What I Learned from Glassdoor
Like the medical profession, running a company is a never-ending learning process and regardless of how good you are in the role, there is so much more to learn and it doesn't just come from books, taking to other people, or experience. Sometimes you have to dig in other places to discover how to become something better. In my case, I have endless curiosity about running companies and what makes a great organization great and a bad company, well for lack of a better term, suck.
As an exercise to learn about what's out there, find my next company, and to build my advising practice, I looked at 544 companies and counting that have a Glassdoor score of 2.5 or less that are not a restaurant or are franchise-owned. Here is what I learned.
First, there are a lot of first-time CEOs who have no prior experience running companies and consequently have no means to compare their effectiveness against others. The lowest scoring companies typically have the least experienced CEOs. Often it's because they don't know what they don't know and believe they are still doing it right.
Some founding CEOs are brilliant technologists and industry experts who don’t have the personality or temperament to run any company, except they don’t know it, or in some cases don’t care. They live under the false notion that they are the best simply because they know the most. These CEOs often blame their employees when they are unhappy and regard them as over-reaching when they write a harsh review. These employees are pissed!
I’m not a fisherman however there are a lot of analogies to fishing that apply to company mindsets. In an overstocked pond, even the worst fisherman can catch fish. They would be under the delusion that because they are catching fish, they are good at it. This is like the delusion that because you have a great technology that you invented, you’re automatically a great CEO. Meanwhile your competition is catching up and will eventually blow by you.
Any great fishing pond attracts other fisherman and soon the pond begins to run out of fish. This is when it takes skill to catch fish, and this is when the poor fisherman stops catching fish and eventually gets squeezed out of the pond by those with more skill.
Great CEOs are sometimes born with the talent, however most of us learned how to be good at our jobs through experience, trial and error, and a willingness to learn something and ask for advice when we don’t get the results we intended. Great CEOs learn how to fish!
There are some common patterns on Glassdoor.
First, the companies with the lowest ratings are the first to go out of business. I’ve come across a lot of companies, that trended down in score from 2012, then suddenly shut their doors. Some of these rating were because they ran out of money and the stress of a declining company impacted everyone.
There was a theme of consistent complaints. The number one gripe is that management doesn’t listen!!! I read that same comment over and over again. Management doesn’t listen!!! I'll repeat, MANAGEMENT DOESN'T LISTEN!!! This same comment also occurred in most of the companies that eventually failed. Management didn't hear these employees when they were reporting up that something needed to be fixed. They ignored the fire alarm.
Second most common complaint is that management is unqualified in their roles. The employees don’t trust or respect the senior team who they believe don’t know what they are doing. I read this again and again. Keep in mind low quality employees also blame everyone else, so that has to be taken into account. Some of these low ratings come from very low quality people in the first place. This doesn't excuse the bad reviews because it's still management's responsibility to hire great people.
A lot of employees complain about feeling mistreated and there is a high turnover as noted with each one. The two go hand-in-hand. I read a lot about bullies in an organization and so often they are left unchecked.
When looking at companies that are in the consumer space, low Glassdoor scores run in parallel with low Yelp ratings and other consumer reviews.
Some low Glassdoor scores came from employees who regard the CEO as unethical and downright dishonest. I was surprised by how many were reviewed as such. Ouch!
Ironically, the best rated companies on Glassdoor lean towards using outside guidance to create the best possible work environment. This article may be one terrific explanation about why that happens. They take advice and apply it.
Once I've completed a sample of the worst companies, I'm going to undertake a similar exercise with the 500 best companies and see how they contrast. Stay tuned!