Malevolent and Dysfunctional Family Business - Anonymous employee Aulysius Employee Review

An absolute tragedy of a work environment. These are the instances that are expected to be showcased in documentaries. During my time in this family business [the COO and CEO are in a relationship], I have noticed instances of verbal bullying, harassment, and fear-based tactics. To provide an informative review, I will talk about three aspects: the business, work culture, professionalism, and the growth strategy and outcome. *the business*: it's a consultancy business that partners up with leading technology service providers such as Monday.com. Their partners connect them with clients to support and provide them with professional services. It's simple, there is no novelty or "deep-tech" behind it. *culture*: It's a flat structure. The COO mostly oversees the employees and assigns them tasks. The verbal communication style of the COO is arrogant, abusive and unprofessional. We have heard the COO yelling at employees several times. The COO also employs fear-based tactics to get employees to work harder, and pushes them to work in the weekend for free. By having such a figure in the workplace, the manager who's toxic, some employees have caved in and sucked it in. This is the shadow brute for which no one wishes to be in its presence; employees literally run to avoid the hostile shadow brute. Many have faced repercussions of being under such a manager, and it is suffocating. *professionalism*: The managers often attempt at projecting a professional figure in every meeting, but it is very clear to everyone that it is a facade. As a result of the many verbal assaults, the many lies, the lack of leadership skills, almost everyone recognises the dichotomy between what they project, what they say, and what they do, what occurs. *strategy and outcome*: The business goal was to double revenue and the team size within a year. Within a few months, the team have been halved with resignations flying all over the place. To increase the revenue, the COO simply spoke with each employee and assigned them a sales target, whether they worked as customer success managers, account executives, or part of the professional services team. The targets given were outrageous, with some members having a sales target of 200,000+ British pounds per year. There was no strategy or plan on how to achieve such targets, the COO's actions projected the following reasoning: - Divide the desired annual revenue needed for the whole company with the number of employees. - Assign a sales target to each employee, even if they did not work in sales. - Apply fear-based tactics to get employees to work overtime and in the weekend for free. The statements to fire someone if they did not reach their targets were flying all over the place. Essentially, perhaps her understanding was: "If I make everyone work on everything, all the time, I am making maximum use of my human resources". It is clear that there was no business strategy to drive growth, just absolute madness. Their strategy was to demoralise the team, lie to clients and partners, and blame everyone but themselves when they fail. Oh the tales of unspoken stories. Leave the shadow brute alone, it will devour itself when no one is left around.