The offices and work space are, for the most part, not attractive to entertaining clients or holding client meetings. They are not amenable and optimal to produce a positive work environment. Directors and VP's are behind closed doors and rarely touch the staff while Managers are amongst the employees more to take the temperature of the 'situation' than to provide guidance.
As a manager, you are not in a position to help your team grow. Your direct reports are put under as much paperwork as the manager and the admin work has only grown over the last few years - regardless of how much is said around adding personnel.
The first few sentences in the employee manual states how important the "employee" is to the company. Noble statement, however, when planning new initiatives or rolling out new products/ services - the last person in the loop [and the ppl with the most valued feedback] is the employee. Our Leadership Principles are clearly available for all to ahere to and all employees are annually rated against them...who is monitoring Management on these Principles? Starting at the manager position and working your way up the chain, the accountability becomes less and less to "Leading" the team and striving to live by these Principles. Calling out your boss is 'career suicide' but your success is deemed to be the success of your boss when looked at from above. In most cases, the managers and VP's have virtually nothing to do with the sales revenue. Watching the daily revenue tracker to then crack the whip when things are tight OR 'send an email' when things are looking good is not the way to run a sales team.
Separate issue: Most executives these days live and die by email....not good. Productive to a point, but when you're the leader in your industry - "you" should be able to get off email and work more intimately with your employees and your customers.
Training: Getty Images used to have a global learning team dedicated to educating the employees on needful items. It was made up of formal sales employees and these ppl were educated to the workings of the company inside and out. It made sense b/c the ppl pushing the new knowledge on you had a very good idea HOW to dish it, HOW to digest it and WHERE the pitfalls were going to be. No longer. This team was disbanded and recently a new team was put in place with no knowledge of the products, sales cycles, daily hurdles to overcome etc. Not effective.
