Is Executive Hubris Ruining Companies?

Crash McBang wonders: "In a recent IndustryWeek article, Mathew Hayward, assistant professor at the University of Colorado, does a Q&A on his new book, "Ego Check: Why Executive Hubris Is Wrecking Companies And Careers And How To Avoid The Trap", which shows how executives' inflated egos can impact what they choose to produce, the manufacturing decisions they make and how they market their products. What failures (colossal or otherwise) have you been involved in that could be attributed to Executive Hubris?"

Comments

Sounds like the author...

[CRCulver]

...Needs a chair in the face. Accusing such responsible and level-headed executives as Mr Steve Ballmer of "hubris"? As if.

Re:Sounds like the author...

[bigstrat2003]

I concur. I mean, taking a cue from Mr. Ballmer, I run into work every day yelling, "I LOVE THIS COMPANY!!"

Re:I was sabotaged by a sr exec last year.

[Bin_jammin]

You worked for Dodge? Which one of the catastrocars did you work on?

Re:Possibly?

[Travoltus]

More liberal communist tripe by yet another confiscationalist author from Rio Linda California.

Don't you people realize that it's unions, not corporate execs, who bring companies down? Look at what the electricians' union did to Enron!

[right wing parody off]

Meatspace, or infospace?

[macadamia_harold]

Ego Check: Why Executive Hubris Is Wrecking Companies And Careers And How To Avoid The Trap", which shows how executives' inflated egos can impact what they choose to produce, the manufacturing decisions they make and how they market their products.

Nah, the problem is that these executives are running companies whose business models are predicated entirely on producing, manufacturing, or selling actual products. Clearly, they just need to be running different types of companies. Like the ones that were around during the dotcom boom of the late 90s.

Re:Meatspace, or infospace?

[ConceptJunkie]

Everything else is just a cost so you're best getting rid of that pointless, expensive R&D.

Except HP is doing massive R&D... those printer cartridges don't become unrefillable and prematurely unusable on their own.

Re:Back in 2000

[DuctTape]

Whoa, you've described about every company that went bust back then. Except my company. The CEO was deathly afraid to release product, thinking he'd have one chance and one chance only, so he kept putting it off, still grubbing for more money (and diluting our shares). I think they still haven't released.

DT

Re:Back in 2000

[udderly]

Some years back, I worked in a department of a Fortune 100 company that produced weekly sales circulars. Even though the average level of experience in the dept was well over 10 years, our egomaniacal and clueless boss insisted on having twice daily production meetings where she would circle "glaring errors" with a red marker.

The funny thing is that at the end of the week the circular was exactly where it had started and she didn't even know it.

• Monday: "Replace picture A001 with A002."
• Tuesday: "The picture doesn't 'pop,' bump up the red on picture A002."
• Wednesday: "Why does picture A002 look so red to me? Fix it."
• Thursday: "Who used picture A002, replace it with A001"
• Friday: "Another excellent job, team! Send it to the printers."
  

After awhile, we just started keeping two working copies of the circular and only did meaningful changes on the original.