Wonderful Organisation but Lost It’s Way - Operations Catch22 Employee Review

* Promotions are too often influenced by personal relationships rather than merit. There is a deeply rooted culture — both conscious and unconscious — of elevating individuals who lack the experience, capability, or leadership behaviours required for senior roles. This results in underqualified leaders managing large teams, significant budgets, and high-profile programmes, without delivering the level of leadership expected; which from a helicopter view does not feed into business strategy. * Leadership decisions can feel insular and, at times, contradictory. In some cases, those promoted are not respected by their own peers, which undermines credibility at the top and erodes trust across delivery teams. * Programme mobilisation is frequently rushed, while closures can be abrupt. This creates instability, with redundancies often happening with little notice. There appears to be a stronger focus on protecting income streams than on safeguarding employee wellbeing and job security. * Inconsistent leadership quality leads to environments of insecurity and micromanagement. Where leadership falls short, the consequences are significant — impacting staff confidence, wellbeing, commissioner relationships, and the long-term sustainability of programmes. Delivery staff who ‘under perform’ are placed on performance improvment plans without any look at the leadership in place. In most cases I have witnessed, leadership were not effectively leading and should have been on PiP. * There is a tendency to deflect accountability when people leave. Responsibility for challenges is often placed on departing individuals, rather than being owned collectively. This fosters a culture of blame rather than learning, allowing the same issues to repeat. While there are individuals who challenge this, they are too few to drive meaningful cultural change.