[Closed] Anyone here work for a large corporate that is in the slightest bit efficient?

Maybe I'm just not a corporate person but I can't see how anything ever actually gets achieved in this kind of environment...

By determined individuals working around all the BS.

Sounds very much like the NHS?
The coleface bit of the NHS does work if you ignore all off the above!

In answer tho the OP - a resounding NO (NO, NO, NO)

I have worked for two enormous engineering corp's and they were / are both as much use as Anne Frank's guitar amp.

No

Anne Frank's guitar amp? [i]The[/i] Anne Frank?

and I'd add to the OP's list

"Almost daily emails announcing management restructures which will clearly improve the situation"

I work for a massive US company, and they're fantastic to work for.

1. Politics - None

2. Hierarchy being more important in the decision-making process than the quality of the idea - Nope, I could pick up the phone to our CEO right now and he would listen to my ideas

3. Indecision/inability to stick to the decision made - Not a problem here

4. Poor communication - Excellent communication and the staff feel really engaged

5. Email and meeting paralysis stopping anyone from actually doing any work - Our email policy is superb and we're encouraged to work very smartly when it comes to handling and responding to emails

6. Isolation from the outside world and the customers - Nope. Customers come into the office all the time and we receive constant feedback from them and how we're doing in their eyes

7. Lack of taking responsibility - Everyone is challenged to take responsibility

8. Taking months to decide to do nothing/scrap the project - Not in my experience. Resources are allocated, projects are scoped out, the job is done

9. Personal development of employees being of no importance whatsoever - Massively important with real scope for employee development throughout the organisation

10. No-one really know what's going on - Nope. As above, excellent communication with employees

BB - sounds highly improbable unless you're an Exec-VP in which case I'm sure that how you'd like to think the company is run - care to name this beacon of rationality in a world of Dilbert Corps?

Stuey01 - Member

By determined individuals working around all the BS.

Yup, that's exactly it where I work. Instead of having a fear of change and a perceived requirement to inform everyone when, how, where and why something is happening, just do it and pick up the pieces afterwards.

I did work in an area where innovation was stifled, change didn't happen and there was a layer of management unable or unwilling to challenge. Now I'm in that layer of management and my entire remit is to improve and change things, I've found it a lot easier to actually progress things along.

It really depends on the company, the leadership and the culture as to whether things do run efficiently.

My experience so far of big corporations so far...

Generally you get a brilliant CEO and senior management team, who are engaging and will stop and chat to anyone about their roles and ideas they may have. And you often get many individuals at the front end of the business, doing the work, who are exceptional too (you always get the occasional waste of time but that's life).

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...

Sorry BoardinBob - name it or I don't believe you

All big organisations are like this.

The one thing is - just because you are part of the organisation it doesn't mean you have to behave like everyone else. I try not to, I wish more people would.

In my experience it is medium sized organisations that suffer worst from this - lots of petty BS and people not moved around enough to stop empire building, skirmishes, land and resource grabbing raids etc.

Bigger organisations have proper infrastructure, which helps loads.

BB is either CEO or Head of HR/Marcomms at the company in question 😀

Anyone here work for a large corporate

that is in the slightest bit efficient?

Very frustrating. I try my hardest to circumvent as much policy/process/politiks as possible. Recently very nearly moved to a much smaller company because I find it increasingly difficult to do the job I'm employed to do.

Top 25 FTSE Co. (Not current)

1. Politics (none)
2. Hierarchy being more important in the decision-making process than the quality of the idea (no)
3. Indecision/inability to stick to the decision made (stick to decision but modify if wrong)
4. Poor communication (no)
5. Email and meeting paralysis stopping anyone from actually doing any work (no)
6. Isolation from the outside world and the customers (to some extent)
7. Lack of taking responsibility (no)
8. Taking months to decide to do nothing/scrap the project (no)
9. Personal development of employees being of no importance whatsoever (no, complete opposite)
10. No-one really know what's going on
etc etc (no)

Current... NHS

1. Politics (god yes)
2. Hierarchy being more important in the decision-making process than the quality of the idea (yep decisions made by middle/senior management, who have no idea then lower grades pick up the pieces)
3. Indecision/inability to stick to the decision made (the NHS is an industry at this)
4. Poor communication (110%)
5. Email and meeting paralysis stopping anyone from actually doing any work (People have meetings about meetings, decisions cant be made at a desk, the whole world has to be involved over the course of 2 or 3 meetings and papers drawn out to express the pro's and con's) then see #3
6. Isolation from the outside world and the customers (50/50)
7. Lack of taking responsibility (110%)
8. Taking months to decide to do nothing/scrap the project (No go ahead after lots of #5, spend lots of cash then realise it doesnt work and spend lots of cash on some thing else)
9. Personal development of employees being of no importance whatsoever (110%)
10. No-one really know what's going on (there is no one single goal/mission statement. There can be 100's of 'vital' projects running at one time being led by the same people)

To put in to perspective... I have found companies large or small have different cultures. I've worked in bad small co's and bad large co's. Its the culture that makes the difference not the size, although IMO the larger the co gets the harder it is to influene the culture.

Bigger organisations have proper infrastructure, which helps loads.

I remain optimistic that there are large corps that operate effectively. I've just never worked for or with one yet!

So I'm also curious about who BB works for...

And do you have any vacancies?!

I am a lowly lick spittle, not the SVP!

http://cigna.com/about_us/index.html

BB: I've read that home page and I'm stilll none the wiser as to what it is that your company actually DOES...

[url= http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/CIGNA-Reviews-E119.htm ]http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/CIGNA-Reviews-E119.htm[/url]

I see that CIGNA employs Lean Six Sigma.

Mind you there are plenty of small / medium size places that suffer from the same as the OP.

IME Mboy & FunyDunc + 1.

What is annoying is certain politicians belief that private companies are more efficient [i]just because they make a profit[/i].

[i]I've read that home page and I'm stilll none the wiser as to what it is that your company actually DOES...[/i]

[url= http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/08/cigna-employee-flips-off_n_314189.html ]Gives the bird[/url] 😀

sounds like people have been reading too many Dilbert cartoons

I'm with BB on this - but not in his particular US corporate...

I have worked for a large American company for about 5 months. Now I know I'm new and all but in the first month I was asked to go to a meeting with two of the vice VP's who were in the UK for a couple of days. I feel I will stay here till I retire I really like it and the difference between this and the big two big companies I worked for is mahoosive. Completely different attitude to almost everything being compared. I could in theory pick up the phone and call the CEO direct so can defo concur with BB.

1. Politics
2. Hierarchy being more important in the decision-making process than the quality of the idea
etc etc

Yep, I see all of those.

Interestingly, the business is going through a forced culture shift in a bid to find better ways of working. I have been involved in some of this. I have concluded that (1) change is needed and, in this case, A Good Thing; and (2) the vast majority of people don't have the capacity or desire to change anything.

But, it's incumbent on all of us to attempt to make our working lives better, however that may look. Otherwise why bother?

I work for a large people and freight moving company, they are quite possibly the most horrendously inefficient organisation I have ever worked for. £millions wasted and no one bats an eye lid! Oh and more politics than the Roman Senate.

I have worked for a large American company for about 5 months. Now I know I'm new and all but in the first month I was asked to go to a meeting with two of the vice VP's who were in the UK for a couple of days. [b]I feel I will stay here till I retire[/b] I really like it and the difference between this and the big two big companies I worked for is mahoosive. Completely different attitude to almost everything being compared. I could in theory pick up the phone and call the CEO direct so can defo concur with BB.

This.

I met an old school friend at Heathrow yesterday. 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. I'm lucky that I have a good role and I appreciate that for a call centre lackey, the outlook may not be so good, although in saying that our customer service lackeys do appear quite happy.

I work for a big oil company.

My line manager sits next to me and sends me emails.
Most talk about enhancing efficiency, whatever that means.

On Monday morning, I'm having a meeting to discuss what we will discuss in a meeting.

The OP pretty much sums up where I work. Multinational private company.

I "play the game" because everyone else does and it seems the only way to get on. I'm not massively interested in much at the minute other than a pay rise and what I need to do to get it. It would seem working hard, delivering results was not enough so I've moved into politics which I find a bit annoying.

1. Politics
2. Hierarchy being more important in the decision-making process than the quality of the idea
3. Indecision/inability to stick to the decision made
4. Poor communication
5. Email and meeting paralysis stopping anyone from actually doing any work
6. Isolation from the outside world and the customers
7. Lack of taking responsibility
8. Taking months to decide to do nothing/scrap the project
9. Personal development of employees being of no importance whatsoever
10. No-one really know what's going on

I work in a medium sized company - 800 employees, privately owned, and a fair amount of this is true for "my" company too. With the added bonus of everything depending on the whim of the president - fortunately he's fairly reasonable and approachable, but it's His Company and what he says, goes.

BB. I know a few folk who also work for the same company and are also quite happy.

The place where I work is getting ridiculous. As an example, our new purchasing system, if I want to order something I have to fill out a request (in a spreadsheet that references commodity codes, project codes, cost centres, resource codes etc., the spreadsheet is actually 3MB in size it's that ridiculous), I send that to our purchase admin who uploads it into the system, it then goes along a pre-configured approval chain (depending on the cost centre etc.), starting with 2 people in our US head office that need to give initial approval. It then comes back to me to approve (I have to log in to the purchasing system to do this), then to my manager and then further up the approval chain (a minimum of two more people). Finally once all approved I get a PO I can send to the supplier. I have to do this even if it's for something costing £10, the above process has been calculated as taking at least $45 of admin effort. Before for small value items I'd just buy and claim back on expenses but I can't do that any more.

I'm a technical team leader but I spend half my life in worthless bullshit admin or change control crap. Most of this admin is caused by poorly thought out regulations or needing to confirm to the flavour of the month industry standard certifications.

I'm lucky enough to presently be working for that rarest of creatures - a successful big british manufacturer who's main Market is export. The global recession hasn't touched them! Far from it! Their market share and profits have been going stratospheric for ten years!

From what I've seen this is down to departments and individuals being autonomous. Simply left to their own devices to get on with their job however they see fit! Politics is non-existent! The system in place to brief me on jobs is, on the surface, fairly informal, yet the most efficient I've ever encountered. I have to put it down to the recruitment policy! They're doing something very right! Nobody bitches about anyone as they're surrounded by some very professional people. Sometimes I think I've come to work in Germany by mistake

Christ only knows what I'm doing here! I think the expression may be 'winging it' 🙂

I know someone [i]very[/i] 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.

[i]1. Politics [b]YES[/b]
2. Hierarchy being more important in the decision-making process than the quality of the idea [b]YES[/b]
3. Indecision/inability to stick to the decision made [b]YES[/b]
4. Poor communication [b]YES[/b]
5. Email and meeting paralysis stopping anyone from actually doing any work [b]YES[/b]
6. Isolation from the outside world and the customers [b]NO[/b]
7. Lack of taking responsibility [b]YES, with associated blame culture as well as saying owt to get them out of trouble and to fend off HR investigation[/b]
8. Taking months to decide to do nothing/scrap the project [b]Oh Yes[/b]
9. Personal development of employees being of no importance whatsoever [b]YES but not in my department[/b]
10. No-one really know what's going on[/i] [b]seemingly[/b]

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 - [url= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarbanes%E2%80%93Oxley_Act ]Sarbanes Oxley[/url]

Nope, can't see the link between Sarbanes Oxley and SOX, I'm afraid.
In fact, [url= http://www.singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/anyone-here-work-for-a-large-corporate-that-is-in-the-slightest-bit-efficient/page/2?replies=64#post-2876269 ]this[/url] is the first mention of SOX that I can see.

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.

brycey +1 😀

So the correct way to introduce the acronym or abbreviation is when you are talking about the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX), you can now refer to it as SOX without confusing thickshits like me, without having to waste the corporate millions having to explain to thickshits like me and you won't allow thickshits like to think that you're just hiding behind corporate jargon.

If you don't mind I've got a couple of F2Fs to hone in on the EDD of some stuff, you just can't get the right level of human capital these days. Capiche? 🙄

SOX applies to any company listed on the NY Stock Exchange. I work for a UK bank with very limited US operations and we have to have SOX compliance controls on frigging everything. Normally it is just getting sign off that things are not SOX impacting, unless you work in finance or financial reporting in which case it is way more onerous (I don't, thankfully).
TBF we have integrated the SOX compliance checks into existing project processes and it is not that bad.

We are a long way from efficient in other areas though.

without confusing thickshits like me

It's going to be difficult to be honest if after three or four mentions of Sarbanes-Oxley, followed by SOX, you don't see a link.

I can't believe I'm embroiled in a SOX thread! I'm off out for some fresh air.

PS Regarding your

Capiche?

Brycey + 2 😀

Thanks guys for re-affirming why I'll never enter the corporate world. 😀

Thanks guys for re-affirming why I'll never enter the corporate world.

What you fail to mention is it won't be your choice... 😥

But that makes me happy. 😆

most of the op sounds like Royal Mail ❗