What happened to the WAEM survey outcomes? Everything stopped in its tracks as soon as supervisors got assigned actions.
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It has been two and half years since this post. Do we still spend 3x the effort to complete "Management of Change" activities in ExxonMobil?
WAEM is the slogan for the failed “culture change” package that was designed by corporate consultants.
Its objective was supposed to be to make ExxonMobil more cost competitive by streamlining the top-down hierarchical over-managed business processes that burn money compared to competition.
But making that change has to start with a change at the top, so is impossible while keeping leadership that were selected into their roles by the very same culture.
Implementation was doomed because it was focused on the wrong level, with years wasted on pointless attempts to drive change through low level managers and supervisors instead of making the needed changes from the top.
Result is a bunch of money handed to consultants, a huge drain on resources and organizational focus over many years, and in the end not one iota of actual change.
In the Employee Forum, the Kathy-bot summed it up nicely in her observation of how, compared to any other organization she’s seen, ExxonMobil burns 3X the effort to complete ‘management of change’ activities.
(Unfortunately, everyone on the stage and in the front rows took that as a compliment and not a critique.)
The survey was a piece of happy horse po-p that was never destined to result in any meaning action other than to let corporate leadership pat themselves on the back for having released an employee survey. Total joke.
WAEM started 2018-2019. Bury that da#n thing. Horse dokey!