CGL had recently lost many staff members over the course of two months, including several top performers. In response, they decided to hold a series of “focus groups” to explore the underlying causes of this attrition. Perhaps they couldn’t quite grasp that the reasons were glaringly obvious: relentless micromanagement, five days a week in the office for nine hours straight, absent senior leadership, complete disregard for individual schedules, and an expectation that no backfill would be provided—yet one should somehow know the entire history of a product from the moment a colleague departs. Add to that the scheduling of holidays and the utter lack of respect for a person’s life outside working hours with their family.
So they convened groups of professionals across the globe and, astonishingly, arrived at a solution. More micromanagement. More work dumped on already stretched teams. Even less regard for the time of day. And senior leadership taking even more days out of the office.
Absolutely bloody incredible.