The Obamacare web site fiasco has proven to be a
gold mine for the late night comedians. The failure has been so massive
that even the left listing mainstream media has to acknowledge it. No
one should be surprised that socialists can’t manage projects well
because they have a notorious contempt for the profession of management.
I have heard managers tell good employees that they could give a monkey
two bananas and the monkey could do the employee’s job. That’s a lousy
manager. One of the manager’s most important jobs is to motivate
employees and the monkey with two bananas story only demoralizes them.
The
left think the same thing of managers and the profession of management,
so they never bother to study it or imitate good managers. Recall
President Obama’s contempt for management during the financial crisis
and ridicule of them for using corporate jets. Obama would never
consider taking a trip of any distance in any vehicle other than Air
Force One because his time is so valuable. But he considers the CEO’s
time to be worth so little that he can ridicule them for doing the same
thing he does.
The left loves to
trash CEO’s for the high salaries because they think CEO's don't earn them. People on the left have told me that
the CEO does nothing important; the people under him do all of the work
while the CEO gets the credit and the salary. What could be more unfair?
Most managers are bad managers.
That’s why 90% of all companies in any industry just barely survive.
Mainstream academic economics/finance/management say the 10% who
dominate their industries are just lucky. No skill is involved. No one
can anticipate the market; managers merely submit their business models
and the market randomly rewards a small number of them. They know this
because they can generate random output with a computer
that looks very much like the outcomes in real life.
Of
course, if what the left says about CEO’s and management is true, then
they are right. Nothing could be more unfair than CEO pay. But it’s not true. It’s
nothing but an extension of Marx’s nonsense that laborers produce all of
the value in any product they make and deserve all of the income from
sales. Management and the capital invested play no important role.
The
left needs to consider that CEO’s don’t set their own wages; the boards
of directors to that. Boards recruit top managers in the same way that
owners of NFL team recruit top coaches. And no one forces boards to pay the salaries they offer CEO's. If there is fault in CEO pay, it lies with the boards of directors. The left must think board members are pretty dumb and/or gullible.
There are a lot of similarities
between the roles of coaches and CEO’s. Few NFL fans would claim that
coaches contribute nothing to the value of a team. Clearly, the players
do all of the work on the field; referees will throw the coach off the
field and penalize the team if the coach tries to tackle the ball
carrier of an opposing team. So why do coaches make such enormous
salaries when the players do all of the work?
Coaches
get paid for their ability to see the big picture; for knowing what
makes good players at each position and recruiting them; for strategy;
for knowing the game better than other coaches; for making individuals
play as a team and for many other contributions.
CEO’s
get paid for the similar reasons. Top CEO’s make the big bucks because
they are as rare as top NFL talent and coaches. Their skills lie in
knowing how to make marketing, research and
development, engineering, manufacturing, finance, human resources and
other functions work together as a team toward a common goal.
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