From the top down, there is a culture of fear. For myself and most of the mid-level specialists or managers I was brought in with, we were told when hired that the the company was excited to bring in our unique expertise and share it with the team. However, we were then micromanaged and told what to do, and few if any of our ideas were allowed to enter the culture. Projects that were fully approved by senior management (SVP or C suite level approval) would be cancelled right before completion, or even after spending huge sums on external vendors. After a while, few people dared speak their mind or offer ideas, and we were all told by our immediate managers to save all emails and record video meetings so when management changed their minds and tried to blame us we had proof that projects had indeed been approved by them, in public. (I had to share a video recording of my manager enthusiastically approving a project, after she berated me via email about me supposedly not having approval AFTER a big project had been completed. After I shared the video recording and transcript I heard nothing from her.). Our group had four different leads in two years, because they kept being pushed out, alienated, or let go by the SVP, who simply wanted to make every decision himself. A very Soviet culture where everyone pretends things are great so management can look good, but in the background everyone is miserable and feeling undervalued and voiceless.
