Sprint's Hesse Continues to Show Leadership but Doubts Remain 32 comments
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Sprint (S) CEO Dan Hesse appears to be focused and decisive. He's bringing in trusted, new blood to the executive ranks. He still faces an uphill struggle. Investors, alienated employees and customers will need persistent and encouraging news to rebuild confidence in order for Sprint Nextel to stay in one piece long term. However, Hesse continues to earn positive marks for his leadership, regardless of the final outcome.
It's easy to sit back and offer suggestions and criticism on a
particular company, especially if you don't have much skin in the game,
i.e., your primary livelihood isn't tied to the enterprise. Dan Hesse
continues to make decisive moves. After years of dysfunction
throughout the executive ranks at Sprint Nextel, he deserves credit.
It will still
be weeks and months before we know if real changes are starting to take
hold, and, indeed, more leadership of the kind we are seeing will be
necessary for Sprint to stay whole and / or independent, if that is the
goal. The level of discontent both
within and outside Sprint Nextel is unusual, even for a company in
distress. There are unconfirmed accusations by people who claim to be
current or former employees of Enron-like fraud.
That said, Hesse continues to make positive moves. I've given him kudos in the past for going public with the customer care woes in the Business Week article. I believe it was a good move for him to personally star in current television ads. It seems that Hesse understands that the challenges he has are both internal and external. Most recently, he added Steven Elfman as President - Network Operations and Wholesale.
It's been a couple months since Hesse's joined the company. He's had a chance to make initial assessments. At this point, it doesn't matter whether it was part of the grand plan coming in or something decided after coming on board; Hesse has decided that he needs help. Elfman is part of Hesse's "army" having worked for him at Terabeam and AT&T Wireless. Elfman is a trusted, competent and loyal executive from Hesse's past.
There are three interesting parts to the announcement:
1. President Wholesale reporting to a President (Patterson to Elfman)
2. Chief Network Officer reporting to a President (Walker to Elfman)
3. Product Development and Tech Dev now reporting to Elfman
But for Marketing and Customer Care, Elfman is essentially a COO. Up to now and in the absence for several months of an official COO, Patterson and Walker reported to the CEO. It will be interesting to see in the future if and how these peer to peer reporting relationships are resolved. In addition, with Tech Dev reporting to Elfman, there is an open question as to where the CTO reports. Previously, the CTO reported to the Chief Strategy person that deposed CEO Forsee brought in.
The bottom once again is that Dan Hesse appears to be focused and decisive, and continues to earn positive marks for his leadership, regardless of the final outcome.
Disclosure: Long position in Sprint.
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This article has 32 comments:
Why would they authorize a 40 million dollar golden parachute for a CEO that has led this company into a disasterous situation?
Why would they condine a statement from Hesse indicating that the company is slated to lose 1.2 million net subscribers in the first quarter alone and an additional 1.2 million in the second quarter? Where is the urgency to correct that now instead of eventually?
Why did they condone the Xohm adventure before assuring that their current operations were first taken care of?
Why isn't the board demanding blood and the rolling of heads after the disasterous J.D. Powers report today over the atrocious state of our network? This report echos the previous disparaging reports by others that point out the obvious failures in customer service, network, customer satisfaction etc.
Why hasn't the board directed the CEO to finish the procurement of the remaining affiliates before throwing away billions on a Wimax shot in the dark that many anaylsts claim is due to fail before it even gets off the ground?
Why isn't the board demanding action in regard to the gaming of the system by Sprint employees who are deactivating IDEN units by porting them over to CDMA and receiving full commissionable credit even though they have actually sold nothing?
Why with the supposed increased focus on IDEN did the engineering budget for the enhancement of the IDEN network get cut by an enormous percentage in late 2007?
Why did the board back the decision of the previous CEO to eliminate an IDEN full QWERTY BlackBerry therefore eliminating the possibility of selling this device to clients (such as police) that require full qwerty functionality? (A very irritating problem in the affiliate territory.)
There is a lot wrong here. The need to fix it is now. Urgency should be paramount. However you have got to love the way they are handling things like churn. Let's throw more money in terms of bonuses to the fat cat executives that are so rediculously overpaid allready to reduce churn. Like anything they are going to do is going to make a significant difference. This should already be a significant part of their job. How dare the board condone this foolishness. The churn is where it is in part due to their previous failures. To incent them to fix it now is an insult to those of us in the field.
Since the merger, Sprint has removed our car allowances though gas costs are the highest it has been in U.S. history. It has removed the legacy Nextel Stock Option plans precluding us from sharing in the success of the company. It has eliminated merit increases for this year. It has reduced out monthly commisionable at risk money by 10% by moving that portion over to a churn factor for sales that it knows we can not hit based upon Hesse's own predictions of a 1.2 million net subscriber loss in Q1 and again in Q2. And to add insult to injury raised sales quota's beginning in April when the vast majority of the sales reps are not achieving them currently due to the mass exodus of our subscribers to the competitors. With all of this they also managed to terminate over 4000 staff. I wonder what percentage of that 4000 are at the executive level. I have not seen any of their positions eliminated that has not been backfilled.
As an employee I am ashamed to work for such a screwed up company currently. As a stockholder I am outraged at the decisions being made by Sr. Management and approved by the Board of Directors.
Here is a prediction for you.
I predict that churn will be significantly less than the 1.2 million net subscriber loss that Heese announced for first quarter. I am betting that it will net out at half of that. The result will be an increase in our stock price and big fat bonuses to the executive committee that is now paid on churn reduction. There will even be a small amount of money given to sales for beating the churn prediction. But at the end of the day if my prediction is right it will still mean a loss of 600K customers but that will be overshadowed by the fact that it wasn't 1.2 million. So Heese scores a victory with Wall Street, the execs get a big payday and our company is still far worse off than it was at the beginning of the quarter.
If that doesn't happen for Q1 it would only be because it is such an obvious manipulation play, but it is bound to happen by end of Q2 which will be just fine with our Sr. Management and their new bonus compensation plan. (Q2 might be more logical so that Heese can get rid of a few thousand more of us after a disasterous Q1.)
In the meantime we get less and less (and not just compensation) and we continue to be undervalued and underappreciated while our company continues to go down hill.
I wonder if maybe they are beginning to realize how dumb it was to be the only major carrier that did not get approved on the big federal contract last year for instance. Or how rediculous it is to go to market without a strategic plan to win. But I feel like they really don't care as long as the execs pull in their big paydays. I hope that someone buys us at Sprint Speed (whatever that is supposed to be.)
Who would be left?
It sucks to be here becasue the wonderful company that we once worked for has been consumed in the supposed merger of equals.
It sucks to be here because our network. customer service, leadership, employee benefits, handset mix, and strategic vision have all become a laughingstock of the industry.
It sucks to be here because lawsuits are spreading left and right including one that will end up in front of the Supreme Court, the company has been accused of RICO violations, employee discrimination, and now gambling violations as well as failure to meet the FCC rebanding mandates.
It sucks to be here because our slogan went form how business gets done to how customers get screwed!
As far as resumes and job interviews, believe me MANY times MANY of us are looking and looking hard. Hopefully most of us will find one before the next round of cuts from our leadership.
I am damn good at what I do, but if the company would offer me one tenth (100K) a year for the rest of my life to fail at what I do, I would happily take it and never look back!
The part that is really funny to me is that I can remember saying to my spouse (pre merger) that I was having so much fun in this job that I almost felt guilty taking a paycheck! Now I couldn't hate it much more than I do.
At Nextel we were part of a team. At Sprint we have no significant value.
At Nextel we were the underdog that was always finding new ways to win. At Sprint we are an embarrassment to the industry.
At Nextel we were all about growth. At Sprint we are all about retention.
At Nextel we believed that we were winners. At Sprint we believe that we are losers.
At Nextel there was always opportunity for advancement. We are all about improving the company and ourselves. At Sprint there is always room for a voluntary seperation agreement. We are all about covering our butt to retain our job until we find another.
At Nextel we shared in the success of the company with Stock Options and commission multipliers for over achievers. At Sprint the Sr. Management is the only one with options and they keep raising quota and have reduced your monthly at risk commissions by 10% yet they have a nice new bonus plan for the senior executives.
There are so many differences that one could nearly write a novel outlining them. But at the end of the day the primary difference is that at Nextel we believed we were part of the best and at Sprint we believe that we are of little value to the company and are just a tool to be used by management in their quest for their next multi million dollar pay day.
Internally, this company is a joke. Our IT department apparently was mostly outsourced to India. Every time I have to call the help desk I can't even understand the person on the other line and they have no idea what they are doing. Tickets are regularly closed without being worked. As mentioned above, we no longer have tea provided or cups, we were told to bring our own utensils from home. Yet, the execs are making more money than ever.
Hesse is a joke. He talks a good game, but action has been fleeting. This supposed "nuke" that was the Simply Everything plan was another huge flop. Nothing about it is Simple. There are about 4 different versions of the plan and then you have codes to add on in certain situations and this code won't work with that code, etc. It was launched without any testing and the first week it launched it caused the billing system to freeze. They should have launched one plan, with one price and that's it. That would truly be Simply Everything. Way to go Hesse, your "nuke" was late. Verizon beat us to the punch again and their plan seems much more simple than ours.
Unfortunately I'm going to have to recommend that you NOT believe anything positive you're hearing about Sprint. This company is very, very broken and pretty much it's from Managers on up the chain. The only people who seem worth anything are the front line employees and we are the ones getting royally screwed on a daily basis.
1. There was no hope of making this thing work as long as the legacy S folks believed it was an acquisition, and the legacy N folks believed Forsee and Donahue that it was a merger. The fact that that confusion was allowed to continue for 2+ years (still there today) is a perfect example of the lack of integrity of the senior management. They knew this was an issue, and devoted no time or effort to resolving it. They had NO PLAN for merging the two cultures and NO TRAINING (I asked) for employees on what was expected of them relative to merging the two companies. If "people are our biggest asset" as so many folks like to prattle, then taking care of those people, and preventing them from being confused or misled, would seem to be the #1 responsibility of the seniors. Overall grade for managing the employees: F-.
2. At the beginning, both companies had successes to celebrate and issues to resolve. Neither company had it all figured out. But instead of pounding home the idea that both companies could and must learn from each other, the seniors allowed the partisans on both sides to continue to poison the well until there was no way the two groups could come together. Just one example: The engineer who, in a teambuilding meeting, said "Don't ask the Nextel people anything--they don't know anything." What should have happened to that fellow is that he should have been fired and escorted to the gate on the spot. What actually happened to him--NOTHING. Overall grade for managing the merger: F-
If Hesse has the guts to do it, he should start by having a real funeral, right out there in Overland Park in front of the building where he sits, complete with two caskets and two headstones. One headstone should be labeled LEGACY SPRINT and the other should be labeled LEGACY NEXTEL. He should use that opportunity to announce the following:
a. We are one company.
b. Any employee, process, procedure, tradition, business unit, group, or other division, activity, or attribute of this combined company that is not actively contributing to our bottom line is going to be gotten rid of as soon as it is possible to do so without killing the business.
c. Any employee, process, procedure, tradition, business unit, group, or other division, activity, or attribute of this combined company that IS actively contributing to our bottom line will be trimmed to the bare minimum possible to obtain the business results without mistreating the employees. Any padding of staff levels or budget, when discovered, will result in the immediate removal of the manager and director involved, as well as the staff padding.
d. Any person looking to celebrate past successes in one company or the other, or just to come in and occupy a seat, or only to advance to the next level of management, or to denigrate or demonize "the other company" had better RUN to the exit and leave, because otherwise within 6 months their actions will get them fired. It's inevitable that if they harbor those attitudes their actions will demonstrate it, and at that point they will be canned. HR has been told to develop procedures to terminate employees that fall into these baskets.
e. We are going to collectively learn to walk the high wire without a net, and learn to catch each other and keep each other from failing and falling.
f. In case you didn't get it, WE ARE ONE COMPANY.
First, we are not allowed to use the name Sprint, have Sprint on our business cards, price lists, collateral etc.
Second, we are expected to carry an unmanageable quota with less than one half of a sales bag. And that quota just increased effective today.
Third, we are expected to be competitive with that half of a bag. This is extrodinarilly difficult in that the dealers in the area (indirect channel) are allowed to sell everything to our customers while we can sell IDEN only.
Fourth, we live with the uncertainty day by day as to how long we will be employed. Just a glance at yesterday's headline regarding the appelate court upholding the ruling in favor of IPCS that Sprint can not manage, maintain or sell IDEN products in their territory and absolutely NO formal response of any merit from our management leaves us dangling in the breeze.
Fifth, the competition is having our lunch by telling customers that IDEN is going to go away and presenting these same customers with a print out of the judgement from 2006 which was just confirmed by the appelate court yesterday. Already today I have had 15 calls asking if we are going to be shutting down the customers IDEN units in response to yesterdays announcement. The only response I can give them (approved by management) is that we are currently considering our legal options. Try to make a sale in that environment!!
Lastly, the company has decided to degrade our only differentiator (direct connect) by releasing High Performance Push To Talk on CDMA devices. This very name degrades IDEN as it implies that IDEN is not high performance since they are just introducing it. It also gives us no leverage over the affiliate as they now can compete with us IDEN salesmen without compunction.
One company? Not if you work in the affiliate market. We aren't even allowed to say that we work for Sprint. We have to say Nextel even in our voicemail greeting. The word Sprint is not allowed as it violates the affiliate non compete agreement.
So in answer to your statement ... WE ARE NOT ONE COMPANY. At least not in my area.
First let me say it would be an honor to provide you with the requisite two glasses. I may even throw in a third as long as it had no affect upon your ability to objectively report.
In terms of the morale situation I am afraid that the comments are actually an understatement of the true situation as surprising as that may sound to you.
The recent layoffs were a real thorn in the side of long term employees. In my specific market it was actually quite a devastating thing to watch. Employees with many years of experience were cut in favor of others without any real concern as to the value of that employee. Ironically in my market 100% of those (no exaggeration) were legacy Nextel employees that were eliminated. Some of them litterally knew CEO's of top fortune 100 companies on a first name basis. It was illogical and from a long term basis will be harmful to our company.
But your specific question is in regard to how management must respond to garner front line support.
I am afraid that it is a very theoretical question as I must tell you that management (at least at a director and area v.p. level) is NOT walking the walk. Instead they are taking actions that are draconian to put it mildly.
If they really wanted to right this ship then a house cleaning needs to truly occur. From very senior levels all the way down to front line folks.
Sr. Management should publically announce that they are refusing ANY form of bonus plan during this crisis. Instead we get to read that they are being incented to reduce churn that is at least in part their fault to begin with.
They should present in a company wide meeting a strategic plan (obviously not all could be shared) that outlines the steps that this company is going to take to succeed.
They should present an organizational cohesiveness initiative to eliminate the us and them mentality. This however will never be effective until the affiliate situation is resolved.
They should adopt an attitude of success as a motto instead of the current attitude of cover your butt and blame somebody else for our failures as an organization.
I know that Dan has not had time to do all of this. Though your article basically calls for everyone to give him a chance, it misses the point that he is doomed to fail if steps are not taken in regard to his sr. management staff that has contributed so greatly to these problems.
Now you could argue that he has already made sr management changes. But if you look close, those changes include getting rid of Paul Saleh who all of us believed in as the financial guru that took Nextel to free cash flow over a year ahead of analyst predictions and performed exceptionally as the financial brains of Nextel. Changes like that we could do without.
Dan needs to completely END the current sales situation. Raising quotas is foolish during the current mass defections. Lowering our at risk money by ten percent and tieing that 10% to a churn reduction incentive for employees is seen as ludicrous immediately after he announced an anticipated 1.2 million sibscriber loss for the first and second quarter. The front line folks see this as just another way of reducing our income.
Since you are a former employee I am certain that you are familiar with the term PIP. Sales reps aer being put on PIP constantly now without anyone taking any time to evaluate the issue. A lack of sales performance by employees that have constantly overexceeded for the last 8 to 10 years indicates a much larger problem. If it was one or two people I could understand, but when 90% of the reps in our market fail to hit quota month after month, then the problem has got to be evaluated much clearer and it is unlikely to be the reps failure. However the solution to the failure is to raise quota's? This is senseless. If they want to walk the walk, then they must first define what that walk is.
I appreciate your optimism. But things are NOT getting better. They are deteriorating more rapidly than outsiders are aware of. Long term customer relationships are being severed. Our network continues to get worse (from the custoemrs perspective). Management (local and regional) has quit listening to front line at all. Sr. Management is being portrayed as greedy. Lawsuits are piling up. The affiliate has won yet another battle which has caused an incredible amount of fear and uncertainty with the employee and customer base. And what has been managements response?
They have not presented a strategic integrated plan. They have not responded to employees in regard to any of the lawsuits. They have announced new handsets and recently a new rate plan that we privately call simply confusing. They have demonstrated confusion and a lack of congruity. The act as if they were unprepared to respond to the court of appeals decision regarding the affiliate even though they have had 2 years to formulate a plan of action. They have eliminated valuable assets while providing a new incentive plan to senior management. They have raised quotas and lowered compensation. They have taken silly steps like eliminating coffee service etc., with no justifiable reason which makes working conditions just that much more unpleasant. They have created an atmosphere that makes it seem like management and employees are not even working at the same company. But worst of all, they have failed miserably to communicate with the employees in an effective manner which is a real shame for a communications company.
The question here is not how long they have to walk the walk, but rather when are they going to take the first step of that walk.
Personally I agree - this ship is headed for a reef...management is stymied and the whole company is Paralyzed, and I mean PARALYZED...no one is willing to stick out their neck becasue they are afraid their name is on Hesse's white board and just by doing their job they will get the axe like other executives, who as pointed out above excelled at their career and were highly honored on the street.
So Mr Hesse, this is a call to action...I beleive this company has strong assets, excellent people with a passion to see it succeed so you need to figure out how to deshackle them - let them fail or succeed in achieving the goals and objectives you set for them!! ooops, thats right no one has any goals and objectives because you havent decided to share any insight into a strategic plan to help S!
No - all that has happened is we have targeted reductions in churn as small as possible so we can reach our bonus goals...aka pay the executives lots of bonus money!...get the fat fatter and the lean leaner!
Yes, I am out of here as soon as I can find a job.
I think that the part that you are missing is the idea that you are hearing from a small group of disgruntaled current and former employees. You (fairly) indicate that this is not a representative sampling. It is an accurate statement, but it misses the point I believe.
The discontent in this company reaches far beyond the few folks posting here. People loved what they were doing before the merger. People hate the company as it is right now.
The attitudes in the workplace are far worse than this small sampling conveys. We are discouraged, disillusioned and in short we no longer believe that this company has much value. It is a job. Until we can find something better. There is no passion to succeed as things stand today. The passion is about holding on until we can find a better job.
Today I accepted a job offer. It is an 11K cut in pay. It is worth it just to escape the constant depression, anxiety and disaster that this company has become.
The ironic part was that at the interview for this job I ran into TWO of my coworkers who were applying for the same position.
In break rooms and other places out of managements earshot, everyone seems to be talking about how bad they want out of here. There are even some friendly wagers as to who will be next to leave.
The hard part for me is that I have made some very close friends as I have worked here for nearly a decade. It is devastating to leave them behind. But not quite as devastating as watching the company that I loved so very much get gutted like a pig.
In a couple of weeks I will no longer be Stuck At Sprint. But Nextel will always own a piece of my heart. (Sappy I know but in reality it is very very true.)
If a poll were taken and if everyone that responded answered it truthfully, the net result in my opinion would be that in excess of 90% of the employees would indicate that this is not a nice place to work, that they are not cared about or for, that their opportunities to succeed are nearly nonexistant and that they believe that management is being overpaid for underperformance.
This is not a representative sampling. BUt I truly believe that the opinions and frustration that you see posted here is only the very tiniest tip of the ice burg. This company is not only in trouble, it is headed for a HUGE crash and burn.
And in my opinion, based upon what I have see thus far, Dan Heese does not have a clue as to how to save it.
I'm aware that there is widespread discontent at Sprint. I think my point is that I believe the sample that posts comments on articles like these tend to be more passionate about the subject, just like people who call in to political or sports talk radio shows.
I also worked for Sprint PCS in Kansas City in the mid-90's and lived through the launch of the network, so I also remember what it was like then in the early days. It was a different company than what merged with Nextel in 2004-2005.
Congrats to you on walking the walk and walking out of the situation. It is a hard thing to do, whether it's voluntary or involuntary regardless of the situation if you've spent so much time there.
My perspective tends to be from HQ, since that's where I've worked, so I've found your insights and those of others from the field to be very valuable.
I've also talked to some current employees recently who have lamented NOT getting chosen to leave.
Having been in "management" I was amazed by two general things (nothing to do with Sprint): 1) Right after I was promoted, everyone treated me like an idiot, that is, all of a sudden people volunteered directions to conference rooms and restaurants, and 2) How easy it is to make snap judgments of managements' incompetence. While many times the judgments are justified, I believe a new guy like Hesse, deserves a fair shake of several months for setting out on a strategic direction before passing judgment. He has a lot going against him in terms of existing inadequacy at the management ranks, poor employee morale, the takeover clock ticking with the low stock price, etc. He may not have a clue as to how to save the company as a standalone business and he may not have the time to execute a plan, but to me he does come across as someone who understands wireless.
WE DONT HAVE ANYTHING!
If you recall there has been mention of Enron Like fraud at Sprint Nextel. If you read today's report titled: Ex-Sprint Employee Sues For Wrongful Firing, in the Honolulu Advertiser, you will see an example of some of the fraudulant activities that have (and I believe still are) occurring.
In my opinion this is just the beginning of a rash of suits that I believe will eventually be filled. In this particular case the fraud wasn't really perpetuated by Sprint, but I believe that they were certainly culpable (based upon the article) by telling this executive to "live with it" and then firing her 4 months later.
There is an awful lot of game playing going on here and at some point it is all going to come to light.
One of the biggest things that I feel will eventually hit is how the company is intentionally and WITH KNOWLEDGE cheating sales reps out of commissions. Here is how that game works.
As a rep I activate a phone and get credit for it. Now the customer wants to add a data service. In some cases to accomplish that the phone has to be briefly taken out of service and then put back in service. So the customer calls into customer care to have the data service added. Customer service removes the phone from service briefly creating a deact situation for me. Then customer service adds the data service and puts the unit back into service utilizing a HOUSE agent code. My deact means that my commission is charged back against me. The house code activation means that I do not get credit when service is restored. My net is zero, the companies net is one activation.
Doesn't sound like much? It happens thousands of times per week. That may not sound like much but adds up to what I believe is millions of dollars in lost commissions and the company KNOWS that it is happening.
Now the rep may appeal this. However if it occurred in the same month, the transaction (both activation and deactivation) don't even show up in the reps commission report.
If the action occurs in different months, the rep just assumes that the unit was deacted and most of the time does not realize that he/she was just cheated out of commission dollars.
There are so many examples like this. Some cheat customers, some cheat employees and in some cases employees are cheating the company. It's crazy. And worst of all the company is aware of ALL of it and does nothing.
Thanks for explaining. I don't believe the company is aware of all of it at the highest levels.
Ed
You may be correct, or a may be a matter of semantics when you sau "the highest levels". I have personally brought forth a variety of these issues/concerns to two different area vice presidents and one regional vice president. I never had access higher than that, but in my role I had avp / rvp access and made the case. Though assurances were given that these issues would be examined and corrected, they never were.
On Mar 27 02:02 PM Visionut wrote:
> Agreed. He is making some pretty good & aggressive moves. But the
> big question is how about the lower level VP/Directors that were
> part of the failure so far?? Would changing the top execs be sufficient
> for a turn around? If those VP/Directors were effective in their
> domains, then why did they sailed along the failing processes & decisions??
> IMHO this ship needs a complete overhaul/tranformation... The internal
> chaos needs to be fully understood and a full process re-engineering
> in every aspect of the business, from sales to marketing to fullfillment,
> engineering, IT and the whole enterpise is way over due... Leaving
> some of those people in the executive position and even givin them
> additional duties will only make things worse. Walker thinks our
> network is great and one of the biggest causes of cutomer loss is
> Sprint's network!!! She is still in place and now has the big task
> of converging Network & IT!!! with no background in IT and she is
> learning/taking over from LeFave which did not know much about IT
> except for selling Sprint's IT to Amdocs. Give them what ever money
> it takes without an effective IT model... So the jury will be out
> there as how effective those decisions will be, but there is not
> much more time for failuire. Just because of that, I think the better
> bolder decision would have been to start with a clean plate. There
> are many lower level employees that understand this domain and business
> a lot better than their executives due to them being in frontline
> and getting those folks along with some new visionary new/fresh executives
> might have a much better chance of success!!!