- Weak execution means that the company revenues are around 2 years behind where they could/should be.
- Many inexperienced people have been promoted into senior positions. This can be a great thing to do for some roles, but because it has been done for a majority of roles, it has led to many easily-avoidable mistakes being made and slowed down company growth.
- Politics has been allowed to develop more than they should. This has lead to lower quality decisions being made at all levels of management and given fuel to poor execution.
- On-boarding for most people in 2018 and 2019, whilst fun for most, was a shambles in terms of organisation and set extremely low standards of execution. There was either no structure (or the structure was unhelpful), conflicting messaging, management were late for their slots, and instead of teaching new hires how to sell Celonis, they were taught 'we don't know what we are doing either - go and make it up, good luck'. This would be fine for onboarding start-up builders in an early stage start-up finding its feet - but this approach was not fine for onboarding 500+ people who were there to drive execution and drive sustainable growth. The positive impact is that it led to good networking and bonding, but the negative impact of this is that 500+ people have been taught that poor execution is not only tolerated, but is actually the expectation - this will be felt for years to come and will take a lot of management time to firefight and resolve over the coming years. Consider this before you join.
- Did not establish or embed a common company culture until it was too late (I don't know if there is one now). In the meantime, the founders left it to develop organically. Unfortunately in absence of a defined culture, politics usually takes its place.
- The founders often said they wanted Celonis to become 'the next SAP'. Whilst this would be great for revenues, the SAP culture has many negative issues and is not necessarily one that should be copied.
