any different? I’m not disputing, just want an explanation. I’m still in the game and have been training replacements for years.
Typical response. I asked a serious question as a 20 year and current employee yet the only answer I received was a thumbs down with no answer. Again, please tell me what our origininal Strategic visionaries did that differed from the new? Soft services and admin cancelled, transferred, sold etc how is that different from the new? Tell me how any new or old (last 10 years) were any different? I’m not disputing, just want an explanation. I’m still in the game and have been training replacements for years.
Not dissenting just curious .. what did Kevin put forward or fail to do that facilitated the destruction? It seems that the initial strategic vision laid out by Anne and Ursula didn’t change much under Jeff.