John Deere – “Too good to become truly great”

Pros

Deere is a proud and responsible organization with a rich history of profitable and successful products and customers who swear by the brand with their own livelihood. There is an abundance of pride from making tractors and servicing those who serve the land in the Midwest. If you perform well, you will have chances to do new things and take new roles in different functional areas to broaden your base of experience. Deere is an awesome place to start a career and get a feel for the overall industrial business environment. Pay and benefits are great for the locations where Deere is located, so your standard of living will be reasonably high. You will work with the best people available in the workforce from the area you are located, and you will be given the opportunity to develop yourself.

Cons

Deere is not a management development academy, so don't expect that type of culture or experience. Seriously stagnant at the high middle management layers - with resulting cronyism for the best promotion opportunities - that self-protects/perpetuates. Don't expect to fly high or get a big opportunity for high impact assignments or access to Senior managment unless you work for the right people at the right time or get hired through the Strategic Management Program. SMP is basically an insider club of MBAs from Tuck, Kellogg, etc. that are essentially preselected for the high visibility and impact positions before they even start with the company. SMP is sweet for those involved and bitter for those not.

Deere has done well over a long period of time, so there there is cultural complacency that inhibits efforts to build a great organization. Management talks actively about building a great business, but the culture won't permit it. Great people in general are not being recruited or retained.

There is little incentive to stay more than 5 years with the company unless your career ambition is to build combines, balers, tractors, etc. or you settle down in the community where you are working and decide to stay forever. There are few if any employers that compete for talent in the locations where Deere thrives, so external talent competition is not a factor.

Advice to Senior Management

There are obvious deficiencies in systematic talent development processes from the individual contributor level to middle-management levels which will result in long-term brain drain unless resolved. Use results and talent as the benchmark - not favoritism.

The talent review mechanism is too limited and not robust enough to ensure that the right leaders for the future are identified, developed, and promoted. The first role of leadership should be talent development, but this process is not a first priority at Deere.

The few leaders being promoted today through the ranks are not ready for the next level of responsibility because you have not properly prepared them. This will drive the talented risk-takers that are ready to move up out of the organization unless we rededicate to developing leaders at all levels. The "rocket" phenomena of people working at the same level for 5-10-15 years and then skyrocketing 4 or 5 layers of management in a few years is not a good long term leadership development process, but it is the process by which most of upper middle management acheived their current positions. Change it!

We are not utilizing the full talents of our existing workforce because we are not leveraging their skills or total experiences when assignments are made - only the experience that one gains at Deere is generally relevant for promotion consideration. Not-made-here syndrome puts blinders on the process. Whether there is business experience, leadership experience, language skills, or other skills - our people are not being utilized to their fullest. We can't waste our most important resources and expect to thrive in a global economy. The role of HR is not clear but needs to be strengthened dramatically to centralize/improve the process.