Why Almost Anybody Can Be a CEO

[marmar]

from Too Much: A Commentary on Excess and Inequality:




Why Almost Anybody Can Be a CEO
August 22, 2010

The takeaway from the latest top gun flame-out at Hewlett-Packard: Chief executive ’success,’ in America today, essentially demands no more than greed and a developmentally arrested ego.

By Sam Pizzigati


The tall tales we’ve inherited from ages long gone we call myths. The tall tales that spook our contemporary everyday life we call “urban legends.” But we’ve yet to come up with a label for the tall tales that Corporate America showers down upon us.

These corporate tall tales, unlike urban legends, actually make a difference in our lives. Corporate tall tales don’t just drive the decisions that drive our economy. They drive these decisions in a reckless direction. And the most reckless of these drivers? That may be the tall tale of the “rare talent.”

We’ve heard this whopper quite a bit over recent decades. Running a major corporation, we’re told, takes enormous — and exceedingly rare — executive talent. To get this top talent, and keep it, firms have no choice but to pay top dollar and then some. If they don’t, they’ll never succeed in the fiercely competitive global marketplace, and we’ll all be doomed.

Five years ago, the corporate board at America’s premiere technology company, Hewlett-Packard, anointed Mark Hurd one of these rare talents and named him HP’s new CEO. Earlier this month, that same HP board shoved a disgraced Hurd out the door, the same door that Hurd’s rare and talented predecessor, Carly Fiorina, had been shoved out of early in 2005.

Out goes one “rare” talent, in goes another. This CEO revolving door has become Corporate America’s standard operating procedure. Major companies — high-tech giants like Yahoo, retailers like Home Depot, financial kingpins like Merrill Lynch — routinely shell out fortunes to sign wonderfully “special” talents they then proceed, a few years later, to ingloriously dump.

But none of these dumpings ever seem to dent the corporate demand for CEO superstar “talent.” Corporate boards simply dispatch their failed talents off into the sunset, with generous severance packages, and proudly announce their new corporate savior du jour — and that savior’s generous sign-on package. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://toomuchonline.org/why-almost-anybody-can-be-a-ceo/

[Demeter]

1. It Is a Rare Talent To Be a CEO

One must be willing to be totally amoral, to push criminality to the limits, to exploit ones workers and customers to the point of death or at least maiming, to spend good money keeping the doors open and the regulators far away, and then to cut ties and either move on or move the whole operation if one can squeeze a few more pennies out by doing so.

Don't worry about the community, the people, or the environment. Pay the government well so they ignore your psychopathy and don't enforce laws against you.

Yes, the incidence of sociopathy in the general population is low enough that good CEOs are very hard to find. Far too many end up in prison long before they hit the big time, unless they are protected in Ivy League universities and sheltered by trust funds...

The trouble is CEOs, being sociopaths to the bone, have a hard time pretending to be human law-abiding citizens outside of the business world. And that's where they trip up.

[Egalitariat]

2. It's that easy? I'll do it. How do I get the job?

[unblock]

5. ah, but that's the rare and special talent. convincing them you're worth that kind of money.

mostly it involves a lot of "i know someone with GOBS of money"

[T Wolf]

3. Old boys club for the morally bankrupt. All they have is each other, but it is enough.

[Loge23]

4. And they all leave with fabulous wealth

The severance packages are in the tens of millions, if not more - and that's for failing!!
Generational wealth for the few at the cost of every spec of social responsibility that U.S. corporations at least used to pretend to have.
Generational wealth - the kind that lasts, well, generations! The kind that sends little Johnny into a world of private schools, maids, and world tours before 16.
Generational wealth - the kind that assures the conquered here that he or she will never have to face the issues of their own employees, or perhaps even the goods and/or services that their company's provide.
Generational wealth - you know, Malibu, Southhampton, Fifth Avenue, Palm Beach - that kind.
...and that's for failing.

[Edweird]

6. Anybody can be CEO of a corporation they build. Not everybody can be CEO of, say, GE.

For that you have to come from the 'right' family, go to the 'right' schools and know the 'right' people with the 'right' connections. If you aren't a member of the lucky sperm club you are out of gas.

[dem mba]

7. demonstrably false

Jack Welch was born in Salem, Massachusetts to John, a Boston & Maine Railroad conductor, and Grace, a homemaker.

Welch attended Salem High School and later the University of Massachusetts Amherst, graduating in 1957 with a Bachelor of Science degree in chemical engineering. While at UMass he was a member of the Alpha chapter of the Phi Sigma Kappa fraternity.

Welch went on to receive his M.S. and Ph.D at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1960.
Welch joined General Electric in 1960. He worked as a junior engineer in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, at a salary of $10,500 annually. While at GE, he blew off the roof of the factory, and was almost fired for doing so.<2> Welch was displeased with the $1,000 raise he was offered after his first year, as well as the strict bureaucracy within GE. He planned to leave the company to work with International Minerals & Chemicals in Skokie, Illinois.

Reuben Gutoff, a young executive two levels higher than Welch, decided that the man was too valuable a resource for the company to lose. He took Welch and his first wife Carolyn out to dinner at the Yellow Aster in Pittsfield, and spent four hours trying to convince Welch to stay. Gutoff vowed to work to change the bureaucracy to create a small-company environment.

[Edweird]

10. Yeah, you kinda missed my point.

[AnArmyVeteran]

8. Here's another example of CEO incompetence & reward

When Harry Stoneciper left the Sundstrand Corporation to become the CEO of McDonnell Douglas the stock at Sundstrand rose by over $4 and the stock at McDonnell Douglas fell by over $4. It was obvious the investors at Sundstrand thought Stoneciper was a dud because their stock rebounded over $4 a share on the day he left. And the investors at McDonnell Douglas thought so little of Stoneciper that the stock fell by $4 a share. So the effect Stoneciper's had on the two companies was the equivalent to an $8 swing and a loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in company worth. But even though just his presence lost the company huge amounts of wealthy, he still received a huge raise in salary, bonuses and a lot of other perks. CEOs can't lose. It doesn't matter if they suck or if they do a good job, they still get huge pay raises & bonuses, because they are considered 'gods' among those infected by capitalism.

But that didn't stop all of the corporate insiders from giving Stoneciper a huge salary, bonuses, stock options and private planes. Stoneciper was a Reagan lover who often said "Reagan could read a phone book and make it memorable". We all know why thugs like Stoneciper love corporate whores like Reagan was. Conservatives love to give our country away to corporations while blathering words like 'freedom' and 'liberty'.

Eventually, Boeing and McDonnell Douglas merged and over a year after Stoneciper took the top job he had to leave because he had a improper sexual relationship with a female executive. Oh yeah, Stoneciper was married at the time but that didn't stop this republican, family values conservative screw around on his wife. And even though Stoneciper left in disgrace he still got to keep his huge pension and bonuses.

I've always said, a dart-throwing monkey could do as well, or better, than most CEOs. Monkeys would be a lot cheaper than overpaid thugs and they wouldn't be corrupt like most CEOs are. To get to that level within a large corporation you have to sell your soul many times, if you had one to start with. Advancing to the top positions in a corporation is like advancing in the Mafia. You have to prove yourself to be as evil and corrupt as those in the inner circle at the top. In the Mafia a person has to kill someone so the Mafia has something on them they can use, and therefore can trust them to join the inner upper circle. Corporations aren't much different. While they don't typically put out hits on people, they do collude with each other on contracts and business deals where they know their actions were unethical, immoral and illegal.

Welcome to America, a country with the greatest disparity in wealth between the rich and the poor in the world.


A few more things: Boeing had an incentive program where if an employee created a process or invention that saved the company millions or tens of millions, the employee only received a paper award and $500, that's it. It's not much of an incentive if a multibillion dollar company will only give the creator of a great idea a paltry $500. But they eagerly give their top executives millions even if they are incompetent.

I was bringing a lot of money into the company. When I asked every boss in my chain of command that if I grew the business to increase business by 100% could I get 10% of the increased business? Their answer was no, and they went onto say that even if I brought in that much extra business they couldn't even guarantee that I could keep my job, even though I was the only one in the company who could do what I did. So instead of working my ass off as I was before, my will to do better and increase business evaporated. But the company didn't care. If they had a stable of thoroughbreds they would put them in a pasture to plow fields. And if they had a stable of dense mules, they put them in executive positions to lead the company.

[PufPuf23]

9. I came out of a top 10 MBA program in the mid 80s

I was in my early 30s and had a highest honors BS and much Fed professional /research and technical experience in an atypical field for an MBA.

My Dad went to 8th grade and only left his home as an over-aged volunteer in WWII.

I went to the most historic financial consultants to a specific industry but was also offered a life time job taking over the position of a dying manager for interests of a famous American family; both out of the aether. I took the first and resigned in disgust 7 years later and after a short time being a too easily successful entrepreneur where did not like baby sitting became an academic and later regressed to hippie mode for family causes.

Then I am 1/4 an Illuminati family and impersonate an amphibian immortal on the internet.:hippie:

PS My first DU smilie.

PSS My MBA project was funded by Harvard venture capital in 8 figures but I bailed for the job with the consulting firm.

[LatteLibertine]

11. On another note

our C student ex President Dub-yah proved it's not what you know, it's who you know.