Executive Management:
I saw an e-mail by an upper manager send insulting/mocking cartoons to the CBO. I heard the CBO verbally refuse to pay an incentive to sales people that was written in their incentive plans. (His expression demonstrated his careless regard to professionalism, shoot from the hip decision making, and disinterest in the well being of his team's morale.)
General Organization Management:
There were times when pay was changed and the affected employees were not informed of the change. Although this did not appear to be intentional, it was unprofessional. It appears that the CEO and CBO do not give HR a seat at the decision making table to affect corporate culture. The CEO and CBO are cut throat even though many people in the company are not, but the cut throat decisions still trickle down and are occasionally modeled.
Hiring Decisions:
If I took a moment to pick the top performing people in the organization based on skill, leadership, communication, adaptability and vision, they let go 9 of the 14 , no affect to 3 and promoted 2. It appeared to me that friendship generally over ruled merit and objective performance measures.
Layoffs/Firing:
Their turnover rate is well above industry standards likely due to a disengaged employees due to poor management. Rather than putting strong people in the right position or moving people to a more advantageous place, they just fire.
Processes:
Executive management talks about improving, but they don't focus resources on systematization or automation. They fire the people who have those skills. I doubt that the intent is to avoid automation, I think it's just not a priority to them.
Strategic Decision Making:
One acquisition resulted in intentionally cutting 1/3 of its revenue and another 1/3 of its revenue was lost due to poor management. If there was strategic intent in buying an organization and losing 2/3 of its revenue, I was not clear on how it made business sense. This makes me question the level of involvement of the board of directors. It's possible the board is uninformed because there have been no standards of reporting, minimal centralized data/reporting, majority ad-hoc manually manipulated spreadsheets that result in different figures across different reports.
Overall:
The organization is inconsistent in its culture. Executive management is extremely disconnected from driving value through employee contribution and development, giving almost no resources to developing the culture that Ivy League studies (i.e. Harvard Business Review) demonstrate as essential to a growing organization. Executive management turns a blind eye to toxic behaviors leading to promotion of managers who have no leadership skills and highly productive employees losing motivation. Some departments may be okay to work in, some may be toxic.
