People Planet Society Technology

There is a huge need for “change” , for “corporate excellence” , to tackle the world’s problems in a whole. But how? Absolutely NOT how we did “manage” it the last 120 years. LEAN, SixSigma, PDCA, AI, ERP, ….. all “tools” to “get on track” again. But which track ? The same? Preferably not I would say.

Excellence should be a mindset by default , and for many of us it is, in fact I cannot imagine somebody going to work in the morning saying “Let’s make as much trouble as possible” and yet…. How do we get into as much trouble as we do ? My answer is simple : Because we have poor (weak) decision making. And how is that possible? By information getting
filtered out through “subjective analyze”. In this blog I will be posting some comments on (global and local) issues, which could be a result of poor decision making, just for the sake of showing that this is a universal problem in all industries and through all categories or levels of decision takers.


Jimmy Van de Putte



Email : jimmy@fluidism.biz
Twitter : @JIMMYVDP

An idea of the global treats for the next decades :

http://reports.weforum.org/global-risks-2012/#ol=data-explorer
Some further "reflections" : http://www.ascentofhumanity.com/text.php

REACTIONS ARE HIGHLY APPRECIATED !

29 May 2012

EX Social capitalism needed ? This is an example of the first step

 








Hewlett-Packard's announcement that it would be laying-off 27,000 of its employees in a massive restructuring plan, marks a new low for the beleaguered company that recently posted a significant 31% drop in profits. However, HP is not the first tech company (and perhaps won't be the last either) that took a hack-and-slash approach to its workforce when facing economic uncertainty.
Here are seven major instances in the tech industry of employees facing the brunt for their employer's misfortunes.
1. IBM (1993): 60,000 jobs
Yes, you read that right. In July 1993, IBM announced that it would lay off about 60,000 of its employees, a number of jobs that most companies won't be able to create in their entire lives. Out of that number, 35,000 were laid-off directly while 25,000 were offered early retirement, a move, the company claimed, cut annual costs by $4 billion.
The decision was made by Louis Gerstner, IBM's then Chairman who had been brought in to revive the fortunes of the company that had just posted quarterly losses of $40 million ($64 million by today's standards). To his credit, he did manage that and is widely acknowledged to have saved IBM from failing as a company.
2. AT&T (1996): 40,000 jobs
The American telecom behemoth announced in January 1996 that it would let go off 40,000 employees over the course of three years. The lay-offs were part of a restructuring plan that also saw AT&T spin off Lucent and NCR into independent companies.
AT&T was widely criticized by both American politicians and the media since its then CEO Robert Allen was being paid a whopping $3.6 million salary that was also linked to the performance of the company's shares, the value of which jumped by 10% following the announcement of the job cuts.
3. HP (2008): 24,600 jobs
Yes, HP has done it before. For a company that's often touted as one of the best employers to work for, HP sure does fire people a lot. In 2008, after acquiring EDS, HP announced that it would lay-off 24,600 employees, over three years, in an effort to "streamline" the company.
Then HP CEO, Mark Hurd, who later resigned under controversy in 2010, said that the process would save the company $1.8 billion annually. In retrospect, and in context of the recent announcement of lay-offs by CEO Meg Whitman, it certainly doesn't appear to have done the job (no pun intended).
4. Sony (2012): 10,000 jobss
Sony has definitely seen better days. The consumer electronics giant had always been a profitable concern, posting a profit of $3.84 billion as recently as 2008, but is now being hit hard by, among other things, a television manufacturing division that has seen losses for eight years.
After announcing a projected loss of $6.4 billion for the fiscal year, Kazuo Hirai, the new CEO revealed the "One Sony" reorganization plan that would see 10,000 employees lose their jobs over two years. After four straight years of losses, Sony hopes to see an operating profit next year.
5. Nokia-Siemens (2011): 17,000 jobs
When Nokia announced its tie-up with Siemens Communications in 2006, the outlook for the new enterprise was optimistic. However, after facing stiff competition globally in the network infrastructure segment, Nokia-Siemens has struggled to become profitable, posting a loss of about $380 million in 2011.

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