-Mid and upper level management have not displayed that they are forward thinkers with a strategic vision for a number of fiscal years now. There is not a wealth of innovators that you would think need to be present to keep a company whose primary business is to deliver newspapers, from sinking. Current innovations give an appearance of serving as stop-gaps than as permanent solutions to an annually leaner market for publications. Additionally, there is not a great deal of avenues for presenting forward thinking which may occur at the subordinate level.
-The typical division/section manager or supervisor is not a leader, mentor or visionary. There is a disturbing propensity for management to blame subordinates for an operational complication that lies more with human error at an even lower level, for which any planning could not reasonably compensate for. Additionally, the managers have a tendency to point out problems, yet not pose a working solution, leaving it to the subordinates to deal with ambiguous directives to resolve complications. As such, the low level operations personnel are extremely competent problem solvers, but do not have the support necessary to effect large scale changes.
-There is a clear lack of career progression for an employee, through a promotion scale which seem to be based more on years than merit. If an employee presents that they are capable of more responsibility, give it to them. Being promoted to a position due to a lack of competition or reaching a set number of years promotes stagnancy, which is prevalent in PCF.
-The company suffers from an over reliance upon meetings and conference calls, often these meetings involve the same people and occur throughout the day, limiting the ability of participants and their subordinates, who are required to attend a bulk of the meetings, to actually effect work. The meetings do not typically discuss or resolve decision points, they are often purely to ensure that scheduled daily operations are discussed in forum. Even scheduled or common occurance maintenance of systems requires numerous levels of checks that leaves one to question what is the lowest level authority or responsibility is really delegated to.
-Overredundancy of sections and their interaction with the client. While redundancy is a common occurance in the corporate world, to provide due diligence to the customer, the level to which it is present in PCF is dizzying. The account managers, client services, master data, logistics and operations sections all deal with the customer, yet none of them has a distinct focus that one can point to and say "This is what I deal with, this is what they deal with". Each section lacks a difinitive mission statement which defines their role or allow a section to reference the roles of others.
-The typical employee has been with PCF for a number of years and has served at a number of different levels, yet they often express unfavorable views of the company and it's operations, yet little is being done to address a nearly tangible dissatisfaction with the company's culture.
