MEGATHREAD End to End team PILOT

In my humble opinion, our current CEO will not survive another year. His agenda is contrary to running a profitable business. Make sure you dump any company stock if you have any left in your 401k. When I am not working as a team leader I am a serious investor with my finger on the pulse of Wall Street. I own many different stocks from common shares to master limited partnerships to Real Estate Investment Trusts. What I do not own is any retail stocks since I am not in the game to lose money. The word on the street is that our beloved company is bleeding cash all over Wall St.; on a trajectory which unless corrected will lead to disaster. Don't take my word for it - do your homework.

Since you work for Target you seem to not be in the game to making money either. What gives :eek:
 
According to an email I just received this morning, the end-to end pilot has been terminated, and all traditional teams are to be restored A.S.A.P.
Interesting. Was the email concerning just your store or district, or the company as as whole?

I ask because our DTL had a visit at my store on Tuesday. Today during the smart huddle, our STL said that the DTL wants us to focus on E2E more as it is invisioned. (Electronics handles just Electronics, not pushing Toys, Cosmetics Team concentrates on Cosmetics, same with Market. All work to increase sales in their departments.
 
What gives is that I have been a team leader for almost thirteen years (of good reviews) and I am grandfathered into a lot of programs that no longer exist to newcomers. I am closing in on retirement and am well paid (more than recently hired ETL's) and I have excellent benefits in general. I'd be a fool not to dog it out for a few more years until S.S. and medicare kick in for me. I also have some other things going for me which I will not discuss on this forum. In addition I find my current position both interesting and amusing.
 
By the way, End-to-End theory is not a Target invention. It is a method of structuring business that has been around and written about for many years. However, if it is used as an end run around payroll spending by eliminating teams and replacing specialized personnel with poorly trained hacks, it will certainly fail. Check this out:
Process Ownership and the Art of End-to-end (E2E) Process Management
  • Published on February 15, 2016

Girish K C
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Process Management Expert, Consultant, and Trainer in BPM tools | Process design work for medium and large enterprises
I wrote in an earlier blog about an organization being a network of various processes which collectively achieve the operational, support and management goals of the organization. From a project management perspective, organizations can be 1) projectised or 2) functional or 3) hybrid (a mix of 1 and 2). I believe that under business process management one can categorize businesses also as process-centric, functional or mix of both.

There are many advantages of having a process-centric approach towards managing business over functional approach.

Take the example of a retail (product) sale on an e-commerce portal. If the business is driven functionally, the ownership will typically be split by departments. Each of the departments have their own metrics and targets. The marketing department will focus on ways to attracting as many customers to its portal, the sales department will have number targets for every product sold, procurement department will try and minimize assets, materials team will look to optimize inventory levels and transport costs, cash department on funds replenishment or bank deposits, etc. Each department will concentrate on how their department can be most profitable or efficient irrespective of the impact on all upstream or downstream departments.

If such an organization is tasked with reducing cost per customer transaction by say 10%, it would probably end up identifying the top 10 (or 20) cost items on its expenditure side and target 10% cost reduction for each item by making the relevant function heads responsible. Each function will have its own P&L account, and the function head will probably allocate pro-rated targets to all his / her team members. Cost reduction becomes their only goal. One can imagine the effect each such reduction would have on other functions that depend on these expenditure items – especially if they themselves do not have a reduction target.

Now let us see how a process-centric company will handle the same scenario. In such an organization, the business results are consciously obtained through processes and all their associated elements. The key parts of the organization are structured as End-to-End (E2E) processes from a customer perspective. And each E2E process will have a designated Process Owner (PO). The PO, unlike a function head, will own not only all the processes under that E2E but all the relevant parts of the functions involved in performing the process.

This E2E concept is very context-specific, but in general a process can be said to be E2E when it considers all the works required to achieve its primary goal. The example case for reducing cost per transaction has one main E2E process (Customer Order to Cash) and a number of inter-related E2E processes (such as Materials Procurement to Payment, Assets Acquisition to Retirement, Inventory Creation to Disposal, Service Requisition to Resolution, People Hiring to Retirement, etc.). As the primary goal is to reduce cost per customer transaction, the owner of the Customer Order to Cash process takes the ownership of the overall target. Having visibility of the entire E2E of the customer purchase lifecycle, the PO will have the advantage to look at multiple ways to achieve the target. The cost per transaction could be reduced by either by bringing down various costs across the lifecycle or by increasing the volume of transactions keeping the costs constant (or marginal increase). There could be opportunities for negotiating rates with suppliers and vendors for larger volumes. There could be cost increases in some departments but those that will significantly lower the net costs across the process – for example, investment in automation opportunities. The upstream or downstream impact of change in any cost parameter can be visualized using simulation scenarios. In other words, all the relevant functions involved in the E2E process will collectively and collaboratively act to achieve the target.

There are many other examples and scenarios across industries and business-types that reflect the advantages of process-centric approach over functional. There are also many drivers and enablers for moving from a functional structure to a process-centric structure. I will write about these in another blog. But the key to such a change is openness to process concepts, tools and methodologies - a shift from ‘it’s always been this way’ mindset to a ‘we can do it another way’ one.

In summary, organizations stuck up with the functional view of business puts walls between departments and makes it difficult for anyone to recognize or comprehend the value-creating E2E business processes running across these functions. Only when departments jointly analyze, optimize and support their E2E processes can a transition to process-centric behavior begin. This may be a challenging task, but it will definitely unlock the greatest value for any organization.
 
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One more thing; our beloved CEO just had his pay package cut by two thirds when the board of directors determined that he has not lived up to his promise to resurrect the company from the previous CEO's misplays. If he had any dignity or anywhere else to go, he would have gone. This guy has a history of company hopping, never spending more than a few years in any one position. What does that tell you?
 
One more thing; our beloved CEO just had his pay package cut by two thirds when the board of directors determined that he has not lived up to his promise to resurrect the company from the previous CEO's misplays. If he had any dignity or anywhere else to go, he would have gone. This guy has a history of company hopping, never spending more than a few years in any one position. What does that tell you?

I believe that his cash and stock compensation fell by nearly 1/3 to $11.3 million. CFO Cathy Smith's compensation dropped 41.3 percent to $4.4 million. COO and executive vice president John Mulligan's compensation fell by 32.7 percent to $7 million. Of course, all of us stockholders took a hit, too (around 10% value). It is time to clean house.
 
One of the TL's in my store said that they think E2E will be dead within 3 months. Nothing official that he heard, just from witnessing the process and being with the company for a while. I hope it dies, this process has too many weak points and relies on everything/everyone working to 100% which is not something you can get at most retail jobs.
 
So is it really true? Or not? I'm really worried, my store E2E is working great in my store, I don't want to go back to Overnight shifts again. I hate them with a passion. I'm very happy in my new position and shift at during day side. :(
 
Tear up our processes. Leave us to figure it out. Right before 4th quarter. What's wrong with this picture?
 
Talked to my STL today and he said we were rocking it, up a million bucks or some such shit.

Told him about the thoughts here and he was of the mind that "we" didn't know what we were talking about.

So to speak.

He also told me how ETL's were banned from participating here.
 
I think the wide variety of E2E posts and experiences reflects chaos with the roll-out. Chaos isn't what this company needs right now.
Sell your stock while there is time.
 
Oh gosh no! I hope it's not true. I'm really loving E2E, I have more hours now, very consistent hours (32-37 hours) compared to when I was overnight in Softlines. I would barely work 20 hours a week!!!!

I definitely wouldn't like to go back those shitty low hours, and barely sleeping anything, working Flow again at 4am. Hell no!
 
So is it really true? Or not? I'm really worried, my store E2E is working great in my store, I don't want to go back to Overnight shifts again. I hate them with a passion. I'm very happy in my new position and shift at during day side. :(
ASANTS. It really just depends on the attitude your STL and DTL have towards it.

Tear up our processes. Leave us to figure it out. Right before 4th quarter. What's wrong with this picture?
What's funny is they started rolling this out to more stores in the Spring. But because things move so slowly and because leadership wanted to make it work, we're now moving into Q3 with a mostly broken process.

I think the lesson here is take the time to make a plan during Q4, and implement it right at the start of Q1.
 
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