The gist: Leadership seems to lack confidence in themselves and lack a clear vision, which manifests as a vicious cycle of employee turnover and poor culture.
- Critical Thought Not Wanted: M.O. is for CSuite to parade around incoming top talent hire as saving grace. Once hired, there seems to be little commitment to using that person’s talents and their ideas are quickly dismissed.
- Double Edged Sword: you are expected to stroke CSuite ego without question but also take the blame when their questionable strategy flops
- Toxic Optimism: pointing out potential pitfalls of a strategy or adding data-based suggestions gets you labeled as “not a team player”
- Fear-Mongering Culture: larger systemic issues like poor processes, bad tech, and rushed half-baked strategies are ignored, making change difficult to implement. Instead, individual employees take the blame as scapegoat du jour.
- Excessively Demeaning: Meetings are incredibly stressful as comments tossed around can be very hurtful, dismissive, and demeaning
Overall, I still feel queasy about my time at Rowan. I continuously felt like doing what I knew to be morally right would result in increased tensions with the CSuite, and that there was no way for me to protect my team from a terrible work culture. In the end, I knew that keeping my head down in order to wait for options to vest was going to feel worse. My only advice: stay away.
