First on the chopping block is Michael Francis who joined J.C. Penney as president back in October. Holding a similar previous role at Target, Francis was responsible for trying to explain the dated department chain's pricing strategy. Penney's recently reported a larger than expected sales loss, forcing the current CEO who has been lauded for his previous retail work at Apple to take the reins back over on store merchandising. Any time an executive is forced out after less than a year the question begs: How could one person be held to a standard others are not? Clearly there had to be a fall guy so Francis is out. Safe to say he won't be turning up in any unemployment lines soon.
The second example is a senior executive, Keith Block, who headed sales for Oracle in North America. Block's fate was sealed when some instant messages were disclosed as part of a lawsuit filed by HP. According to filing excerpts published by the Wall Street Journal, Block said that Oracle had "bought a dog" when it purchased Sun Microsystems and that former HP CEO Mark Hurd who Oracle hired following his HP firing had "produced a lot of noise but not many results." Oracle had no official statement but released its earnings report three days early. Ironically enough profits increased 7.5 percent during the fourth quarter. Key takeaway from this hubris sample: You might want to temper language when on official company communication channels. Especially when you work for a king named Larry Ellison who can pull off public commentary that other mere mortals can't.
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