Behind the face of a modern agile company "that wants to make the world pink" lies a giant mess of politics, arrogance and incompetence: the perfect recipe for a disaster. Lastminute.com is Bravofly (Volagratis) rebranded after the acquisition of LMN (in financial trouble). It is an Italian company with the HQ in Chiasso (Switzerland) for not-so-obscure reasons. Decision making is still done entirely by founders, leading to a completely "familiar" approach to strategy. Top management (directors) is generally ineffective and strives with internal politics and wars between founders and newcomers. Middle management (Head of insert-a-buzzword-here) is made up of young, untrained and arrogant people fulfilling their own personal agenda and lacking any kind of common sense. Team leaders (the lower level with headcount) is made up of young people with no clear management skills and, due to the complete mess at top levels, they cannot scale up in any way in terms of expertise. The HR approach is so obscure and opaque to be frightening and there is no respect for people. Exit interviews are not considered and feedback from employees are not leading to any kind of improvement. As a consequence, turnover was skyrocketing. People hired with previous experiences (1+ years) was leaving in a year, graduates in 2 years. No real strategy by the company at the time to address the situation.
