Good intent, but what is the point when all the answers are “It’s not something that I have control over” - then GTFO and let me do my job. I wonder why you get paid so much $, if you all you do is essentially nothing but cascade my work upwards. You are ineffective management. YOU doesn’t mean a person specifically, just all the management that gives the answer this is not from me, it’s a Dallas decision.
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bvi here.
I don’t know the gentleman. But I can take an educated guess that although he agreed with all of us on the stupidity of the trashcan decision, he never brought it for discussion in his/her supervisor staff meeting. Either because he does not have the guts to bring up criticism or (more likely) he knows that the majority in the room will find “no problem” competing for brownie points!
That’s the real crux of the problem. I was in a meeting with Bart going over open, and CAF specifically. He made a comment on how stupid it was that the trash cans and copy machines were taken away and that any “savings” from that was lost by the impact it had on moral. But you know what? At least he lost his trash can too!
Even as one of the 20 or so most senior leaders at the whole company, there wasn’t a thing he could do about it, which is a problem. He didn’t have the power to do off cycle raises for the folks in Permian who were leaving for better pay at competitors, because it takes an act of God to do something like that.
For all that the MC pretends that they stay in Dallas because they want to let those close to the business run the business, they don’t give those leaders any authority on just about anything.
There are many CL 30+ managers that “get it” and many that don’t. Point being that there are so many managers that decisions required a huge amount of alignment (which often mean simply that everybody cover each other’s rear) that action is so slow. Moreover, the real power that each manager has is extremely limited and all decisions are inevitably pushed up.
It turns out that even those that get it, at the end, are equally inefficient and useless. Not to mention that the typical EM way to address inefficiency is to create additional management or other roles that inevitably makes things worse.
@2zat+1ddX9Nry You liked him so much that you quit? That makes total sense.
how did Stalle compare? Seems like he got demoted pretty quickly
Everyone is certainly entitled to their opinion, but that wasn’t my experience with Bart at all. I worked fairly closely with him in a finance / planning role up until last month when I left the company.
He was one of the few senior leaders I had interacted with over my career that I felt truly “got it”. You’re right that there is a lot he can’t do, but that’s a flaw with the company culture and not necessarily a result of him not trying. Like I said, we all have our opinions, but I liked Bart a lot.