CEO Compensation, response to question

Are the CEO’s to blame for failure of corporate giants? From a shareholder's perspective, I think I would be willing to lower CEO pay. Do you think if CEO's were paid less, then the quality of management would decline?

There is no way that CEO's cannot be held responsible for corporate failures, they are at the helm of the ship correct? Therefore the success of that ships' voyage lays heavily on their shoulders, and pleading ignorance is well... ignorant because a responsible leader should be aware of the actions taken by their subordinates on behalf of the organization. I am not sure if the actual gross salary amount can be stated as the problem, I think it is the difference between the salary for the lowest paid employee and the CEO. If you look at the gap between the two and how it has increased exponentially relative to a corporations' profits over the last century, I considered this is a glaring statistic. Also, there seems to be a sense of entitlement to a CEO, as if one who achieves such a title is owed a certain amount of money regardless of performance success, which just seems contrary to good business. Is there possibly a sense that there is nothing left to accomplish once you achieve that CEO chair? So one just shuts all that ambition off? You hear about all these CEO's who come on board with a corporation, get huge signing bonuses or guarantees, then spend two or three years sinking earnings, they bow out gracefully usually, and move to another company and repeat their actions. Only example I can think of is the woman who took over HP, a highly touted choice for CEO, a "ball buster" etc., that was paid large sums of money to run a company for maybe five years with no success. As a shareholder I would be willing to pay those high salaries if the individual were worth it, and the compensation was somehow performance based. If CEO's were paid less it would not necessarily guarantee better success rates for corporations, and I think lower pay would lead to lower management quality. However, if compensation were structured more like Steve Jobs' (his salary is one dollar, but he gets a percentage of annual profits or of stock value increases) forcing a CEO to take ownership of his performance we may see higher success rates in corporate giants. The huge crux of it all is the ethics of the CEO and the individuals within the corporation. The "win never lose" mentality of most business people leads to poor ethical choices and everyone employees, executives, and investors, all lose in the end. The real key is choosing an individual for the CEO position that is truly committed to the success of the organization and it's mission statement.

My Personality Analysis

This is the second time I have taken the MBTI personality assessment in three months and I was interested to observe whether or not I would score the same as I did in June. The results were nearly identical as my final type was again ENTP (Extravert, Intuitive, Thinking, and Perceiving), the only difference being that I was not as strongly extraverted as determined in my previous analyses. As stated after taking this assessment previously, I feel that this is a reasonable picture of my personality from a distance, and can be used to begin building a more complete profile of my personality and can be used to attempt to predict my success in differing work environments. However, one key aspect of my personality type, proven valid through my life choices, is that I am unpredictable therefore anyone taking this assessment at face value and using to predict my actions will most likely meet with numerous wrong conclusions. Further, I have actually been known to take an alternative course of action solely because it is not what is expected.
When examining an ENTP in a work situation, one finds that the unpredictability of our nature less important in the overall picture of our strengths and weaknesses. I found in this assessment my strongest preferences were in the Thinking and Intuitive quadrants, and found the most similarities in my personality to the stated effects of such preferences in both of these categories. As a Thinker I have talent for analyzing problems or situations and excel at anticipating and predicting logical outcomes of choices. This aspect of my personality has most likely resulted in my comfort approaching situations using a very scientific method, meaning that I put things in logical order examining the consequences of my actions analytically and impersonally. Being so strongly this type I can sometimes be thought of as insensitive especially in work situations as occasionally I view emotion as a weakness in the business world. This is a very helpful thing to know about oneself, as a manager in the future I will need to remember to be careful not to scoff at the feelings of my colleagues as those feelings may be a strong motivating factor to them. This assessment revealed that I have strong intuitive preferences as well the effects of which make me always aware of new challenges and possibilities, perhaps my greatest pleasure in life is learning a new skill or working to overcome a difficult challenge.
These two temperaments are the strongest determinates in a working personality, the combination of which has been dubbed “Rational Visionary”, which describes me very well, though not completely. Two counterpoints not included in this classification include creativity and patience, two of my personality traits that I consider great innate strengths of mine, which I have relied on to overtake the rash weaknesses that an ENTP can sometimes display. A “Rational Visionary” is considered most effective at work “as architects of change”, whose strengths include conceptualizing, seeing new possibilities, and grasping underlying principles. This is quite accurate in describing me at work, and as I am searching for my dream career at the moment, these are things that I can consider when examining the responsibilities of various positions as they become available to me. I feel that being a “Rational Visionary” will allow me to be successful in the positions I dream myself to one day occupy, such as the General Manager of the LA Angels, or the CEO of K2 Skis, because I can use my intuitions and analytical strengths to lead the industry that each of these organizations occupy, and utilize my desire to be challenged in industries that are so extremely competitive where a personality without that love for a challenge would struggle.

Responding to "Teaching Smart People How to Learn, by Chris Argyris"

The biggest obstacle to learning and improving performance for highly trained intelligent business people is the same one almost everyone faces when presented with difficulties in their lives. Whenever anyone is forced to examine their own failings we default to "defensive reasoning", blaming our failures and imperfections on the behavior of other parties involved instead of examining the one thing we can actually control, our own behavior. Argyris states that the defensive reasoning instinct of highly trained professionals, successful people in general, is rarely activated because these individuals have experienced nothing but success and therefore cannot respond effectively to failure. I would like to add further that intelligent successful individuals are rarely challenged in their assertions because of their glowing track record, their opinions are taken for granted as being correct and uncontestable, contributing to inefficient learning cycles in personnel circles where personal improvement is badly needed. For example, if an executive whose strategies have always been implemented smoothly and have proved lucrative proposes a new course of action that for the first time encounters failure and setback, who would have the courage to challenge the new directive? Most likely no one, and especially not a subordinate, or colleague. Therefore the company, instead of collecting feedback and making necessary changes in order to ensure the success of the directive, will continue to attempt to implement the imperfect strategy to the directive’s ultimate failure and the only response of the executive will be a defensive one and he will most likely blame all the others for “not giving me feedback” or “ineffectively implementing strategy because you are not as smart as I am.” Subordinates of the executive will then believe that they cannot do anything correctly in the eyes of their boss, and the structure of a formerly effective organization will digress and suffer.
Argyris states further that smart people “have not had to be concerned about failure and the attendant feelings of shame and guilt” because of their great successes in the past. This is off base because, in my opinion, it is this exact fear of failure that drives intelligent individuals. I believe that most smart people are driven totally by deep fear of failure brought on by the high expectations that they have experienced from parents, teachers, coaches, bosses, colleagues, subordinates and even society, throughout their lives. This fear of failure leads to feelings of guilt, at “letting down” your loved ones or colleagues, following events where the individual does not meet with success. When examining the lives of very successful people one often discovers that individual has had an experience that forced them to deal with their own fears of failure and how that affects their behavior and performance. For example Misty May-Treanor (two-time Olympic Gold medalist in Beach Volleyball), has spoken of her own attitude toward losing and how it changed after her mother’s death. Prior to her mother’s illness May would react counter-productively to losses or even minor mistakes, on the volleyball court, as she had a fear of disappointing her teammate, coach, and mother making small issues very large as her feelings of guilt would take over and detrimentally effect her subsequent performance. Through her mother’s illness, and death, May-Treanor realized that sometimes she was helpless to prevent or create certain situations and she was able to carry this learning experience from her personal life over to her volleyball career. She realized that one cannot control when an opponents serve renders you defenseless because it hits the net and drops into the sand, one can only be ready for the next point. Champions such as May-Treanor would not default to blaming the net for being too high, or the rule book for allowing a team to score a point on such an injustice, they just tell themselves to get past that event because they need to be ready for the next serve and dwelling in that “defensive reasoning” will make them unsuccessful in their next endeavor. Therefore one must not fear failure but welcome it, at least occasionally, because a person will learn more from failure and hardship than from continued success.
The main point Argyris is attempting to make throughout his examination is that to make change, or examine failure, one must first look at themselves and the behaviors they enacted which contributed to the failure knowingly or unknowingly. The first step to greater future success is always to look into a mirror identify internal factors that led to ineffective behavior and improve one self, then one can begin look out the window to help others improve so that the organizations’ next endeavor is a successful one.