Where do I start?
- Very little mobility within the organization. Director and VP jobs are given only to those who agree with CEO, who is a textbook narcissist (he over-rates his intelligence, gets joy out of making others look bad, and trusts no one).
Non-concurring opinions are met with harsh discipline and punished in ways big and small. It's a club and McCarvel is the club president and if he likes you (because you shake your head and agree with him) you're in!!
- C-suite team is largely incompetent and not a single one of them would have a similar position at a real company, with a real leader and real management and a real Board of Directors. Those "in power" are not powerful but rather puppets who have somehow managed to trade in every ounce of self-respect they might have had for an options package which is now shrinking in value. How's that working out for you guys?
- Disengaged Board of Directors who clearly don't care that a company that has roughly doubled its sales over the past 4 years cannot seem to reward stockholders with higher share prices. This BoD seems to love McCarvel and nobody in the actual company can understand why, since he is roundly hated by those not in the C-suite.
- The worst evaluators of talent I have ever seen. In 80% of the cases where someone gets promoted, I found myself saying that I would do almost the exact opposite. This company simply does not understand who their talent is (hint; they're the ones leaving in droves).
- No understanding of how to grow and manage a consumer brand. Most of the top executives come from Flextronics - an electronics company whose mission was to squeeze every ounce of cost savings from small parts manufacturing and resell them. Only one of them has prior footwear experience and he is an outright failure as a leader.
Guess what? This aint that… its a CONSUMER BRAND where actual dollars have to be spent on marketing. Any wonder why they can't hold on to a Chief of Marketing for longer than a year? When cuts come at Crocs - and I assure you they are going to come more frequently now - Marketing has the biggest target on its back.
- Wall St. hates Crocs. Hates the management. Hates the lack of vision and strategy. Hates that Crocs actually hates its own customers (you know her - she's got a big butt and is shopping at Sam's Club).
- M3 SUCKS. And anyone who has had to endure it knows Im right.
- The SAP installation will likely be the death nail in the coffin of Crocs. How many of these installations run smoothly you ask? Exactly none. Especially in companies doing business in over 100 countries. The SAP installation is the absolute last thing this company can handle, but because of the exceptionally poor integration of its current systems, it has to be done. Question; will the operation kill the patient? I'm saying it will.
- Did I mention the culture of fear, greed, intimidation and incompetence? It's alive and well at Crocs, thanks to the aforementioned Mr. McCarvel and his band of sorry want-to-be leaders who can't find the sack to stand up to him.