Pros
Has a great heritage, many top notch clients, interesting projects, a good holiday allowance, and many talented and lovely people. It could be a great and fulfilling place to work.
Cons
Unfortunately, it’s run as a personal fiefdom and slowly but relentlessly being driven into the ground. Working there can be an esteem destroying experience. Daily life is shaped by petty bureaucracy, tokenistic time wasting initiatives, interspersed by some random acts of nastiness. For an agency that talks so much about culture, it’s sad that its own is so toxic. Progress and reward are often uncoupled from merit. Favourites are lavished with attention from the CEO and promoted rapidly beyond capabilities. Don’t expect hard work or talent to get you ahead. Do bank on sycophantic loyalty. But not too much. Routine purges and spectacular fallings from grace are the norm. Everything is in a constant state of flux. The entire business has been forced through unending rounds of tokenistic action with depressing regularity. Layers of process are dressed up as strategy, with no substance beyond the superficial semblance of industriousness. Even the revolving door of senior staff has become an accepted norm. All of this comes down to the leadership style of the CEO, a mix of paranoia and delusion in equal measure. For a while there were yearly celebrations of her elevation to CEO-ship (once marked by cupcakes featuring her face), forced company-wide Fireside Chats with SLT members ‘spontaneously’ standing up and offering fawning praise. Very little was put down in writing lest the SLT be held accountable. Even mundane policies were rarely shared, resulting in farcical situations such as employees frantically screenshooting slides during company meetings to keep track of the latest process they were meant to be following. All of which is a shame. Flamingo could be a great place to work. But at the moment it isn’t.