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Palm Beach – Woody Johnson said a big reason the team offered buyouts to 170 of 250 employees was to help change the culture.
“We’re in a major transition in terms of culture and the way we do things,” Johnson said. “We haven’t really made major changes in the organization itself in years, decades. So, we thought that this was a good time to give everybody an opportunity to reevaluate what they’re doing in their lives and the plan we’re going to. We want people who are all in, 100 percent to what the plan is with [Glenn and Mougey] on the football side. They have to be on the business side exactly the same, and they have to be together to serve our public, serve our players in a much more innovative way than we have.”
“That’s something that we thought was consistent with changing culture, giving everybody a chance to go in a different direction if they wanted, seek other opportunities, but also to move the whole organization forward in maybe a new and slightly different way.”
But the part of this that some people around the league question is how you can change a culture when all the people at the top of the organization, and not talking about Glenn and Mougey, but other very high-up decision-makers, are still there, and decided who would stay and who would go?
Many of these people have been in the building just as long as the people they bought out, and these people all have more power than the employees who were bought out.
Look, this could work out, and the culture could improve significantly, but anybody who knows anything about corporate America knows that if you are attempting a drastic culture change, it often has to start at the top.
Look, I’m not calling for more firings, I’m just talking about corporate cultural philosophy 101.
Starbucks recently replaced its CEO with the man who led Chipotle to great success, and the new CEO changed a lot of things over the last few months.
He’s at the very, very top. It wasn’t the barristas who were fired.
So what the Jets are doing, to institute a culture change, is a somewhat eclectic approach, and it could turn out great. Nobody knows right now. I never like to blast decisions out of the gate because I don’t have a crystal ball.
All I’m saying is that it’s a rather unique strategy to attempt to change a culture by firing many people on the second and third level and keeping all the top people, who some might blame for the cultural issues more than the axed underlings.
So how would some of these people, who were part of the old culture, know who to keep and who to bounce to implement a new culture?
Some would argue that none of the decision-makers charting the new course have the track record of Brian Niccol.
Hey, they can absolutely prove the detractors wrong and oversee a magical cultural reboot.
We shall see.
Just saying it’s a very unique way of executing this cultural reboot.
April 2, 2025
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