Executive management, merit increases (or lack thereof), and interdepartmental politics.
Executive management - they are in it for themselves. They are all about the corporate jet and off-site meetings at resort locations. Patti Hart needs to leave - that's the only thing that will boost company morale. She takes credit for the stock price doubling or at one time, tripling, since she was brought in by the board. Well here's the fact, she came end right at the absolute dead bottom of the stock market crash in 2009 when IGT was trading for $7 and change. The "dead cat" bounce from $7 to $20 that occurred in the year that followed could have been accomplished by a zombie. If you look at the stock performance from now to 4 years prior, you'll see how the company has severely underperformed. IGT stock went from about $19 in early Jan 2010 to under $15 as of Jan 26, 2014. Under Patti's reign, IGT has dropped about 20% in 4 years, while the general market has experienced one of the greatest bull markets ever! I wish someone could explain to me why this performance merited $8.5m in total compensation in 2011 (according to Forbes).
Merit increases - the merit increase process assumes that only 30% of the workforce contributed to the goals of the company. The other 70% either gets tipped or nothing, resulting in a negative disposable income curve for most employees. This fallacy assumes that the weight of the company is carried by a few employees, and does nothing to recognize the accomplishments of the team. (See my comment above about the rank and file...)
Politics - at the director level (and sometimes the manager level) and above, it's nearly impossible to accomplish meaningful cross functional process change and improvement. The company is bogged down with all sorts of useless KPI reporting that makes management look great, but doesn't tell the true story. The only way that anything gets accomplished is by placing the burden of process change on a severely under-staffed IT department to change an already complex system(s) to meet everyone's demands (and myopic KPI's) making it even tougher for the rank and file to do their jobs and even harder to train new employees on increasingly complex processes and systems.
