Tone-deaf leadership, merger disaster, and a culture in decline - Anonymous employee Southern Veterinary Partners Employee Review

The CEO and COO now leading SVP are completely out of their depth. The MVP/SVP merger has been mishandled from the start, with talented people laid off simply because leadership failed to understand the business or the people behind it. The CEO leans heavily on his outdated “good ole boy” persona, which feels painfully tone-deaf for a company with hospitals in major markets like NYC and Chicago. He is neither a leader nor a visionary - he’s simply a veterinarian who found himself in a CEO chair. The COO has no experience running anything at this scale, and it shows. Direction, professionalism, and accountability are sorely lacking. Leadership decisions seem driven by favoritism toward SVP employees rather than qualifications or performance. People have been promoted into senior leadership roles despite lacking the experience or skills necessary to execute effectively. Given the resources available to support this merger, it’s baffling how poorly it has been handled. Morale is at an all-time low. The merger was expensive, poorly executed, and the culture has been unraveling ever since. If leadership sent out a genuine engagement survey, they’d see the extent of the damage.