Huge potential. Too much short term focus on sales, no true organic growth
Pros
If you want to learn business systems, this is the place to be. Danaher is very effective at what I call the firm processes such as manufacturing. procurement, quality, and even sales to some extent. The people are great (but moral is poor)
Cons
Danaher does poorly with, excuse the term, fuzzier processes such as innovation and organic product development. My belief is that there are flaws with some of the concepts behind the DBS system. One of the concepts appears to be that anyone or any team can be made to fit a role with the appropriate DBS tool and training. To some extent, that is true. Virtually anyone can be taught to swim, or to play a musical instrument. So, while anyone can be taught the tools, you get mediocre performance from mediocre skill. There is little or no attempt to highlight and assist the people that are excellent in their roles, at least at the innovation level. Managers of these people may get noticed, but they are not the innovators. Danaher is not, in my experience, a company where skills and contribution are valued more than being a manager. There is no balance re specialists, SME's, etc. If you are not a manager it is hard to get your voice heard. Your viewpoint may be heard if you are fortunate enough to have a boss who brings your voice forward and does not take credit for it. , A boss that does this though does it sometimes at their own peril. Danaher managers are not 'people' managers, even the better ones. They tend to try to project and micro manage. Who is managing the people? There is no real career path planning, no training for new roles, no mentoring (again unless you are lucky). A wise person once told me "good managers give their people the tools knowledge and resources to get the job done, and then let them do their job". No micromanagement in that. Danaher focuses much too closely on maximizing profit to shareholders. This myopic view has the effect of having everyone lose sight of the other aspects of growing the company, i.e. innovation, organic growth, etc.. Forget about suggesting 2 year or longer projects even if you have the very lucrative business cases to back them up. Managers like the idea of doing these projects, however they are being driven very hard by their managers to increase weekly and quarterly profits.