American Express – “He was good until the stock tanked, they laid off 10% of the work force and took $3.5B in TARP money.”

Pros

Work/iife balance is really true before the VP level. The company is dominated by women, who are often the lower-earning part of a dual-income family. The time off is ample and employees can't roll over their days, which indicates that senior leadership supports time off. The people and culture are refined, meaning that people treat each other fairly well in meetings and during presentations. Most of the people are very smart, creative more on the beta-side meaning an emphasis on collaboration vs alpha side meaning goal or results oriented. The focus on customers and customer satisfaction is genuine which senior leaders actually reading letters from customers and sending them to to you if it effects your area.

Cons

The matrix-culture waters down a lot of good, original ideas because so many people can shape/influence the outcome. This also means it takes an incredibly long time to make the simplest decision since everyone and their brother needs to hear about it. This means a lot of presentations and follow ups before you can even implement. This also effects promotions and meritocracy, so getting ratings is essentially a popularity contest. If everyone likes you and you've done a decent job, then you'll get a good rating. However, if someone is annoyed they can tank your rating through the annual alignment process. Plus the technology group is terrible on the interactive side. What else explains a 4 second load time on the home page and below-market recurring billing???

Advice to Senior Management

Make decisions faster and agree to move forward without 100% agreement on every little thing, actually take risks instead of just talking about "innovation".