Over more than 5 years at Frontiers, what became apparent was the lack of long-term planning, strategic thinking, and fluid communication that a company like Frontiers should have. This has become more acute in the past year/year-and-a-half, where it seems that our “Leadership Team” seems pretty ignorant and incapable to deal with a crisis situation.
A few of the main points to be massively improved upon are:
- Lack of strategy: no strategic planning is done over a 3-4 year period, as EVERY company (including, of course, publishers) are doing. This leads to a situation where no clear overall plan of action, at company level, at departmental level, and then more granularly below, is set out. It is quite dramatic to notice that Journal Managers plan more strategically for their journals than the leadership of Frontiers. Being adaptable is excellent, however changing priorities every 2 months, on average, is not a way to lead a company to success;
- Poor communication to the whole company: for instance, the recent departmental reorganization was poorly presented, creating distress amongst the teams with each email sent by the Publishing Director. The lack of clarity in communication appears to the teams either as sheer incompetence, at best, or complete malevolence, at worst. (this is based on feedback received from a 100+ people team I managed) Overall, it completely removes any credibility from higher management, as they appear clueless;
- Lack of feedback and reflection: while the overall communication pretends that leadership is open to discussion, nothing could be further from the truth. In open discussions/meetings, constructive feedback is mostly ignored and management tends to ask for "positive feedback". Furthermore, higher management, and the CEO herself, seem ignorant of issues that have been fed back for months, showing that, along the way from Head of Programs to the CEO, feedback and issues were not passed forwards. This leads to the following point:
- Cronyism, appointment of enablers, “upward failure” (As is known in the business): it is sad to see that politics have become a massive issue at Frontiers, and that people who have shown to be incapable in their positions have been promoted time and time again (for instance, those who supported massive changes or failing plans being promoted higher, constantly evading consequences - another earlier review on Glassdoor highlighted this point clearly). Furthermore, the level of the D- and C-suite is debatable: the past 6 months have shown the inability of the latter to not only communicate change properly, but also fail to deliver a complete, well thought-through, and clear plan for the company. Regarding enablers, refusing to feedback to a higher position problems is obvious, and is also directly the problem of our higher ups - leading to problems piling up and leading to crisis situations as is obvious now;
- Complete lack of accountability: after more than 6 years in the company, it has become apparent that our leaders are happy to make decisions but not take responsibility for any of it, and hide behind specialists, journal and portfolio managers. For instance, APC changes are decided at a higher level, ignoring any community push-back or market misalignment, and leave the teams to deal with a decision that is detrimental to the journal AND leave their teams unable to explain the decision. Central communication made centrally (e.g. recent external communication from the Chief Executive Editor) is sent without any regard from initial feedback from the teams who know how the communities will respond, and leave the Journal Managers and Specialists to clean up the mess. This shows a complete lack of consideration for not only the Frontiers Teams, but also for the external stakeholders of the company;
- Focus on micromanagement: while not being able to present a long-term strategic plan, higher management is indulging into deep levels of micromanagement. One could wonder about the value added by D- and C-suites to look at the nitty gritty details of journals, reaching out directly to Journal Managers & Specialists (despite there having about 2-3 ladders of hierarchy in-between). This creates an atmosphere of distrust, leaving also middle managers (Portfolio Managers) in a situation where they may wonder what use their job is;
- Lack of actual managerial skills, in particular with regards to the Publishing industry. All decisions are made as if Frontiers and its journals were evolving in complete autarchy. The external ecosystem is often ignored, or minimized, at higher level. Some excellent Heads of Programme, in the past, were able to bring visibility to their teams and adapt the work of their teams, but they have unfortunately left. One could add poor budgeting to the table, and inconsequential spending: budgets come late (usually in February March of the running year), are not revised (e.g. on a quarterly basis or other), and investment seems misused (e.g. lavish parties, booking week-long seminars in 5-star hotels...). The cuts do not appear where they should - an example is that 2023 saw a hiring freeze, except for the "Leadership team" (C-level) which have doubled over the past year (also, is there a need to have 3 CFOs in the organigram?). Finally, from the teams' perspective, the current behaviour of all D- and C-suites is that of massive panic, when what the company needs is strategy, direction, and calm. As mentioned above, any serious company would have its targets for Year+1 ready in late Q3 early Q4 in current year, those were always communicated at best in late December, at worst in early January Y+1 – not mentioning journal budgets being delivered, on average, in February of year Y+1.
Overall, having stayed for a long time at Frontiers, it is quite sad to see how things have evolved. We have excellent teams, dedicated, competent, clever staff who are being look down upon. Writing this review is all the harder as I truly care about Open Access, our excellent teams, and Frontiers' mission, which I believe could TRULY bring some good in the world of publishing, and for science dissemination.
