I think what's interesting here is that you must have had access to the raw financials (eg. sales numbers, P&L by department). These are very tightly controlled at all companies I've worked at, making it hard to know if a particular product is important to the bottom line or not.
This is also a great point. Teams should have detailed knowledge of the performance of the company or groups. It helps with the shared ownership, pride and responsibilities.
Yeah, I'm in a company that has transitioned to an ESOP. Management haven't figured out that financials have to be open, yet.
They are begging people to engage but I have no idea what projects are paying the bills, which ones are drags, and various other missing information.
If you keep all that a secret people have no choice but to tune out and just expect management to handle everything.
I don't think the current CEO wants anyone else loudly expressing concerns over the future of the busieness as we are trying to shift away from contracting to SaaS. This is an 80yr old company, mind you.
Now we are trying to grow and bring in employees (for a contract), promising them stock and supposedly stable employment but in the end most of the dozens of employees who are brought in will be let go before they vest. The long term base employees (there is a cache of 20+ yr employees) will have their stock price increase after these people (they will let go) put in years of work to deliver on record-breaking contracts. None of this is the stated intention but it's going to go down like this. About that time the CEO will retire and cash out.
