Pros
Smart colleagues and great companies to partner with
Cons
Everything is a facade. Every year, a new strategy comes out with grandiose ideas of how restructuring will make a big difference in what the Forum can achieve. In fact, all it does is change your manager, secure another promotion for those at the top and confusion partners. Those at the top of the leadership pyramid have fanciful notions they’re making an impact. In reality, those employees in level I & II implementing the ever-changing strategies spend 75% of their time internally “grabbing a coffee” to try to understand what their colleagues are working on because there is no lateral visibility and multiple teams end up duplicating work. This has greatly inhibited the Forum from moving past a mere event and networking organization since there is little time left to do substantive work. The Forum prides itself on being complex in order to tackle a multitude of issues. Yet in its wake, it leaves employees confused about who does what. There is so much confusion on the inside that an org chart doesn’t even exist. And if it did, it would change every 6 months. Every new comer can attest to the new hire mantra that it takes at least 6 months to begin to understand the Forum and what it does. If there was a small semblance of an onboarding program, there wouldn’t be so much wasted time and talent. Leadership has managed to pin different departments against each other since all performance is based on how much money is brought in and retained. This leads to unhealthy internal competition to hoard partners and contacts and dissuades collaboration outside your “cluster”.