The executive committee takes feedback as personal attacks on their egos. They seem to be incapable of calmly, thoughtfully considering alternative perspectives. Their gut reaction is to immediately shut others down. This organization struggles with distrust, which then makes blaming and punitive behavior a common practice, that then destroys psychological safety in the workplace. There was a firing of a small finance department without previously alerting those individuals of any performance issues prior to it occurring. There was also a firing of a key personnel to the Navy Market-- out of the blue— by the executive committee, to the complete shock and dismay of the FTI workforce at large. It was a remarkable misstep. Top-down communication is pretty bad. Leadership claims that FTI is “leading with its SBIR technology” but it seems to be mostly smoke and mirrors. Many people at FTI feel guilty engaging with customers about FTI advertised analytics solutions, as there is disparity between what is advertised as FTI capability and the actual capability that can be delivered during project execution.
