Let's start with an advice : If you are a young professional (not an intern but under 32 years old) or a woman, the advice is to strongly avoid to work for Canon if you are looking for an exciting life in your career. You can have 2 good years for your CV but nothing more. Several reasons for that as given below. But basically the global mindset is do something for doing something. The result is not the focus. Moreover, political and blaming game is a must to have as a skill to survive. The atmosphere is globally toxic (no creativity or flexibility, bullies...) and it is hard to have a proper balance between work and life.
1) Japanese company
Canon is a japanese company. Many japaneses are working in the countries with offices. The fact is there is in place 2 way of hierarchies and processes in the company : Japanese and non-japanese. That doesn't help to create one vision to move forward the company.
We can add as well all the decisions related to products are made in Japan. The business is struggling but that doesn't speed the process. In the past brands like SEGA paid the price for this kind of strategy. Today all the japanese electronics industry is in a difficult situation. When you don't learn from the past...
2) European Management
The world is changing so the business as well. The generation which has today over 45 years old builds trust based on fidelity and years spent in a job. The same for the japaneses. You end up with people who can spent 10 to 20 years in the same position with huge salaries. Or they have been placed in an area where they have few high level knowledge. Still with a high salary. As all those people are seniors they have managers/directors positions of course. At the end they are too many compared to the workforce, takes most of the budget without to give much value to the business and don't really decide or communicate any strategies.
The most sad is maybe the fact they don't create a bridge between generations to lead/teach the youngest and create the future of the company. There is no diversity : none. They are opportunist men who have been at the company at the right moment in the past and took over on the leadership.
So the top management is defined by an unique way of thinking without being challenged. Meanwhile the world is moving fast. At the level of middle management the confusion is leading and the team are operating in silos.
3) Human Resources
The company is lacking vision and leadership. It is not HR responsibility. But the lack of a global organisation and transparency in roles and responsibilities are. The Human Resources don't really do the human part of their job and are at the end assistants of the management. Most of the decisions are based on money, not quality. The most appalling is the fact there is no proper training/certifications offered to employees.
Of course as in all big corporation a survey is done every year by employees. The employees are really chased to do it. Surprisingly all the employees comments are not kept and the results of the survey are perfectly aligned with the targets given by the CEO to senior management. Perfect world.
4) Océ
Canon bought few years ago a company named Océ for the B2B business. The integration is really complicated and most of the bad habits of both companies stayed. Especially in the area of systems. The 2 worlds don't understand each other and sometimes don't even try. Again the Unity which is communicated is far to be there on the field or in the actions. Moreover the B2C Business is becoming more and more niche.
To conclude : Hopefully the political communication is there to hide the real challenges and create the impression the company is going somewhere. Without vision, leadership and strategic actions it is going in a wall and maybe faster than planned by the almost retired management.
