A Case Study on Bad Leadership - Manager Indigo Employee Review

To understand Indigo, you must first understand the CEO – a visionary, optimistic, passionate, money-raising machine… whose vision diverts attention away from core businesses into new businesses where Indigo has no legitimate right to win, whose optimism forbids discussing challenges and drives goals that are literally unattainable, whose passion comes with authoritarianism where direct reports will not question nor tell the truth at fear of being fired, and whose money raising prowess drives unbelievable financial mismanagement. While the CEO is the classic visionary type, he doesn’t surround himself with a strong counterbalance. Instead, he surrounds himself with a group of yes-women and yes-men who will drop anything to meet his every whim – a dangerous formula that has resulted in a comedy of errors including quarterly go-to-market changes alienating growers, losses of hundreds of millions of dollars due to reckless business ideas, go-it-alone global initiatives eschewing years of data and leaders in industry, hiring people and letting them go within their first month due to change of strategy - then re-hiring on the same team within two months…the list goes on. Finally, the culture… Unlike any company I’ve seen, Indigo has an appalling lack of care for people. Instead of listening to employee’s concerns, leadership instantly rebukes with a familiar trope: “Indigo isn’t for everybody…” or “Changing the world requires immense effort…” When 100s of employees, some who had been at Indigo for 4+ years, were laid off, they were led out of the building like convicts, not even allowed to say goodbyes to colleagues. When asked about rebuilding company morale, leadership averred that morale was not important, and merely an outcome of successful business results. Indigo touts core values such as “transparency”, “doing the right thing”, “admitting mistakes”, all of which the company has continuously fallen short on. It is such a shame to see a place with great people and a tremendous mission crumble due to poor leadership, lack of culture, and recklessness.