It's funny that I just received my letter about Cengage's bankruptcy today...I've been thinking lately how different my life is now working for a company with a culture of accountability, kindness and recognition of true achievement. My memories of Cengage generally center around the mean clique of middle to upper managers who had been with the company for years and years and had no discernible worry about performance or innovation. Years of observing superiors taking advantage of the company's flexible work policies, abuse of expense accounts, rewarding cronies for strategies that yielded no results and taking advantage of the lower-level, hard working employees is what I remember first. But in the wake of the bankruptcy, I see all of this in context: editors and marketing directors truly felt that they knew everything and didn't need to do any market research, review their competitor's technology or content or put in the effort to innovate. They knew that they could not be fired that within the crony culture of the company, it was not necessary to perform, work too hard or meet any particular goal. Nothing changed, nothing was fixed, students interests were not a priority.
