Voss, Kilpin, Wadleigh and more are gone. Love 'em or hate 'em, it doesn't matter. Sure they promote the wrong guys. Sure they let some deserving people go. Why? The culture of hiring & promoting is totally unchecked at Mattel. Directors and VPs wield ultimate power, no matter how ignorant they are. Ask yourself, what does HR do in a day? When have they ever helped the individual? In my 15 years of working here, I have never gone to HR for "help". No one does. Fear runs rampant throughout the lower ranks. We've seen what happens when someone challenges someone in management, or goes to HR with a complaint. They are labeled "problem child" in their HR folder, and they are given a "strike". But there is never any follow-up to see if a complaint is legit. HR is simply "Big Brother", a non-ally, a cold, anonymous, bean-counting entity who maintains a paper trail to justify flushing someone at any time. Every year the required-signing Employee Agreement gets longer. No one actually reads it all, it's sufficient to be reminded in the early paragraphs that we are all "at-will" employees and can be fired at any time for any reason. That certainly makes me feel appreciated.
A Kaye used his fifty-dollar smile and spewed his crap at company updates in the cafeteria about how Mattel was a "talent magnet" and would attract, retain, and reward the most creative people. He's long gone, but has anything really changed? Mr. Gros, creative talent is at an all-time low. The real talent has left the building through layoff and attrition because there is no creative freedom or support left here. Permanently. The damage is done, and it's real. Every week a few talented people just give up on Mattel and quit. I cringe when I see Mattel's job listings on LinkedIn. Sure, you'll have a nonstop stream of mediocre applicants. A better method would be a solid foundation of internal talent and a succession plan. But that requires long-range planning, totally counter to Mattel's reactionary nature.
HR needs a complete overhaul. TRACs should be discarded. It doesn't work. No one writes goals until the night before TRACs are due. Guess what? They perfectly match what the person achieved. Another TRACS miracle!
Kilpin was a nice guy. Too nice. Always chose smooth sailing with the "team approach". Avoided conflict, avoided challenges. That passionless mentality pervaded through his chain of command: don't challenge, don't think, just go along with the mob and pat ourselves on the back when another no-champion, designed-by-committee, cost-reduced, market-research-approved product hits the shelves. Assuming our mired-in-1970s development partners can actually manufacture it, but that's another rant. Related: HR, take a good hard look at EVERYTHING S Goodman has put into place. Most everything needs fixing, including PLM to the tune of $70+ million. Adjust his bonus accordingly. But I digress...
HR: Time to stand up and start earning your paychecks. Create a totally new, relevant review system that doesn't treat everyone like they have the same jobs. Legal people, marketing people and design people all contribute differently. You can't use the same form for everyone.
HR: Stop being anonymous. End the veil of secrecy. Walk through your departments. Talk to people. Call them by name, that's your job. Be open and friendly. Let them know who you are and ask them how things are going and what could be improved. Encourage people to email, call, or visit you with comments, concerns, or questions. Have a sit-down chat with EVERY SINGLE PERSON at least once a year. Two or three would be better. It's your job to get people to talk freely about how things are going, including what isn't working with their superiors.
HR: Empower the people. Reward people for pointing out areas needing improvement, EVEN IF someone in management needs improving. We are chock full of buffoons who blundered their way into manager and director positions who have serious issues of their own. It's NOT acceptable to be in a position of power just because your are buddies, brothers, or bandmates with a GM or SVP. When you consistently hear about a personnel problem, ACT, even if it's someone in management.
HR: Make your actions visible. Hold people accountable. If a director screws up, bust him down to manager or worse. Take away a VP's car when she's caught screwing her boss in the DC. Stop the coverups. Name names. Complete disclosure. A government should be afraid of their people. Everyone at every level needs to be accountable, to know that their decisions and their screwups are affecting a lot of other people. Why do you choose to protect the people who screwed up instead of the people they screwed?
HR: It's all about accountability, challenging comfort zones and having difficult conversations at ALL LEVELS throughout the company. Mattel has never been forthright about dealing with or even acknowledging failures. Failures are swept under the rug. No post-mortems, no accountability, no lessons learned. Oops, the wrong lessons are learned. "Don't ever try X again, because we tried X once and it failed, so clearly nobody wants X." VPs are exempt from the finger of blame pointing at them, so this insane trend continues. Anybody remember our crack (smoking) Juicebox team grabbing a pile of Matty awards for delivering this pre-failed product on an accelerated schedule? Go team!
HR: It's no secret that our costs for everything are spiraling out of control. Well YOU are a huge part of the problem. You continue to hire new C-suiters with ridiculous incentives and golden parachutes. Stop the madness! Once again, no guarantee of performance, no accountability for them. You are furiously signing contracts and writing checks that will burden our bottom line and products costs for 20+ years from now. (How much are we still paying J Barad annually?) Is overpaying the only trick you know to quickly fill these seats? If you have the right organization in place underneath them, you wouldn't have to rush to hire. C'mon, FOUR last September was ridiculous. Probably just to have them onstage waving at the quarterly update, right?
Let's turn this ship around, Mr. Gros. There is still time, but massive changes are necessary, and quickly. Firing a few people and hiring some longshot replacements isn't going to cut it long term. No more PepsiCo people for starters. We need talented, passionate people who are placed properly throughout the organization, from the top down. Look at every single person. We are watching you with VERY high expectations.