Management focus was always directed upwards to the manger higher up in chain, as opposed to directed downward or neutrally on employee operation. Which meant that all managers were bogged down with meetings and reports. If you had a problem with your job or a project, then you would need to schedule a meeting with your manager, as they were never around to talk to.
Lack of management availability created a backlog of problems and issues that needed to be dealt with, thus creating an attitude of "deal with it yourself." This lack of management availability ultimately turned the workplace into a group of independent workers as opposed to a team of employees.
Lack of obvious direction. Goal cards, Management Employee reviews, etc. All are designed to create workplace objectives that constantly move the department in a forward direction. However many goals are set on objectives that are not quantifiable nor were measurable. So setting effective SMART goals on non SMART objectives rendered many objectives inneffective. This left many employees failing their objectives, and receiving generally negative or neutral reviews, and receiving non to little annual bonus. Those that did well on objectives were able to do so by shifting the reason for not succeeding goals as a "dependency" of another team or employee, more or less "Passing the buck."
I can't say this for other sub-departments within IS, but my department's senior manager had a reputation for swearing, belittling employees in meetings, and screaming. All things aside he managed to stay there for quite a while until I heard news that he was layed off and rumours because he was having an intimate relationship with a contractor he was trying to employ as a senior manager, how much of it is truth I don't know, but the fact that employees are spreading these rumours seems to indicate that the atmosphere is still negative.
Employee recognition awards, they were political and showed to all the employees how narrow Management's view was. Every award, managed to award individuals that worked closely with Senior management. The awards were meant to be unbiased, but still managed to be biased because of the way manager's focused their attention. They didn't see the work of employees at the front-line, because they wouldn't see past the work of the managers just below them.
Every failure was a success. Some way, some how, a project failure turned into a success. A failed production deployment with very little adopters, somehow turned into a succesful test pilot. This happened on one project for 3 years. The employees all knew it was a failure, but management always seemed to tout those things as a success. It created confusion, and a distrust of management.
