So much potential, but we have to Pivot - Anonymous employee SelectBlinds Employee Review

On the other hand, there are a few things that really turn the day-to-day work that gets done into soul-crushing work. Firstly, the CEO who started off his time here saying that he was a "servant leader" and pronouncing his desire to get to know everyone and learn the way we operate, is now nearly impossible to get ahold of. He is rarely in the office, and when he is, he is holed up in his office, still unavailable. Meetings are constantly rescheduled, often 10-15 minutes beforehand, only to be rescheduled again and again. It highlights a lack of respect for employees time as there is plenty of time spent preparing presentations and slide decks, only to be told after you're ready that he will not be attending the meeting. Projects are frequently just 'dropped' if they need any sort of approval or review from him, as getting this approval (or even time) is not going to happen unless it pertains to immediate sales or conversion. If a project has huge potential benefits, but will take more than ~2 weeks to ramp up, it's discarded. This leads to the next issue, the reactionary nature of upper management and the short-sighted decisions consistently jostling the company around. There are loads of fantastic ideas lobbed around from most people at SelectBlinds, yet there is never any time to develop and follow those ideas into something that can be implemented. There are nearly daily pivots. "change the sale from X to Y", or "change Y image to Z image on the homepage" that eat massive chunks of time from everyone. The company is unable to find a single strategy and really follow it through, if it doesn't produce immediate results within the next business week, it's scrapped and we move to the next one. It is again, showing a lack of respect for the employees who diligently worked on the said project by telling them to toss it and moving on to the next hastily made decision. Projects commonly get caught in "limbo" (sometimes for years) as the priority is switched around constantly, creating a domino effect for other projects. This creates a spiral of projects waiting on other projects that never reach completion. The transparency of these decisions also leaves plenty to be desired as well. Often projects are passed down with little forethought or insight to the core issue they're looking to solve, with nearly unreachable deadlines. It's like we're permanently playing a slot machine, just pulling a new lever every week, hoping something finally sticks this time. When pivots happen, and changes are made, the direction given to employees to create this pivot is minimal. Often the direction is "This isnt working, make something new by EOD" and it's left with that. The lack of communication between department heads is astounding. The customer service and sales teams consistently feel as if they are left out to dry, as their leadership team fails to pass critical information down to front-line employees. The E-comm team has so many different facets and responsibilities that things fall through the cracks frequently, leading to dropped initiatives and forgotten projects. The lack of communication has bred a toxic environment inside SelectBlinds, with different departments not fully understanding what teams have what responsibilities, leading to resentment as things do not get done. Whenever a team does have a finalized, concrete structure, it's changed within ~6 months to be a new team. Departments were torn apart around a year ago, with many gaping holes still visible in terms of overall output (and stress levels) yet there are no approvals to fill those existing spots, only bringing on new department directors, even if the department already has a director. People are expressing the need for help with their roles/projects, and the solution is to place another level of separation between the person who is asking for help, and the person who can do anything about it. It seems like SelectBlinds is trying to reinvent itself every few months, prioritizing short-term gains over long-term growth. When I first started, promoting from within was huge to this company. Take the people who know the way our company operates, and give them the space and ability to grow into a role. This is no longer the case, with nearly every single new role (or filling an existing role) going to someone from outside of the company with little to no previous industry knowledge. The ability to climb the ladder and grow has shrunk to minuscule proportions at this point, with the only option for someone looking to grow now being at another company. It's incredibly tough to feel valued in a meaningful way at SelectBlinds.com. For all of the reasons that I listed above, burnout is incredibly high, and morale is incredibly low.