Almost all my issues with Questionmark stem from the CEO and is handling of the company, the employees and management structure. The Chairman, who is also the companies founder, is a great guy, but shouldn't have given up overall control of the company during the merger between the British parent company and the US distributor. This merger left the then owner of the distributorship as an equal partner in the newly formed company. Even a 1% difference could have saved a lot of headaches.
The CEO, as others have said, can also be a great guy (and socially he's a delight to hang out with), but his mood swings from meeting to meeting, day to day, create an unstable working environment and, to use a previous reviewers phrase, a culture of fear - Will I get a nice email (maybe even a thanks!) today, or will it be the usual criticisms based on unrealistic expectations and misunderstanding of what's involved to achieve goals?
The CEO seemingly believes that he understand all facets of each employees role, even to the level where the employee has done years of training and research to be come an expert - surely the CEO should be taking his information and lead from these key employees, rather than assuming his limited knowledge is sufficient and telling the experts how to do things.
Investopedia defines the CEO role as...
"The highest ranking executive in a company whose main responsibilities include developing and implementing high-level strategies, making major corporate decisions, managing the overall operations and resources of a company, and acting as the main point of communication between the board of directors and the corporate operations. The CEO will often have a position on the board, and in some cases is even the chair."
Questionmark's CEO doesn't fit this definition - his 'fingers in every pie' approach negates the need for industry experts and managers to be employed by Questionmark. He just needs trained monkeys (no offense to my friends still there).
