Axon is a company rife with favoritism, a lack of integrity, and a CEO who has been absent since 2012. The company's ability to execute on programs has stalled, and morale is at a low not seen since 2009.
- FAVORITISM: Current president and the general manager of Axon was promoted based on their relationship with the CEO and board members, prior to this these individuals had the lowest rated integrity of any individuals in the company. The response to this has been to remove individuals from the company who have shared this concern with the CEO and leadership. The current president continuously promotes his friends and colleagues for accomplishments they were not involved in or only played small parts in, while the real contributors and success drivers are left wondering what is needed to gain recognition for their hard work.
--- How to fix this: Listen to people when they bring up problems like this, and don't bury it. The CEO in this case should not have avoided the conflict and should have attacked this directly. New hires recognize these faults and have voiced their opinions privately, this is a problem with morale across the board.
RETALIATION: It has been observed time and again, that if you voice a difference of opinion of a senior leader, or bring up examples of behavior exhibited by the senior leadership that does not fall in line with the claimed core values of the organization, you will face retaliation which includes: firing, pressured into leaving the organization, forced vacations, demotions, and being passed over for promotions and raises . In order to succeed, each executive must know that you have their back and can support whatever behavior, even if a direct violation of company values and code of conduct. Some notable quotes "You will never get anything from my team again, you're done", "The executive team met and decided that you were not an individual we want to see be successful in this organization".
--- How to fix this: This is a culture problem that is prevalent all the way to the top. There may be no way to fix this considering the level at which this occurs.
- FAVORITISM: Management, director, and executive positions in Seattle and Scottsdale is filled with individuals with no prior accomplishments or successes, entirely based on personal relationships with board members and existing executives.
--- How to fix this: Stop promoting and hiring friends. Promote those that have a history of successful accomplishments, even if those individuals are not SEXY and HIP. Promote individuals who are respected by their peers and direct reports.
- FAVORITISM: "Leadership Development Program" is strife with favoritism. Sending messages that other hires in the organization are just "cannon fodder" for the elites. #1 comment is "Great, another inexperienced friend of Rick Smith's that we have to teach how to lead us".
--- How to fix this: Eliminate the LDP Program. Management should be built from individuals who have demonstrated an ability to both execute and lead teams. Leadership team should be nominated not by executives, but by the teams with which they were a part of.
- PREJUDICE AND SEXISM: Failed programs such as Axon Fleet due to mis-management resulted in mass promotions of individuals identified as problems within the organization. This set the tone for the rest of the organization that hard work and persistence does not pay off. Morale dropped to an all time low. Leadership team on this program exercised biased and sometimes angry retaliation towards team members, sexist behavior towards female participants through condescending and hateful emails, meeting behavior, and direct messaging through companies Slack channels. When these issues were presented, senior leadership responded with "Well, these individuals are high performers, so there isn't much we can do". New LDP hires, as part of the hiring process, were taken to strip clubs and other events to party. As though this was a huge part of the culture of Axon.
--- How to fix this: A lack of integrity starts at the top, and considering how bad this was, the top is where you need to look for change. These individuals should not have been promoted, corrective action should have been taken to ensure this behavior did not continue.
- IGNORANCE: New senior leadership hires start their first week with "You're all stupid and doing it wrong, so we're going to re-do everything". Followed by failed executions, excessive spending, and reductions in product quality. Often times this has been directed towards team members responsible for the most successful product launches in the companies history. New team leaders come on board, ignoring past lessons learned, only to force teams to relearn efforts versus marching forward. 1 step forward, 2 steps back.
--- How to fix this: Don't hire someone based on a resume and throw them into roles to disrupt functioning groups. Develop a deep understanding of where you are actually lacking efforts. Include direct reports in hiring managers, new leadership should be trusted by their direct reports, versus today where new managers are considered EVIL, not based on title, but based on behavior.
- SILOS: Senior leadership in Seattle has created the largest Silo in company history. In their early start, they were quoted as saying "We're moving everything to Seattle, the people in Scottsdale are just too stupid to handle anything". The Senior Engineering Executive once berated an engineer in Scottsdale during their employee review for not showing the proper amount of support in arguments to the Seattle team's opinion to strengthen their resolve in moving all efforts out of Scottsdale.
--- How to fix this: Have employees provide reviews against managers. Review these in details. Have open discusses between leadership teams. Stop the power grabbing, remove any leadership team member who is not focused on ensuring their specific direct reports are accomplishing their tasks.
POWER STRUGGLES - When presenting a proposal to team members in Seattle. Product managers, engineers, finance, and other team members in close to 99% of cases get the "I don't believe you, I need to verify all of this with customers before we do anything first" response. This tells other team members that only the opinions of a single group matters. Individuals who are tasked with execution of a task are now powerless, and the leadership team only further supports this negative behavior. This has created power struggles, and failed executions on products, features, and quality improvements across the board.
--- How to fix this: Management needs to address this head one. When team members come with a requested task, the response should be "Ok, how can I help, and let me figure out when I can get this done for you". This creates a partnership, versus a power struggle.
- LACK OF LEADERSHIP: New development programs lack leadership and guidance. Existing and new senior leadership teams are too afraid to make decisions as they work to avoid responsibility for mistakes, or conflicts in opinion that may introduce constructive arguments. Leadership is focused on covering up decisions, or avoiding them while maintaining positive personal relationships with their peers. Current team morale is low, 99% of teams are confused about what should be done, and most are now looking for new employment.
-- How to fix this: Remove any leadership team members not focused on execution and providing tools, guidance, and removing barriers. Leadership team members focused on survival versus execution should be moved to new positions or removed.
- LACK OF CAREER GROWTH: There is no career growth. Over the last 8 years, anyone who has shown promise has been squashed by upper management. Much of the company runs like the North Korean regime. Senior leaders are afraid the board will discover their inadequate capabilities, therefore immediate retaliation occurs when new ideas are presented.
- DEPRESSING ATMOSPHERE: Due to a lack of confidence in executive and management team, 99% of company participants who are in the Scottsdale and Seattle office and responsible for key programs are miserable. Passion and drive to continue working are constantly tested and typically lost throughout programs. Individuals work in a frustrating, hateful environment that are continuously fueled by several key individuals that company is unwilling to remove.
FALLACY AND PREJUDICE: Program updates and progress updates are rife with fallacy to protect personal images and deflect responsibility. Seattle team leaders are constantly trying to solidify the message that "they must be in charge" while poorly executing on programs. Axon camera program issues were consistently messaged as "we just didn't know", yet information was always known and presented to team contributors and leaders, yet ignored due to prejudice and bigotry towards non ivy-league and non-Seattle born individuals.
