Recent, predominant CSW “senior level” managerial behaviors include mentally tormenting and humiliating lower level employees (many examples jump out here) “scape goating”, exacting revenge, long, excessively eerie periods of silence, ridiculing, back stabbing, verbal lashings of other organizations (LE’s career building tool), an inability to articulate what needs to be done, useless excessive data gathering and reporting, holding long multi function meetings to comb through meaningless calculations of non value added data for the purpose of attempting to appear to know something, (tea leaves, taro cards, palm reading, numerology, etc.) that does not make any sense whatsoever while tying up a myriad of workers to do so, misrepresentation and misinterpretation of the facts, arbitrary misdirected decisions which are then used to implicate the once innocent and obfuscate the facts, and lots of involuntary twitching. And the corporate folks jump aboard; encourage the behavior, wasting time, resources and money. What a sorry mess. Can’t blame them for the twitching though. Gone is the sense of loyalty, a dedication to mission, and a commitment to support our military customers.
We deserve better.
L-3 is in desperate need of leader who has earned authority, a leader who can set a positive tone and direction for the organization. Someone who can develop a vision based on knowledge and experience, and develops a direction and a purpose for the firm. More than financial gain and self-promotion motivates a genuine leader; they embrace competition, love technology and possess an ability to inspire people. They lead to win. They win trust, loyalty and contracts.
Tragically in recent history, the only three requirements for being “the chosen one” at L-3 CSW has been 1) hold an electrical engineering degree from a low end engineering school, and 2) the ability to play “up ladder” internal politics and finally 3) have no significant accomplishments on their resume. There must be an assumption that knowing Ohm’s law and kissing @$$ while not having done much of anything somehow translates into that person having the ability to navigate and prosper within our market. How crazy is that?
L-3 CSW once possessed in abundance a sense of loyalty, a dedication to mission, and a commitment to solve difficult problems, no matter what. Those unwavering qualities grew the company. Customers would marvel at how hard L-3 personnel worked as compared to other firms. There was respect. And from that position of respect, loyalty increased, the reputation spread and the business grew. Back in the day, when a customer selected L-3 to provide a communication system, they were absolutely sure that it would work and work well.
That binding strength showed up in financial statements. It’s something an external auditor would likely miss. Loyalty, dedication and commitment can’t be accurately measured or quantified and as such is not talked about much or valued by outsiders. It’s hard to explain to someone not intimately involved. But you know it when you’ve got it. Cynics will scoff and dismiss this as some sort of touchy feeling nonsense. But it’s real. And that strength that once was the backbone of the firm has been drastically weakened.
It was weakened by a belief that senior management was important and little worker bees are not. To them, the little people are easily replaced. It was weakened by the arrogant and incompetent. The senior managers running the firm convinced themselves they were worth what they were being paid. After all the proof was in the paycheck and bonuses, why else would they be rewarded so well? When in reality, they inherited a strong enterprise and drove it off a cliff. The only play for them now is to hang on and/or jump to a customer or competitor quickly.
CSW has never had a genius leader/inventor like Jobs, a Bell or an Edison. The intellectual power that built CSW turns out to be the “little people”. And it’s obvious L-3 does not have to foggiest notion how to manage that.