Dave Brandon does exit interview with Detroit News, learned nothing
Because he is what he is (a self-aggrandizing misanthrope), Dave Brandon got a farewell profile in the Detroit News today. It's one of their top stories. Let's see if he learned anything from his time at Michigan.
http://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/columnists/daniel-howes/2015/…
(Spoiler: he has not! What an asshole.)
A fitting move, that. What better preparation could there be for running a kiddie emporium than spending five years in the middle of the Ann Arbor circus, a swirl of trustee politicking, fan resentment and a football team that had the audacity to fall short of mythical expectations?
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Brandon sounds like a man pleased to be back on the familiar ground of corporate America. There he'll be tackling marketing and operational challenges, building (or repairing) a brand buffeted by changing technology and changing consumer tastes. (All of which, by the way, applied at Michigan, as much as the die-hards refuse to acknowledge it.)
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Critics hungry for the old AD to lash back at the university, a majority of its regents or the fans and students who hastened his exit will be disappointed. He's not obliging, in part because his separation agreement with Michigan bars it and in part because Brandon is moving on to a new chapter with the knowledge his tenure is defined by more than Brady Hoke's won-loss record.
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What about that didn't go right — the mistakes, the terms of your departure, the criticism by alumni, students and fans, I asked. How will the lessons of your Michigan tenure, many of them searing, inform how you run Toys "R" Us as its next CEO?
"Every job experience I've had, every lesson I've learned — some the easy way, some the hard way — changes you and hopefully makes you better," he replied. "If you don't approach things that way, then you don't improve, and I'm wired to constantly be challenging myself to, 'how can I do things better, what mistakes have I made?'"
"And, most importantly, how do I never make the same mistake twice."
Go away, you jackass. He is legally barred from bashing the Michigan fanbase, so he has a handpicked writer do it for him. What an asshole.
EDIT: And oh by the way, Toys R Us isn't making Brandon available for interviews to anybody. This article was conceived and proposed entirely by Dave Brandon.
OP, you're reaching
"it's (Toys R Us) beset with the same challenges all big-box retailers face in the Internet age: customers with choices."
And they hired Dave Brandon who, during his time at Michigan, lost out a huge contingent of customers to other choices (staying home and watching the game).
Does the fact that he has a new position mean that UM doesn't pay him his full contract?
Wasn't there some deal when he left that he'd get his full salary for the remainder of his contract unless he took a new job?
The dude was not a good AD here, but are we really going to keep this up? Calling for a boycot of Toys R Us and criticizing every move he makes has us looking like the jealous ex-girlfriend who is TOTALLY over her man, you guys. Let's just move on.
Says who?
for themselves when they decide to go to school there? Also do privates get to maintain their ideology or should we tell ND they have to be less conservative and lose some of the religious trappings?
I'm going to have to pay for a parking pass at my local Toys R Us now.
will now taste like cardboard. But you'll have them delivered to your door in 30 minutes or fewer or they're free. So there's that.
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Maybe - but rest assured you'll enjoy a "wow experience" while visiting there and every minute inside the building will be your own personal Super Bowl of shopping fun.
and you won't be able to bring your own water
He's going to fit in wonderfully. Absolute mess of a company and has been for years.
For all those "OK" with his quotes:
I think the OP went overboard, but Brandon's anondyne quotes are so inoffensive they are uniformative and thus worthless. I haven't seen Brandon say, specifically, what mistakes he made. What, specifically, did he learn?
Without that, this is just a puff piece where Brandon gets in contact with a pro-business writer (Howes) and has him say all the anti-UM stuff, while Brandon (allegedly) takes the high road.
If that wasn't the case, Brandon could have been more forthcoming ("You know, I've learned about customer relations -- even when you disagree with a customer, it's not a good idea to insult them via email and act like a know-it- all" or "I've learned the importance of making sure everyone in the organization understands we have a premium brand, like Toys R Us, is a premium brand. We should never give people the impression they can get a UM ticket for just two cokes, nor should they be able to get the hottest My Littlle Pony toy for a bottle cap.")
You guys are forgetting who Brandon is. You can't actually be humble and learn until you *actually* say what it is you did wrong and what you *actually* learned.
I don't think that's fair. I wouldn't expect him to detail all the mistakes he made in an interview like this. He did, at least, acknowledge making some. He could have been defiant and portrayed himself as the victim, but did not.
If you suspend all prior knowledge of the man and just take the quotes at face value, there's not much to get worked up about here.
Am I taking crazy pills? Give me one--just one--mistake he "acknowledged." Based on what he said in this article, what action did he take or decision that he made does he now regret?
I'll wait.
He proved he's a good executive in the past, just an awful athletic director. He didn't take any shots at UofM and did say he learned from the experience. We (the MGoBlog Community) are such haters. Dave Brandon couldn't do anything that would receive anything less than a "he's an asshat" reaction.
I'll get negbanged. But let's move on.
Brandon was a CEO, that is unquestioned--whether he was good one is a matter of some dispute.
You said "He didn't take any shots at UofM and did say he learned from the experience." Two things:
- He chose to spoke to Howes, who is not a reporter, but a columnist. He knows what Howes is going to say, as they have a past relationship. If he wanted to make sure there was no anti-UM stuff in there (e.g., "the Ann Arbor circus" "fan resentment"), he could have. But he didn't.
- More specifically, he did *not* say what he learned. Give me an example, from the article. "Never make the same mistake twice?" What does that mean? What "mistake" did he make at UM?
hard to say what part is really Brandon, since the article appears to be quite informed by the politics of the author.
I don't think he ever tried to intentionally harm Michigan or damage its brand, but I do believe he tried to improve Michigan with methods and ideas that are clearly incompatible with what we (collectively as students and alumni) consider core values here.
That and he is such an obnoxious, abrasive person that he burned through any goodwill or slack he had at a rapid pace.
Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.
Yeah, I agree with you there. Mostly I'm just glad we're rid of him.
Brando is about to do for them what he did of Univ of Michigan and Dominos.
Give the man some credit. He restructured how they were doing business and then went to UM. The issue isn't that he doesn't know what he's doing with business, it's that he treated our AD as if it were Dominos.
facilities for all the non-revenue sports, I'll give him that. Thanks for the wrestling building Dave!
What about that didn't go right — the mistakes, the terms of your departure, the criticism by alumni, students and fans, I asked. How will the lessons of your Michigan tenure, many of them searing, inform how you run Toys "R" Us as its next CEO?
Brandon's answer to this question was pretty innocuous and not too different from the answers you would hear from executives who had a suboptimal time in one of their stints, although the general vibe you get - not just from the article, but even when he was AD - is that he found little or no legitimacy to the concerns that were raised (on a daily basis in 2014). It would have been interesting if he'd been allowed to expound on what he though the lessons might be when it came to Michigan, but part of me doesn't want to know the answer to that.
but I must have missed the offensive part of the article.
This
Where is, "I've learned my lesson and hope to not make the same mistakes twice" offensive?!?
Pfft, Brandon can't do anything to worse to Toys R Us than the complete and utter butt-kicking that Amazon.com has already given that store.
This article is basically the absolute opposite of whatever negative PR attack the OP feels is going on. It's a dumb fluff piece, but unless you expected Dave Brandon to save "F*CK YOU UM" and then give a stunner to Jim Harbaugh with two middle fingers in the air, I'm not sure this article should disappoint you.
It didn't work out at UM. He didn't handle it well. But honestly nobody seemed to have handled it all that well, and while I get Brian's distaste for Brandon and take real issues with some of his changes while AD, this site has also helped foster such a toxic image around Brandon that I think it has exceeded the actual harm he did.
The snark is all in Howes' words. Whether it came from Brandon or it is from Howes is unknown but Howes is a pompous, arrogant, jerk who thinks he is the smartest person in the room, no matter who he is with. So, basically a mirror image of Brandon. Must have been quite an interview. Glad I wasn't there. Never read Howes. Hope to never read about Brandon again.
You almost have to admire an ego that isn't in any way chastened by the shit storm of public hatred db went through.......almost