Oh, when I heard recently of Keith's retirement I was so happy for everyone else that works in the building. This is a man who oppresses people, treats his staff with almost no respect and demoralizes most everyone he has reporting to him. I then quickly remembered that all of his cronies have been put into senior management positions so quite honestly, nothing will change.
This is an organization that has been built on how to use scare tactics in to getting their employees to work 7 days a week and almost be fearful of missing a work related call for the backlash that it could cause. I still talk to many people at the company and no matter what department they are in or level they are at, they all echo the same feelings. In my many years there the negativity and poor morale had become so ingrained in the culture through senior managers it will never be able to leave as long as those same people sit in the positions they are in. This is a company that doesn't promote based on talent, they promote based on who Keith has the best relationship with at that time. In addition to that, they do not train or develop their staff. The company simply let them sink or swim.
If you are placed into a new role you can expect that you will have a grace period of about a month to know every single function of your job but you will have zero training or coaching along the way. The people who I still talk to that have gotten out have gone on to thrive at either other Sysco operating companies, with corporate or at other food service companies but never at Baltimore. Sysco Baltimore does not take talented people and work with them to make the organization better. They take talented people and beat them down with unrealistic expectations and zero top down help. Now, they will say they will help and always say they are there when you need them but when it boils down to it, don't expect much. In addition you cannot do anything in the building without the approval of either the VP or President. When I was in sales I couldn't take a customer to lunch without getting approval of them before taking the customer to lunch. You have to have the presidents approval to get a customer off credit hold. I don't know how this makes sense but I want my senior leaders focusing on big picture and not day to day items they should empower their managers to make.
The operations and transportation department are a constant crutch for this company. The problem is two fold. The lack of senior leadership to rally their troops is glaring and the lack of talent to pull from is undeniable. Since the senior leadership won't change in the building this company needs to take a long look at how to bring in better talent for these departments, and keep the talent!
The last thing I have is that they do not empower their middle management to make any decisions on their own. They expect amazing results with no support and no empowerment. This company will always be exactly what it is, a breeding ground for poor morale, zero leadership in the senior level positions, no development of talent and a complete lack of understanding the business that they are in. The sad fact of the matter is that now that I work for another company I see that they had really good and very talented people in place but they are not empowered to do their jobs.
