Here's my attempt at removing some of the worst fluff from the email:
Last week in my email to you I outlined our direction as a productivity and platform company. On July 22, during our public earnings call, I’ll share further specifics on where we are focusing our innovation investments. The first step to building the right organization is to make changes to our workforce. With this in mind, we will begin to reduce the size of our overall workforce by up to 18,000 jobs in the next year. Of that total, Nokia Devices and Services is expected to account for about 12,500 jobs, comprising both professional and factory workers. We are moving now to start reducing the first 13,000 positions, and the vast majority of employees whose jobs will be eliminated will be notified over the next six months.
It’s important to note that while we are eliminating roles in some areas, we are adding roles in certain other strategic areas. My promise to you is that we will go through this process in the most thoughtful and transparent way possible. We will offer severance to all employees impacted by these changes, as well as job transition help in many locations, and everyone can expect to be treated with the respect they deserve for their contributions to this company.
Later today your Senior Leadership Team member will share more on what to expect in your organization. Our workforce reductions are mainly driven by two outcomes: work simplification as well as Nokia Devices and Services integration.
First, we will simplify the way we work to drive greater accountability and move faster. We plan to have fewer layers of management, both top down and sideways, to accelerate the flow of information and decision making. This includes flattening organizations and increasing the span of control of people managers. Our business processes and support models will be more lean and efficient with greater trust between teams. These changes will affect both the Microsoft workforce and our vendor staff.
Second, we are working to integrate the Nokia Devices and Services teams into Microsoft, completing the acquisition announced last September. To win in the higher price tiers with our first-party phone portfolio, we will focus on design and technical innovation. In addition, we plan to shift select Nokia X product designs to become Lumia products running Windows. This builds on our success in the affordable smartphone space and aligns with our focus on Windows Universal Apps.
Making these decisions to change are difficult, but necessary. I want to invite you to my monthly Q&A event tomorrow. I hope you can join, and I hope you will ask any question that’s on your mind.
Thanks, that was great. Your version is clear and to the point without losing anything. It really makes me wonder why corporate messages are so often written in such a strange style. It clearly isn't necessary, and often ticks people off.
That may generally be true, but people capable of becoming CEOs of big companies are almost certainly not a fuzzy thinkers, which suggests to me that there is something else going on. Maybe this sort of corporate-speak, while being a negative signal to the set of people I'm more familiar with, is a positive signal to different and more important sets of people, like other executives, business media, and investors.
Making the public earnings call the centerpiece seems like a real bad morale move. If I were a 'Softie it would be a strong signal where the leadership's priorities lie (stock price). It gives the talk of "lean" and "accountability" a decidedly negative undertone IMO.
I do like the line about "the respect they deserve" without qualifier. It adds a bit of humanity to the whole thing.
But not enough overall IMO. It really leaves me with the impression that this is just typical corporate speak trying to put the stock price ahead of the mentions of "design and technical innovation".
well, his duty is to the shareholders so having that as a priority sounds like a good thing to me. Yes treating your employees well is a good thing, and it's necessary for a successful business, but that doesn't mean you should keep people who aren't needed or aren't performing.
With an acquisition of this size there are going to be redundant people, and as Nokia was headed towards going out of business, everyone would have lost their job instead of just half.
> well, his duty is to the shareholders so having that as a priority sounds like a good thing to me.
I think it's pretty tone deaf in a letter to employees. But tomato/tomato I guess.
I didn't say anything about keeping redundant positions, just that he wants to raise the bar for results, and I feel like this release only hurts that effort.
I'm not aware of any great turnarounds that began with "look, we're here for the share-holders". (I'm sure for good or ill they're out there, but they haven't come to my attention for whatever reason).
It's just about the exact opposite of other famous turnarounds based on the "it's the product stupid".
I don't know... I just feel like there's a lost opportunity here. Morale is going to suffer regardless. That doesn't mean you have to make it worse by being tone-deaf.
I was just thinking of doing this yesterday, you should email it to him! Could be fun to try to do this for all overly wordy corporate email/announcements.
Last week in my email to you I outlined our direction as a productivity and platform company. On July 22, during our public earnings call, I’ll share further specifics on where we are focusing our innovation investments. The first step to building the right organization is to make changes to our workforce. With this in mind, we will begin to reduce the size of our overall workforce by up to 18,000 jobs in the next year. Of that total, Nokia Devices and Services is expected to account for about 12,500 jobs, comprising both professional and factory workers. We are moving now to start reducing the first 13,000 positions, and the vast majority of employees whose jobs will be eliminated will be notified over the next six months.
It’s important to note that while we are eliminating roles in some areas, we are adding roles in certain other strategic areas. My promise to you is that we will go through this process in the most thoughtful and transparent way possible. We will offer severance to all employees impacted by these changes, as well as job transition help in many locations, and everyone can expect to be treated with the respect they deserve for their contributions to this company.
Later today your Senior Leadership Team member will share more on what to expect in your organization. Our workforce reductions are mainly driven by two outcomes: work simplification as well as Nokia Devices and Services integration.
First, we will simplify the way we work to drive greater accountability and move faster. We plan to have fewer layers of management, both top down and sideways, to accelerate the flow of information and decision making. This includes flattening organizations and increasing the span of control of people managers. Our business processes and support models will be more lean and efficient with greater trust between teams. These changes will affect both the Microsoft workforce and our vendor staff.
Second, we are working to integrate the Nokia Devices and Services teams into Microsoft, completing the acquisition announced last September. To win in the higher price tiers with our first-party phone portfolio, we will focus on design and technical innovation. In addition, we plan to shift select Nokia X product designs to become Lumia products running Windows. This builds on our success in the affordable smartphone space and aligns with our focus on Windows Universal Apps.
Making these decisions to change are difficult, but necessary. I want to invite you to my monthly Q&A event tomorrow. I hope you can join, and I hope you will ask any question that’s on your mind.