Where to start? The near-constant re-orgs are killing this place. It's obvious that the Thomson family regrets its acquisition of Reuters in 2008. They made a mistake buying a firm that was so dependent on the financial services industry at the precise moment that industry was beginning a 10+ year decline. They have global data collection operations that make it impossible to achieve the profit margins required to make this an attractive acquisition though, so they've been hacking and slashing every few years, under the guidance of one major consulting firm or another. They've all been paid millions -- McKinsey, BCG, etc... -- even after David Craig began loading up senior positions with his consultant friends, who then began hiring all their friends from Oliver Wyman -- who are all great at generating Powerpoints and Excel sheets, not so much on delivering much of anything. Each major re-org (ca. every 3 years) requires a massive shift of attention and focus and ultimately drags motivation down. Nobody is ever held accountable for these horrendous decisions. The latest changes (smaller cuts in late 2015, large cuts late 2016) completely reversed the massive changes made in 2013. Does anyone realize how much time and energy was wasted trying to figure out the operating model from 2013? How much money this actually cost the company? C'mon, there must be at least one so-called "strategy" person who can crunch the numbers on this. Why not claw back some senior management bonuses as compensation for these losses?
Financial & Risk has shifted to the "ADD strategy": shift focus and strategy every year, re-brand your efforts internally, generate a new batch of business cases aligned to the new strategy, and then arrive in the new year with the realization that there are not enough resources to deliver on the approved business cases. Everything stagnates. Late Q2 into Q3 it becomes clear that nothing is getting done, and then rumors of the "new" re-org start swirling. Play - Stop - Rewind - Play.....Repeat. Have a look on LinkedIn -- see how many people have changed roles every 12-18 months, repeatedly. That's not because they're being promoted based on performance. It's because there are repeated shuffles of strategy and how the organization should achieve it, followed by everyone scrambling to re-brand what it is they're doing to make it sound relevant (and central) to the new strategy. Yawn.
To go along with this, they've been systematically reducing the benefits across the board. They've fine-tuned the commission scheme for sales so that they can keep total payouts reduced, they've eliminated stock bonuses for anyone but the most senior managers, and they've keyed the cash bonuses to metrics that also guarantee you'll never get full payout. It used to be the case that if your business unit over-performed (ie, exceeded already aggressive targets by 5-15%), those responsible for that were rewarded above your baseline rate. Now that might mean you get 90%-100% of your bonus rate. Actually -- not 100%. Never.
Wait a year and see if they've finally managed to sell off the Financial business, check to see they haven't taken David Craig along with the acquisition, and then see what they're doing. Going in now: you'd just be signing up for one long defensive crouch. And that's not a good way to live your life.
