Dow reviews

- Midland Michigan is a boring small company town where you can't t buy a bag of carrots without 10 people asking you what you're cooking. - Extremely inwardly focused. Very bureaucratic. No idea what goes on in the "real world". People don't understand their own businesses but know Dow like the back of their hand. - No idea how to develop and commercialize new technology. Very focused on high NPV concepts, scared to death of getting hands dirty delivering products (note - I am a Sr. Director R&D leaving company for personal reasons). - No accountability. Lots of chiefs, few indians. Many people able to say "no", no one can say yes. - Functional reporting (e.g., supply supports into supply chain function, R&D reports into R&D function) allows each function to independently create their own goals (and exceed these) while businesses go down the toilet. I couldn't believe some of the things I heard from functional leaders when reviewing disappointing business results. - Revolving door business leadership teams create constant business disruptions.

Have to work harder to make up for top management mistakes. Troops save the day for poor decisions by the Generals.