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- low employee morale and lack of trust of execs
- fear of outsourcing/training your replacements
- no career growth potential
- regular benefit cuts
- constant fear of layoffs (for some)
- no tolerance for innovation, managers want to play it safe and save their a$$
- did I mention low morale?
On a bright site, I, like so many others, am hoping I get the notice soon and walk away (while I still can) with my retirement.
Cheers
Now I have to say..he sucks...the managment team he created (ex-GE guys) with the bull crap 6 sigma have not done anything and have not brought anything other than their bloody EGO's.
You have to dig dip into the "working class"....ask about the Operations...ask about how people really feel.....it such a mess, and only thing they are conerned about is making the key metrics so they get their undeserved bonus.....
How can a company survive when the "people" don't respect their Mgmt team. So, its doesn't surprise me how disappointing the results are......
A recent poll shows that 78% of iPhone users are VERY SATISFIED with their experience. I bet if you include SATISFIED and VERY SATISFIED it would be well above 90%. What do users like about the iPhone? Is it AT&T? No, AT&T is the necessarily evil that brings phone calls and slow data rates. The iPhone revolutionizes how people connect to and use information. AT&T gets in the way but there's no better way to deliver ubiquitous voice calls at the moment.
Nortel needs to figure out how to align with the iPhones of the telecom world rather than the AT&T's. Selling pipes to AT&T is a commodity business, and whoever makes the cheapest pipes wins. See Huawei.
I don't see how we (Nortel) are getting out of the pipe making business, so my hopes are very low right now as an employee. We're doing yeoman's work cutting costs. What are we doing about growth?
The problem it has is that it's been unable to capture the telecoms zeitgeist and set a differentiated "fashion trend" in an industry dominated by simultaneously niche and volume players. It's being choked out of the market. Nortel is also hamstrung by a peculiar North American xenophobia to globalisation and a lack of understanding of markets outside NA.
It's too easy to say the economy is slowing down or there's an industry specific downturn in telecoms. Ultimately, around the world, more is being spent on comms now than last year. And it will be more again next year. Mobile comms is booming, consumers and enterprises are crying out for decent converged voice, data and multimedia applications and services. Why would MSFT, HP, Dell, Apple, etc. all be trying to break into a declining market?
Nortel has three basic problems:
1) It has been bad at exploiting truly growing markets, relying on NA for far too long.
2) It's been poor at converting innovation into new market opportunity (PBT a possible recent exception).
3) It has no vision of where comunications is heading and what the world should be aiming for in a way that global societies or its carrier and enterprise customers can relate to.
Allied to this are contributary factors: tinkering with it's organisational structure when what was needed was a wholesale revamp of it's complex matrixed organisation ever since it shed 60,000+ employees in 2001/2; competition between it's different business units with carrier and enterprise sales going after the same end customers with different business models; a fundamental lack of understanding throughout the organisation of what the huge changes in communications with the advent of the Internet and widespread mobile communications from '92 - to the present day have meant for their overall business model; and a failure, despite loud noises in the right direction, to become a services lead business.
Is it too late to turn it around? I hope not.
But decision making needs to be vastly accelerated and some real bets made on the future of the company. Every current manager in the company should be tested on their understanding of Nortel's business fundamentals, where the communications markets in different parts of the world are headed and what sort of behaviours will mean success (specific behaviours, not vague tenets such as "Focus on the customer").
The problem is that, once they do this, they could find only a handful of people truly qualified to work there.
Still, I'd rather like to know how employees feel about that story:
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/busine...
It's funny when the press makes bold statements without stating the actual facts behind the statement. Stir the pot a little more please.
Thats lousy mangement.
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/busine...
luck favors the brave.
why does nt have to be a global company when the market is so different around the globe? nt-na, nt-eu, nt-asia etc...
6 sigma. own it, are only buzz words that say to me ' i ,upper management, will not take responsibility for anything bad that happens". i challenge you to show everybody where these phony plans have worked with out pain to those that really produce.
MZ and his cronies don't have a clue. out source engineering to mexico, half a** engineering is the result. out source supply chain to ??? where are the parts..
i have been on a job since week 1 that was to run 4 weeks. i am still there and will be for 2 more, reason, incomplete engineering, parts have still not been delivered. gosh, somebody pony up a credit card so we can buy the parts.. we can not survive waiting for parts..
if NT were a patient it would be high cholestrol, blocked arteries, heart attack, major bypass and stuck on life support until organs are harvested.
Thanks.
battle fatigue. They are tired of the retoric and propaganda of Mike Z and his
GE cronies.
forecast, namely Wimax..the MEs were in Optical, and that oh so old fashioned CVoiP.
Guess what happened to those MEs? they got hired by Ericsson and Alcatel within 1 week on higher salaries than Nortel....thats the Nortel of today...mediocre and blinded by stats...
it does not matter whether least effective or most effective. the lean six sigma ironically is to make the company leaner. so irrespective of how one performs there will be a layoff coming almost every quarter. each manager will to identify one person. even if there is a ton of least effectives somewhere else it does not matter.
that is process a bunch of bean coutners.
http://www.jobvent.com/companyBrowse.php?Compan...
themselves up for disaster.
The chinese will cheat, steal, copyright/patent infringe and pull the rug right from under them.
Z will leave the carpet and be airborne with such torque twist and force due to the sudden yank he could probably drill a hole in Beijing Bobs Skull. All at the expense
of the North American Employees.
I thought Nortel were building that huge R and D campus over there because the Chinese were buying nortel gear and signing contracts? Looks like all that dried up, but the building continues over there and the investment turns softer and softer. What a crock.
If Nortel want to make headway, fire the marketers they
have now and get some innovative commercials and advertising that feature COMEDY. You know laughter, the universal language. They also need the Canadian Government to put some more pokers in their fire. After all isn't Nortel suppose to be Canadas Crown Jewel of Technology? The gov't treat it like a Crown Royal. And what good did John Manley ever do on the board?
Anybody?
I know one thing.
Nortels best prospects are definitely not in China, Mexico, India, Poland or God knows
where they'll be looking next...North Korea?
Outsourcing is a traitorous choice.
If they let got the right people in North America they have a chance.
Ditch the suits, the under achieving marketers, salespeople, admin, poor market
strategizers, managers that aren't managing their employees, a meaningful
project or something progressive, and the plethera of idiots that Z keeps promoting or hiring for dumb ass positions and programs like black belt, sigma six, ethics and all that other crap.
Nortel need an intellectual go getter home grown Canadian like Don Cherry with
the proper knowledge to succeed.
Maybe Canada should get out of NAFTA and Alberta and it's oilfields should
be the capital of Canada. Definitely not Ottawa or Toronto.
We'll see what happens..We'll see....
I disagree with the India/China Comment.
Outsourcing has shown to have the opposite effect of that which was desirous.
China is no longer a low cost center.
It has become too westernized and the average salary per engineer head between
the Two countries is NOW LESS than 2:1 and the gap is rapidly closing.
China has not shown they can make a profit for Nortel and in fact it is a losing
endeavour. Many Chinese leave nortel after basic training along with stealing
technology so they can go peddle their wares at Huaweii or other Chinese Companies. The chinese can do manufacturing (so long as we are not
talking about anything too complex) but design, engineering and
even support is another story. They fail miserably at that. If nortel continue to invest
these skillsets in China and India and other cheap
markets that simply cannot turn over a profit the company will slip into oblivion.
Mexico and Poland (particularly the quality of workmanship from Mexico) will
have disastrous effects on the bottom line if Nortel cotinue their investment
in places like this.
Here is how Nortel Needs to Get Fixed:
A/ More subsidies from the Canadian government. The government talks how
important Nortel is To Canada. They should put their money with their mouth
is rather than have John Manley walking around like he is doing Nortel a favour
which they deserve based on their history and contributions to the telco world.
Talk and suits (unless you are Don Cherry) are cheap.
B/ Massive re-org to cut the fact from JCI-4 positions and up. Promote JCI 1, 2 and 3
to managerial positions if they want it and save a ton of money with better informed
more eager people who know how things really work at all levels.
B/ Immediate salary freeeze on anybody earning over 100k unless they have patents
in their name and are one of only a few who can do a particular job at Nortel.
Nortel have to start looking at how much people earn and what kind of job they are
doing. Administration salaries over 70k/year is ridiculous. SG&A on the whole
over 70k is ridiculous.
C/ Instead of outsourcing to cheaper markets that don't deliver they need to clean up
their own house with respect to overinflated salaries paid.
The scientists, researchers, designers, engineers, support and people who
are hands on, doing the working, contributing to revenue and saving money by
doing more than the job they are paid for are the ones they have to keep and
compensate accordingly. If they make the right choices they can salvage the place.
But historically this just does not seem to happen.
Lean sigma six and black belt is a crock.
Let the young experience people who work on the floor and are directly responsible
for revenue come up with ideas they can be compensated for.
Overcompensating managers who should be gone with ridiculous programs like
this is a huge waste of resources and money.
Since Mike Z hasn't been fired, doesnt this mean that the board is also part of the grand scheme to fleece what is left of Nortel...
Mike Z should have at least been fired for the content of the following article:
http://www.billingworld.com/news/briefs/struggl...