Pros
1. The organization seems committed to improving, doing purpose driven work with important/big brands - not just a promotional chop shop 2. The overall diverse culture is enjoyable and pretty much everyone here is positive and nice to work with - no neanderthals 3. We have dramatically improved the level of talent across all departments and reorganized in ways that appear to be helping our organization “start” to move in the right directions.
Cons
We are too focused on what went wrong, what is wrong, and the past - even recent past. Who made what mistake, who did something we don’t like. Rather than focusing on what is right, correct, and building on that. People feel constantly torn down for 2 percent of what they might make a mistake on vs the 98% of the effort energy and great work they do. Executive Leadership tends to thrive (intended or not) on a culture of last minute decisions and breaking the process it tells everyone else to follow despite being often times a critical part of the feedback/direction loop. There is a culture of fear of mistakes (tell me who did that, who did this - vs team or manager accountabilities), lack of change management training and coming down on people struggling or failing at change (and allowing others to naturally understand this, and grow through the necessary change development, dip, growth). We NEVER celebrate success. Agencies must stop and plan even a brief celebration of a new clients. We take the grind to get those businesses and the real reward to those who help earn them is a pat on the back and back to the grind of onboarding them, or going after the next. These should be celebrated in real time, when they happen and be focused on stoking pride, excitement, and confidence in what we are doing as an organization. Nobody feels this with any of the wins we have recently unless they are tightly associated with the wins, and then they are too exhausted from it. have a champagne toast or a happy hour so everyone can take even 30-40 minutes to celebrate bringing in what we believe are millions of dollars of new business. Celebrate that we are a BOSE agency, a MONDELEZ agency. we move too quickly into who did what wrong and isn’t doing their job on Mondelez, etc. We have a reward system that is only based on sales commissions (and very low to no bonuses). There are times when some key support people in other departments have had a substantial impact on winning the new business but see very little to no reward from it - while the sales persons commissions from it might be significant - at least over time. This is starting to create some perceptions of not being appreciated for bringing in this new business.