Though there are bright spots, narcissism is endemic in vast pockets of senior leadership - and it appears to be a product of a) massive insecurity, or b) potentially sociopathic and/or unethical behavior. Unfortunately, this behavior is systemic in many large companies, only Nutrien seems to have it down to an art – and exemplified gloriously in IT. There seems to be a difficulty in all departments (though again, IT is especially bad), in giving credit where credit is due, giving non-management the lime-light, building up and encouraging employees, and not hoarding information – all products of narcissism.
The leadership tone is set at the top - the very top. Right now, it's obviously off key, and that bad note floats down through the entire company.
The wrong people, with unethical values and actions, have been given both senior leadership titles and roles that influence the company and employees. This only goes to further validate that the company doesn't understand what true leadership is or is failing at its ability to assign leadership effectively. In doing so, Nutrien has seriously distanced itself from the values of the agrarian customer they purport to serve. This has been further enhanced by moving the corporate headquarters (in all practical senses) to Calgary and further distancing the values of the company from the values of the customer. Let’s not kid ourselves, Saskatoon is no longer the ‘headquarters’ of the company in any true sense of the word, and (at least corporately) the flavor and identity of understanding the farming lifestyle has been lost.
‘Feeding the future’ and ‘Growing our world from the ground up’, while pragmatically true tag lines (we provide product that enables the process of food production and plant growth), are disingenuous phrases at best, and deceptive at worst. In both instances, there is a high cost to providing the feed and the growth i.e. we’re not giving the product away for free or helping the growth because of some altruistic principle. Profit is the bottom line, and that profit has been heavily borne on the backs of the employees - and I don’t see it stopping. As an example of profit being the bottom line, training was one of the items pulled from employees to hit a nefarious and ill explained $100 million dollar savings target - yet, money seems to abound for other initiatives.
I could go on.
