half my career I’ve worked in small businesses, with large corporates as clients, or in the large corporates themselves but I’ve never found a large corporate to operate anything like as well as a small business. For e.g.

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
etc etc

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

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? The 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

Yes

that is in the slightest bit efficient?

No

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.

Not in my experience, the company I work for has > 100,000 employees and is still growing.

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…

http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/CIGNA-Reviews-E119.htm

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 just because they make a profit.

I’ve read that home page and I’m stilll none the wiser as to what it is that your company actually DOES…

Gives the bird 😀

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. 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.

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 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.