ITW reviews

Please, read this! I am a former long-term employee (15+ years). When I started, ITW was focused on leading small decentralized businesses. This training ground grew strong, savvy, general managers. While pay has always been low, I was offered opportunities to run a variety of businesses. Most of the people I worked with were hardworking, dedicated employees, even during tough times. People truly cared about co-workers and the business. The latest Enterprise Strategy has gutted the organization of business leader talent. In 2012, I was invited to a meeting (with roughly 200 other business unit leaders) and told that WE were the reason for under-performing the market in the past 5 years. The company was consolidating businesses and the 200 management employees would be reduced to 20. I spent a year and a half watching good, hardworking, dedicated, intelligent managers being restructured or allowed to walk out the door. ITW was built by strong General Managers. These people have either been let go, marginalized to insignificant roles within the organization or have left the company. ITW states that it wants to "maintain it's entreprenurial culture". My experience is that it does, but at the top management (EVP) level. Divisional employees have simply become yes men, and if they disagree, or challenge corporate thinking, they are marginalized or publicly shamed into agreeing. The sole focus of the corporation has become short term stock performance. Top management has very little appetite for mistakes, even for long term employees. They state that employees are valued, but their actions speak differently. I've worked for a variety of managers, unfortunately, the best have left the corporation. Many of the top managers left have difficulty recognizing employees for their contributions, they only blame when mistakes are made. It pains me to see a once great company being misguided. Time will tell if this strategy will produce LONG TERM results.