Honestly, we could function just as well if not better without so many of them. But who gets laid off in the end? Employees who actually contribute something useful to the company.
Until this issue is address, don't expect to see anything change for the better at this place.
There needs to be a functional systems audit of the organization. One of the subtypes of middle manager that do a lot of damage is the muppet.
Yeah, here’s how things seem to work. Individual contributor has an idea. A decision must be made. Individual contributor approaches manager. Manager doesn’t want to be accountable, so manager suggests calling a meeting with the other managers in the team. The other managers forward the meeting invite to all of their reports, as well as other managers in technical support groups, because it would be bad politics not to include XYZ group also. Manager of XYZ group forwards meeting invite to all of their direct reports, as well as their manager. A decision that should have been made by 2 or 3 people now necessitates a meeting of 35 people, all with different agendas. 30 people sit quietly in the meeting while the other 5 grind their political axes. No decision is made because the group of “decision makers” is too large. A follow up meeting is required, but more people must be included. The individual contributor who proposed the idea is now completely powerless to implement it, while 5 managers either oppose the idea or brazenly take credit for it. The individual contributor becomes frustrated and stops proposing ideas. The system is broken.
It didn’t used to be this way. Individual contributors used to work in small multi-disciplinary teams, and had freedom to implement ideas in cooperation with their small and flexible teams.
The massive reorgs and endless consolidation into an unnecessarily large hierarchy have stifled creativity and taken decision making power away from the people who truly understand the technical challenges of the assets they work every day. Instead, we have a bloated structure trying to apply a “one size fits all” solution being pushed down from people who don’t understand that every asset is different, and different assets require different solutions.
I totally agree. There has always been too many layers of management and many managers sit in their office doing nothing while drawing a substantial paycheck. For the non managerial positions. I've seen so many useless people promoted to supervisors when they are not qualified and definitely do not have the personality to have direct reports. And oxy wonders why morale is bad? I am so glad I am retired.
I cannot help but note how similar OXY and COP are run. Same situation with the layers. COP already cut nowhere near the percentage of managers as they did staff people and most of the managers got to keep some position either by being transferred to a different Business Unit and becoming a staff member or some new department was created. They take care of their own, first and foremost. Staff members are looked upon as tools. Once you as a staff member come to that realization, it makes it a lot easier working with these people. Treat everyone as business colleagues in the office and don't become "friends" with anyone in the office. Over the years I filled up an entire address book of work colleagues, and the only people I ever heard from during bad times was some of the field guys I worked with....other than one supervisor who called me and asked if I happen to had some stuff I had worked on previously to working at that company and if I could send it to him as a favor (I sent him a middle finger emoji). Look to see who you are hearing from now. That will tell you all you need to know.
Whatever expansion @crv didn’t work out. And really the overlap has created more bureaucracy and noise. Get rid of underperforming middle managers/ ones with no direct reports. They don’t do anything for the bottom line. No one needs managers to help people communicate, people can communicate much more effectively (and get things done) if the levels of unnecessary managers is taken away. #TrimtheMiddle
Can someone please tell me what Sandy Lowe does? How is his role any different than Ken Dillon?
From what I have seen over the years, there are many high level managers that won’t retire that need to be gone. No one can move up until they are gone so they just keep adding layers to promote people. There are also managers that keep getting transferred around when they do something unethical instead of being fired. I have heard some disgusting and unethical behavior that management has been able to get away with and it’s honestly shocking. Anyone else would be gone.
Oxy is a joke of a company now what does it matter about how well we were run in the past? It’s incredible to me that you can mess up at OXY and be put on a PIP for the smallest thing but if you are VH or anyone on the EC you can literally bankrupt a company and not face the consequences. What she did was criminal she should be in prison.
There has to have been some reasoning or strategy involved in the ballooning of middle level mgmt positions in 2019. The overlap and mutual interference added was remarkable. Maybe some expansion out of UC or Permian planned down the road? I'll assume that someone had a purpose- expansion, training, protection from cuts etc. Regardless of the current negativity, Oxy has been a very well run organization in the recent past.
The same thing everywhere.