Slightly delusional, but slowly coming to... - Executive Director Estée Lauder Companies Employee Review

There tends to be more enthusiasm than competence in a lot of areas. In particular, there are constantly "newly created roles" for senior people who aren't particularly talented. So it leads to an environment where many senior people, as pleasant as they may be, are not respected for their business/technical acumen. The implicit communication is that your image and relationships are more important than substantive work quality. In fact, many senior people lack the necessary competencies to effectively evaluate their direct reports at all. On the bright side, it appears that this veil of incompetence is slowly melting away. Incremental steps are being made towards accountability and bringing in good people. The challenges we face now are building a system that rewards people for the right contributions and developing strong leaders.