Top down leadership culture and significant growing pains during company transition
Pros
There are some talented and hardworking people across the marketing and delivery team. The CEO is highly respected, personable, supportive, and positive to work with. Cons: In my experience, the leadership culture was highly top-down, with decision-making concentrated within a very small inner circle. Employees outside of that group could often feel excluded from key conversations and decisions. As the business started working with larger customers and different parts of enterprise organisations, I felt leadership had a somewhat naive view of what was required to operate successfully in this segment. The transition from a smaller entrepreneurial business into a more mature enterprise-focused organisation appeared challenging. Work-life balance was also a concern. Many employees regularly worked very long hours and relied heavily on goodwill and personal commitment to keep things moving. There also appeared to be a high level of staff turnover during my time there. In several cases, employees became increasingly excluded from discussions and responsibilities before eventually leaving the business. I also observed occasions where colleagues were discussed in ways during leadership conversations that I personally found unprofessional and uncomfortable. I found some management behaviours overly controlling, and criticism of individuals in wider meetings could negatively affect morale. Overall, I struggled to trust the consistency between internal messaging and leadership behaviour. My overall impression was of a business that had been successful as a smaller company but was still learning how to evolve into a larger enterprise organisation and adapt to the expectations that come with that scale.
Cons
In my experience, the leadership culture was highly top-down, with decision-making concentrated within a very small inner circle. Employees outside of that group could often feel excluded from key conversations and decisions. I felt that leadership had a somewhat simplistic and naive view of what was required to operate successfully in new segments. The transition from a smaller business which was acquired into a more mature enterprise-focused organisation appeared challenging. There also appeared to be a high level of staff turnover during my time there. In several cases, employees became increasingly excluded from discussions and responsibilities before eventually leaving the business. I also observed occasions where colleagues were discussed in ways during leadership conversations that I personally found unprofessional and uncomfortable. I found some management behaviours overly controlling, and criticism of individuals in wider meetings could negatively affect morale. Overall, I struggled to trust the consistency between internal messaging and leadership behaviour. My overall impression was of a business that had been successful as a smaller company but was still learning how to evolve into a larger enterprise organisation and adapt to the expectations that come with that scale.
