Employees have been there too long and the small company mentality has not left them. Gaslighting and toxic behaviours seems to be encouraged. Lots of cliques formed with the long term employees and they divulge confidential information to each other about other employees. It is very difficult for outsiders to drive change. There is a fixed mindset amongst these long term people and they are afraid of even the smallest of changes.
Extremely poor senior leadership. Strategy is non-existent, performance goals are vague at best and therefore employees don’t need to show any kind of initiative leading to mediocre performance. But they get away with it because of their tenure. There is a lack of direction from the very top which then filters down to all levels. Of the senior leaders that they have brought in from “outside” it is generally their “mates” who they worked with 20 years ago in another company or somehow worked with in the industry, so even if they’re new, they are already part of the clique.
While they seem to have lots of restructures, they are ineffective because everything is driven by the leader’s (who influence the useless HR teams) personal ambition, decisions are not based on the good of the company. You’ll often find two different departments working in a similar function. They also need to call out bad behaviour which is rampant particularly amongst long term employees.