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

Obvious Sony Dig

[BinaryOpty]

Let me be the first to nominate Sony's execs (namely games devision but not limited to) for executive hubris running their company into the ground.

Re:Obvious Sony Dig

[HappySqurriel]

Have you ever worked at Sony? I have. And I call BullCrap on what you say. Sony may have a lot of problems, and a lot of those may be associated with pride. But thats The Japanese Way pride, not hubris. Sony needs to be fixed. Nepotism, favorism (for example japanese products are favored over all else when it comes to buying machine or parts) and the underestimation of the 'Average User' has to be ripped out of Sony Culture. They have many problems but hubris is NOT one of them.

I get the feeling that you don't really understand what hubris is. Hubris is excessive pride (or arogance), what typically determines that your pride is "excessive" is that your pride is causing you problems.

That's not what's ruining companies

[Kris_J]

What's ruining companies is upper management's pathological inability to make a fucking decision.

Is Programmers' Hubris Ruining Companies?

[rice_web]

"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 Programmers' Hubris Is Wrecking Companies And Careers And How To Avoid The Trap", which shows how programmers' inflated egos can impact what they decide to produce, when they will produce it, and in what language and with what buzzword they will create it in. What failures (colossal or otherwise) have you been involved in that could be attributed to Programmers' Hubris?"

Re:Is Programmers' Hubris Ruining Companies?

[khallow]

I suppose the exercise is insightful, but programmer hubris is curable. You can always fire them or (in less enlightened parts of the world) just take away their computer. Executives have more power, can do more damage, have access to far more of the business's resources, and are more often not monitored or audited properly.

Authority != Experience

[svunt]

My own experiences with hubris in management mostly consists of newcomers in high positions thinking that some management experience meant that they knew every industry better than those non-executives with 30 years experience. Being able to spell KPI does not an expert make! Humble (and goo) managers spend their first few months (at least) learning about the industry & company they're in. The rest come in and start hiring, firing, spending, slashing, basically making a lot of 'impact' without the first clue about the consequences. This is called "being pro-active"

Re:GEC/Marconi

[jimicus]

Unless you're an old boy yourself. If memory serves, the folk running the business were paying themselves a small fortune and amassing nice big pension funds.

Re:Private Sector has the Military beat cold on th

[R2.0]

I concur. I work with a gentleman who was a Colonel in the Special Forces when he retired, and took a position in logistics at a Very Large Non-Profit Organization. He has never really been able to adjust to the fact that there is really no "chain of command" such as he is used to; no one will make a decision, people shown on the TO as under his authority don't report to him, and no one has any compunction about bypassing anyone else and going over their heads. He desperately WANTS his superiors to give him a tangible set of directives and responsibilities, but they won't, as this would make it harder to scapegoat him if his project fails. But they've already announced that they will show up and "cut the ribbon" on opening day, at which point he'll be out of a job.