So Much Potential If Leadership Would Just Get Out of the Way - Anonymous employee MISO Employee Review

Most of MISO’s challenges stem from a central issue—the MISO executive leadership team. Whatever the opposite of imposter syndrome is, that’s what they have when it comes to running a business. While they bring some solid technical knowledge and industry experience, they don’t seem to function well as a unified group or make thoughtful business decisions. It often appears they’re using trial and error or the latest business fad with the company and employees just to see what happens and then pivot if needed, which leads to continuous organizational change and instability. Most recently, they decided to update their organizational model, which led to 20+ position eliminations. Restructuring happens—it’s part of business—but the way this one was handled was really poor. Leadership hinted that changes were coming months in advance, which led to apprehensive employees. They then spread the layoffs out over several weeks, keeping people on edge with no clear communication. The culture of fear this decision caused will take years to repair, with the culture taking a significant hit. To make things worse, the people who were let go were told this was purely an organizational change and not performance-related. Then, just months later, leadership is communicating that those same people were let go because of poor performance and now have to live with that reputation among their former peers. And they are rehiring many of those same positions, either with slightly different titles or job duties. Whether that’s backtracking or just a bad decision in the first place, it shows a serious lack of transparency and MISO’s core value of integrity. Despite promoting diversity, inclusion, and the employee experience externally, executive leadership is largely absent from these efforts internally. Employee resource groups are driven almost entirely by employee volunteers with minimal reward, recognition, or support, reducing these initiatives to little more than check-the-box exercises. It’s become more about appearances than real engagement. Unfortunately, the behavior and characteristics of the executive team are used as the ideals for leadership development and training, so you often see similarities in executive directors, directors, and some managers. That means you regularly see people promoted for technical skills or political savvy—not for being strong, supportive leaders. There are still great leaders at the manager and director level who are truly genuine and caring, but they’re not the majority.