IT feels like a playground for some of the those that have been here for a long time or have leadership titles. It is hard to see the "business benefit" of many decisions that are made. Consistently, I see decisions being reversed, knee jerk reactions, and essentially a lot of decisions that are made because the person who made it was senior enough - not because it is defensible.
I know the executives (VP's and above) will not like to see the above. I am sure they believe that the work they are doing is high quality. At their level that is true but that is because they are at the strategic planning level - there is very little tactical planning being done.
However, once the work starts to filter through to the middle management, the quality of the decision making suffers greatly. There is a huge lack of willingness at the middle management level and below to put in the work that it takes to make sure that plans are actionable and align. Unfortunately, the middle management does not see or participate in the day to day work - orders are issued and they leave - essentially absolving themselves of any accountability of the result, until something breaks and then it is critique city. It feels like they have more important things to be doing.
Ultimately, the way that work flows is as such:
1. Executives work with Directors to create high level goals.
2. Directors hand off high level concepts to Managers (sometimes).
3. Managers sometimes tell independent contributors, "you are on a project". However, no real direction of the goals or anything tends to be communicated. No plan of success, risk mitigation, etc. seems to flow to the IC.
4. IC's then have to fend for themselves.
