Classic Marketing Agency in ALL the Worst Ways - Director of Sales Directive Employee Review

This culture is toxic. The CEO consistently undermines his department leaders, publicly and in private, and often ridicules team members, clients, and especially former colleagues behind their backs (no class). The onboarding training was entirely focused on the ability of a new hire to audit ad accounts, with maybe 5% max focused on the rest of the job to be done, which sets you up for failure. When it came time to execute the process, there was little to no documentation, and little to no support. The job is 60% trial by fire, 30% pressure from the CEO, and 10% judgement from others as you try to adapt to unwritten rules and/or learn undocumented process. The CEO will also join, and completely take over sales calls, and his success (ego) is often the central component of these calls. I witnessed numerous formerly interested marketing leaders roll their eyes and lose interest such that talk of next steps was answered with "none, we're not moving forward with Directive." 75% of the senior leadership turned over in my time there, with entire departments being created and disbanded in short order. People are routinely fired and there is no centralized process for communicating these changes to the team such that people are literally asking each other where people went and what happened. Pretending the ex-colleague didn't exist is the go-to move at Directive, except when the CEO is trashing them. In terms of the quality of their work there are strong individual contributors and there is some sound theory behind Directive's strategy, but they are clearly more intent on executing a proprietary strategy in-line with their own branding and marketing (e.g. Customer Generation, use of gift cards) than in learning about the clients' target audience(s) or creating customized marketing programs that match the context.