Brian Cornell to be replaced next year as retailer navigates boycott over its scaling back of DEI initiatives
The CEO of Target is stepping down, as the embattled retail giant seeks to turn around its fortunes amid an ongoing customer boycott over its scaling back of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
Brian Cornell will be replaced next year by Michael Fiddelke, Target’s chief operating officer, the company said on Wednesday.
Steps “down” to a position on the board of directors…which the new ceo will report to.
This is the most important part of this whole “we did it, Reddit” moment.
This is entirely a PR move and not actually going to do anything.
The “we did it” moment is their sales being down and staying down. The CEO thing is just icing. I’m cool with them rearranging deck chairs and putting in a new CEO who will also preside over falling sales numbers due to the continued boycott.
Yep, all they really care about is the money, and they have less of it, and will for a long time. They can measure their decrease, and know exactly how much their cowardice cost their company, and then they can look at the declining stock price, and know how much it is costing them personally. They are all extremely unhappy.
And getting a demotion from CEO to Board Member is still a humiliating day at the office. It may not seem like much to us rubes in the trenches, but to those C-suite guys, it’s super embarrassing. Everybody at the country club will know you got your heinie spanked by your customers.
Lots of MBAs will carefully* study the ways businesses can learn from Target’s mistake, and have easier ties to cut with window-dressing PR initiatives like diversity.
*cocaine