I know someone very well whose CEO is a bit of megalomaniac - the first thing he does when he arrives in any company is to find a reason to sack anyone in a position of authority with the same first name as him.
Now that's refreshing management for you 
I have worked for some of the large multiple nursing home concerns. One thing they do is count the pennies for every purchase but waste the time of the staff on the most useless of things. the best was the company that every monday wanted all the financial information for the week. A form was emailed to the home. it was printed off and then the figures entered by hand ( from the computer) and then the form now multiple pages long was faxed back. Every 4th week a more detailed analysis was required.
Now this took up 20% of the managers time and the administrators time. 20% FFS. I know the faxes were sent to the home addresses of the regional managers who each had 50 or so homes to manage. I know these were never looked at in any detail - just filed.
so not only was it going email, print , write, fax for data that could have been on a shared database and automated but they absorbed 20% of the managers time to produce figures no one looked at!
Oh hell no. Used to work for Lloyds TSB and it couldn't have been clearer that there was nobody really in charge, and that an understanding of the facts wasn't a valuable part of any decision making process.
He's working for Oracle and he asked me where I was working and we then had a discussion about how good it is working for an American company.
The Oracle employees I know don't rate their employer too highly (understating things somewhat).
Yes, and most of the previous ones' too...
But, its mainly the back-office that's crap - as most of the companies I've worked are at the top of their game for their core business and consequently have plenty of cash to waste in other areas.
I work for a large American corporation. Two words make it painful, Sarbanes and Oxley.
''The biggest problem stopping all this working well however... Many, many, many, many layers of middle management, happy with their lot, no desire to rock the boat or make any improvements (and if you're on £50k a year for doing F all you might start to think that way too!), who procrastinate, get in the way, send emails about emails about a meeting that was held about last weeks meeting that was about a meeting the month before, and generally find ways to keep themselves busy which doesn't actually involve doing any real work! Oh, and taking credit for your work if you should ever actually do something worthwhile yourself, though of course if you do something that fails it's all your own doing...''
CHRIST I USED TO WORK THERE AS WELL..
I would have to agree there Brycey. Sarbanes Oxley is the new Health & Safety in instilling paranoia in people that don't quite get it...
WTF is Sarbanes Oxley?
US accounting law brought in after Enron. They were the two fellas that decided that the best way to avoid a repeat was to get everyone to get CEO approval for key decisions like, "can I go for a dump or not?"
SarBox is a pain but it's nothing to do with CEO approval for everything. it's all in the implementation like ehs.
to the op, yes. not at everything but a decent proportion. It's also a big US corporate.
I wasn't actually being serious.
My company is hugely inefficient. I can't bollock myself day in day out though 
large corperation here...
I am staggered at just how wasteful some processes are.
As an example working an early/late shift we are entitled to a taxi in to work or home if shift begins or ends outside public transport hours.
One chap was allowed to hire a car when he had runs of earlys, it worked out at about £16 per day. New boss has stopped this so a Taxi was ordered through precurement..£68. If he had just called a cab it would be £18.
We are compleatly unable to source anything ourselves and it costs millions a year
The Oracle employees I know don't rate their employer too highly (understating things somewhat.
I'm ex-Oracle (as are many of my colleagues) and it used to be a great company to work for. Now it's not as good, although by no means the worst. It suffers from very regular re-structuring and also changes in emphasis (e.g. the current focus on selling tin since buying Sun) which means staff turnover is pretty high these days.
Sun used to be good. Oracle used to be good. Sun went to s**t, Oracle bought them and now have cancer. (I've worked for and with both)
I work for a huge American company (company A)who has taken over and run the IT infrastructure for another huge American company (company B), every project has to have twice the number of people and twice the approvals needed. To confuse this the UK have different processes than the US but no one in the US understands this and also all our project managers are based in India who dont understand the UK or US processes. The middle managers only goal is to convince the big bosses in the US in both companies that the processes are working and everything is great as normally they are only on the account for 2 years then move up the ladder.
Every day is a fun day 
Large italian (although we like to be perceived as american) multinational here. I'm in an odd position in so far management is in Turin, so I'm left to get on with things without interference. At the beginning of this year things were looking a little precarious, but the resignation of a Belgian colleague and my previous boss's position being reassessed ( shafted) improved things considerably. Management now is very lean so whereas in the past I would have been considered as middle management I'm now a 'specialist' The only politics takes place at the highest management levels. The whole business is very lean and process driven, which does suit me.
NHS - tis a law unto itself.
I see that CIGNA employs Lean Six Sigma.
I built a course on Lean Awareness last year. Really not sure quite how many of the 4000 staff supposedly taking it are genuinely going to adopt it.
IMO anything over 30 strong starts to drag dead weight.
1. Politics YES
2. Hierarchy being more important in the decision-making process than the quality of the idea YES
3. Indecision/inability to stick to the decision made YES
4. Poor communication YES
5. Email and meeting paralysis stopping anyone from actually doing any work YES
6. Isolation from the outside world and the customers NO
7. Lack of taking responsibility YES, with associated blame culture as well as saying owt to get them out of trouble and to fend off HR investigation
8. Taking months to decide to do nothing/scrap the project Oh Yes
9. Personal development of employees being of no importance whatsoever YES but not in my department
10. No-one really know what's going on seemingly
I can't stand much more of it. Plan to leave in the near future.
I have just left an American Multinational Professional Services firm - they plan, design build and operate infrastructure all over the world. I was in the 'plan' part and the OP's comments certainly ring true and some are the exact reason i have moved to a smaller boutique firm that is higher up the food chain. I was put on gardening leave as they were paranoid about what i knew and may see/hear. New job starts next week.....and i'm looking forward to it.
As a middle management type in a large national I would point out that the vast majority of business are run with a much finer margin of error than many people realise and the risk of business failure is closer than you would think.
There is constant pressure on income and to hammer down cost whilst trying to maintain the impression of an innovative and forward thinking business that is a great place to work. The behaviour and decision making that results from it can often give the impression of incompetence where it is in reality driven by economic reality. The detailed financial performance of most businesses are shared by very few people yet these ultimately drive all the decision making.
I think alot of people in large corporations have to spend their time justifying their jobs and salaries rather than actually doing anything constructive. This, of course, is a little bit more difficult in a smaller company where there is no-one and nothing to hide behind.
brycey + 1 on the SOX compliance stuff - about once every 4 months someone has a panic and everything gets checked/sorted out etc for SOX - it is ongoing process that is meant to be built in to company systems but when an audit looms - people start getting agitated about it and all that could be heard in management mtgs was stuff to do w SOX......massive corporate yawn!
I think alot of people in large corporations have to spend their time justifying their jobs and salaries rather than actually doing anything constructive. This, of course, is a little bit more difficult in a smaller company where there is no-one and nothing to hide behind.
My experience too. Small company also means you can get things done more quickly/try your own ideas out/say what you think. Essentially it's down to you to get things done. The experience is far more satisfying and fulfilling IME
This, of course, is a little bit more difficult in a smaller company where there is no-one and nothing to hide behind
as mentioned above - Sarbanes Oxley
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarbanes%E2%80%93Oxley_Act
"commonly called Sarbanes–Oxley, Sarbox or SOX"
don simon, are you being facetious or just daft?
"commonly called Sarbanes–Oxley, Sarbox or SOX"
don simon, are you being facetious or just daft?
If you worked in an American Large Corporate, in a role other than janitor etc, you would probably have heard of SOX, Sarbox, Sarbanes Oxley
It was introduced after a number of major corporate and accounting scandals including the Enron - its a common term and so are its abbrevaitions - maybe i did learn something whilst i worked for an American Multinational!
DonSimon's point is, I believe, that large businesses often have their own language made up of acronyms and words unique to that organisation. What happens is that people use this language without checking that the recipient understands it too.
Which leads to poor communication and all the results of poor communication.
It's about as effective and sensible as English people shouting loudly in English at foreigners and wondering why they're not getting a very positive response...
It's not our own language it's US federal law. While I'd conceed that most people are not going to be familiar with US law, that doesn't make it jargon or some sort of secret code.
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