The company made more decisions based off of intuition than off of analytics. I feel this is changing with the new CEO, Steinhafel, but it still surprised me how often sound suggestions would be completely rejected because of a manager´s feelings. I would regularly receive feedback that I couldn´t use basic statistics in explaining my rationale for a business idea.
The company has a warped perspective of diversity. Managers are incentivized to retain and to build diverse teams. However, when I pressed for HR´s definition of diverse, they said that it was purely skin deep. To be diverse, you have to be non-white.
Prior to recession, the company spent money like it was going out of style. The recession was probably a good thing because it created a reality check for upper management.