[yourapostasy]

She inherited Palmisano's promise to investors, and re-committed to it when she signed on, and at that very moment she painted herself into a corner. She tries to serve two masters, and ends up failing both: shareholders and a bet-the-company pivot.

This likely signals she herself doesn't really believe in her own championing words on the pivot. Definitely not enough to command the shareholders and spend the buyback funds she did spend on the pivot instead.

At this point, the sectors they're betting on for the pivot are not hauling in the kind of revenue required to replace what they are losing in their legacy sectors. Hence the appearance of a death spiral.

What isn't widely known is those legacy sectors are by and large still profitable. Just not enough for the leadership team; a tragedy of micromanagement and misdirected metrics.