But Maybe Not! The main functional reason for such a CEO is that it simplifies and enables crisp decisions. But it makes no sense to expect the CEO, or any other single person, to figure out the alternatives and their implications, and also to pick the "best" one. A CEO is a tie-breaker, a discussion-shortener and a consistency-ensurer. She is a referee. Must she also have all the ideas; certainly not. Does she need to know everything that's going on in her company; in fact, can she? Of course not. Is she automatically the best judge of company direction? Not at all.
How else can we run organizations? There are other alternatives. Many well-known and highly esteemed orchestras and ensembles have run successfully without a conductor. Corporations, after losing their CEO's, have often gone for long periods under a "caretaker" CEO, with no apparent damage. Moreover, if a famous CEO goes from great success at one company to failure at another, such as Bob Nardelli did in his transfer from GE to Home Depot, what are we to conclude? (Of course, once a CEO, always a CEO; Nardelli went on to take over Chrysler, whose epitaph is being written right now.)
There are also fairly large and very successful companies run with few executives at all. Semco, a rural Brazilian manufacturer of industrial components, has run with a nominal but almost completely inactive CEO, Ricardo Semler (who wrote about his company in "Maverick".) And Procter & Gamble has for decades run large and complex factories as stand-alone enterprises, sometimes without any identified managers at all. And, of course, the opposite is also true. Many old-fashioned CEO's have destroyed the companies they ran, and that includes not only the current financial firms, but many earlier ones. ("Chainsaw Al" Dunlap, for example, destroyed Scott Paper.)
The bottom line is simple. There are lots of ways to organize effectively. It may make sense to have a CEO, but her authority, her tenure, her background, her education and her age can all vary greatly. And her compensation should in those circumstances be equal to or only modestly above her usual peers.
It's time to end the cult of the famous CEO.
The general public need to know what is actually going on "out there" in the monetary system - most people seem to have no idea, and I would expect that you would feel a sense of responsibility to educate the public about the true foundational causes of this "global financial crisis."
ReplyDeleteI wish to direct your attention to some very important information, which covers the true root causes of our socio-economic problems while offering a sane solution. What needs to be recognised is that equal rights mean absolutely nothing unless there is equal access to all things at all times to all people - anything less is deprivation, this is easy to understand.
Please take time, when you can, to read this Orientation Guide (http://www.thezeitgeistmovement.com/The%20Zeitgeist%20Movement.pdf) or alternatively view it in Video Format (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3932487043163636261).
They are both from a global social organisation called "The Zeitgeist Movement" which currently has over 250,000 members, and will have surpassed (according to our current growth rate) 1 million by 2010. On March 15th we held over 450 events, and this was the official beginning day for our movement, many of these events were hosted in Australia. The main event was in NYC, if you'd like to know about that event please see the New York Times review: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/17/nyregion/17zeitgeist.html
For additional information, please visit our website (http://thezeitgeistmovement.com) and view the viral internet documentary "Zeitgeist: Addendum" which covers these issues further, but in a more aesthetically pleasing style than the other video presentation. It is this documentary which has had millions of views and is responsible for educating growing numbers of people about these issues.
We look forward to having you join us.