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Ask Slashdot: Would You Fire Your CEO? (cio.com)
As America celebrates a national holiday honoring organized labor, long-time Slashdot reader itwbennett shares this story about the modern workplace:
Three years ago, talent management and human resources company Haufe U.S. created a workplace democracy in which C-level leadership is elected by the employees for a one-year term. In an interview with CIO, Kelly Max, who is currently serving as Haufe's CEO, explains how the company got to this point and what they've learned from the experience.
"If you're going to talk about how your employees 'own' the company, if you're going to tout how they all have a voice, why not go all the way and see what happens? Because why not? You already have people working for and with you who elect you every day, who either agree or disagree with you and follow you, so we wanted to make it very transparent," says Max.
This raises an inevitable question for Slashdot readers: would your own organization work as a democracy? So leave your answers here in the comments. Would your company's employees fire your CEO?
"If you're going to talk about how your employees 'own' the company, if you're going to tout how they all have a voice, why not go all the way and see what happens? Because why not? You already have people working for and with you who elect you every day, who either agree or disagree with you and follow you, so we wanted to make it very transparent," says Max.
This raises an inevitable question for Slashdot readers: would your own organization work as a democracy? So leave your answers here in the comments. Would your company's employees fire your CEO?
They wouldn't give me an excessive golden handshake and parachute!
...next question?
I was immensely pleased to see the phrase "raises an inevitable question" in the summary, instead of yet another instance of "begs the question." Thank you, Slashdot. -PCP
One man one vote, all hail me!
Does this story have too much Bennett Hasselton, the mastermind behind the algorithm to end the lines for ice at the Burning Man festival?
Cisco, nuff said
Various startups, none of them are here any more, some of them were outright scams. I wouldn't just fire the CEO, I'd impeach him
Tivoli was in the process of being ruined by IBM
A bunch of people taking the industry in directions it doesn't want to go and willing to shit on workers to do it... fire the lot
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It will be out of a cannon and the parachute he gets isn't golden but mead of lead.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If you have an issue with your partner. It is her/his fault.
If you have a problem with your partner the second time, it is the fault of the both of you.
If you have a problem with your partner the third time, it is your fault.
So if ALL your CEOs are an issue, perhaps the issue is you.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
I am not pleased with our CEO. We all aren't. It's a way of life.
I'd settle for one that understands business strategy well and who knows how to keep the company profitable in the mid and in the long term. But those are few and far between.
The employee's choice will inevitably be the most popular one. Which most of the time isn't one bit better than the status quo.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
on my 2nd CEO this year.
Can we all vote to fire HP's CEO's. Retrospectively.
I doubt my CEO would notice if you fired him!
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
Arthur: Please, *please*, good people, I am in haste! WHO is your CEO?
Woman: No one is.
Arthur: Then who is your board?
Woman: We don't have a board!
Arthur: (suprised) What??
Man: I *told* you! We're an anarcho-syndicalist commune! We're taking
turns to act as a sort of executive-officer-for-the-week--
Arthur: (uninterested) Yes...
Man: But all the decisions *of* that officer 'ave to be ratified at a
special bi-weekly meeting--
Arthur: (perturbed) Yes I see!
Man: By a simple majority, in the case of purely internal affairs--
Arthur: (mad) Be quiet!
Man: But by a two-thirds majority, in the case of more major--
Arthur: (very angry) BE QUIET! I *order* you to be quiet!
Woman: "Order", eh, 'oo does 'e think 'e is?
Arthur: I am your king!
Woman: Well I didn't vote for you!
There is one element of socialism in here. Not all elements, though, so you Americans can start breathing again.
I'm actually all for the democratic control of companies. If nothing else, stupid voters/employees might end up learning that voting for incompetent or corrupt leaders will actually make you end up without a place to work.
Lemon curry???
The best form of leadership is a Benign/Benovolent dictatorship, this means they are reasonably popular but can get things done and can make the unpopular decisions when needed
The reasons this works for a company, are the same ones that work for a country... ... but if a company stops being profitable they go bust and disappear, whereas when a country does the equivilent you just get a classical dictator
Democracy is a terrible system of government, but it is the least bad system in the long term ....
Puteulanus fenestra mortis
Would you fire your cow orker? Would you fire the coffee lady or the person sitting at the reception?
To me it depends. Are they doing their job? If so, then no. If they don't, then yes. Not really that hard. What often is the problem is twofold. ..." or "increase the market value of the shares".
1) The amount they get (including bonuses) is not realistic compared to the work they do compared to others. Should they earn more? Sure. Should they earn 200 times more? No.
2) It is often unclear of what his job is. Most of the time it is pretty simple, make as much money for the company as possible. Sometimes it is something else, like "increase the market position to
And that might be something that is not correctly interpreted. Is it possible to achieve these goals and are they realistic or is he achieving them, then no, he should not be fired. What might need to be done is to change the goals.
And there lies the issue. Are the goals something we can agree with or are those the issue? Perhaps we do not want to increase the market value of the company for a buyout. We want to keep as much people employed as possible. Or we want to give better service to customers instead of lowering prices to increase the market share.
And if we are able to change the goals, is he still the best choice for these or not? If not, fire him. If so, all the better.
Just look at him as any employee and treat him the same. I get fired if I don't do my job and so should he, but first ask what that job actually is.
I can be the world best perl programmer and am hired to write perl, but if the rest works with c# what I do is meaningless and a waste of money.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
C-level leadership is elected by the employees for a one-year term.
So how to "ordinary" employees (even ones from a recruitment company) know what qualities to look for in a C-level? Do they understand the legal obligations that C-levelship brings. Do they know what is possible or within scope for a particular "C"?
Or do they simply engage in a beauty contest and vote for people they like, or who make the biggest promises: "vote for me as your CEO and I'll give everyone a pay rise and annual bonus"
It all sounds lovely and group-huggy. But does it actually make the company more successful or a better place to work?
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Do you have any evidence for all that, or does it just look cool on a poster or t-shirt?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Why would any company want C leadership these days, when C Programming Language's Tiobe Rating [has] Drop[ped] To Lowest Level in decades? Surely some Python or even a modern Perl leadership would be far superior.
then I'd eat her up I would I tells ya.
...because employees don't all see all aspects of the company to make educated "votes"
Can your team vote out the slow guy on your team of 10? If not, why not? Same thing. Though in this case at least you have all the info.
Trump > Palin .. but not by much.
He's the GREATEST guy in the whole world. He's smart, witty, intelligent, great with customers, doesn't make very much money, always gives out vacations, always takes the blame, never changes things without reason, doesn't have a golden parachute, and actually gets his hands dirty. If I were female, I'd totally fuck him. My CEO is awesome!
Did I mention he's the only employee in the company?
Traditional corporations have a board (which is elected by shareholders, at least nominally) and then executive officers who are actually supposed to run the company. I don't know anything about business organization theory, but I'm guessing that in some pure sense corporations are already technically structured around the idea of some kind of democratic management.
I think the problem is that in so many corporations, the board is relatively weak and not very involved in much oversight. They also tend to have at least one executive officer on the board, which IMHO corrupts the oversight role of the board. There's also the question of board member elections -- are they a real thing, or is their election some kind of structured rubber stamp where they get elected by default? The end result is they are marionettes controlled by the executive officers, barring some big-name investor buying a significant percentage of the stock and demanding seats on the board.
I think a more democratic management of corporations would be possible, but I think it would take a careful structuring. You would still need some level of technical leadership, people who can intelligently manage the business of the company where technical information makes sense -- finance, taxation, HR, and these people should probably be hired the usual way.
But instead of these people making all of the decisions, I think there's probably room for an elected, board-like entity that they report to that could be elected by the entire workforce who could set some kind of affirmative company policies, directions, and so on, as well as review and overrule senior management decisions. Some kind of hybrid between what a board is supposed to be doing now, but with more involvement in day-day operations. It would also be critical that this oversight board be elected *from* the rank and file *by* the rank and file, with membership apportioned among the business units. Senior management would be exempt from membership or voting and with risk of termination for any interference with board elections or decisions.
I don't know what it would do for the company's business success, but it would probably result in a company that's better to work for, with saner executive pay and saner general management policies.
The US is about to choose between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump to run the most influential country on the planet. At this point a dictator CEO is looking pretty good.
You don't have a very high standard for t-shirts do you? :)
Yes. Every Corporation has a board, as a matter of state law pretty much everywhere. The board has a legal obligation to use reasonable business judgment, which gives them a lot of leeway. (Basically because the courts don't want to be involved in running a corporation).
Real lawyers write in C++
My CEO is Meg Whitman, so of course I'd fire her. I'd then fire the every incompetent member of the HPE board. I'd also claw back any pay they've received for the year and give it to the thousands of US IT workers that have been laid off due to their negligence.
But I'd definitely fire my CIO.
There's no way around it - be it by luck, opportunism, IQ, bank account, family, networking, entrepreneurship, share ownership, influence or the most relevant of all: charisma - leadership these days is acquired through different forms of merit, never democratically. A suffrage for C-level anything is just gonna place more emphases on the least "true-merit" traits of them all.
This is mostly what happens nowadays on evolved democracies, and why they are, ultimately, in decadence. Think about it like so: there's this guy called Trump with no real quality other than bringing a lot of empathy to the table, because a lot of voters are being driven by his isolationism rhetoric which never fails to catch a big chunk of an ever-increasing patriot country's vote. And in my opinion, he's gonna win because the other candidate has a near-50% handicap, from the long-established, yet to be solved gender problem, even more relevant than the previous incumbent's racial minority trait, for the simple fact America has embraced different races a lot more than it has suppressed gender inequality.
This is gonna be equivalent in a company, to a different extent but to similar outcomes - the bottom-of-the-pyramid voters are gonna side with whoever seems to bring more to their table, and candidates just need to find the rhetoric that identifies them as such. If this is, like american politics, mixed up with a candidate-picking system that pre-establishes a small pool of "desirables", no single candidate will truthfully bring anything to the bottom tiers. Winning will be a matter of the best liar. I would likely fire my current CEO if I had one (don't work in that kind of corporate structure) , but the question remains: would we be allowed to pick something better than the status quo?
So no, I wouldn't fire my CEO until the proper permits have been secured.
please please please
Not if he fires me first.
I'm 2nd in command at my company, so if the CEO lost his job, I'd be in charge. And I can tell you for a fact that I would be bloody useless!
My CEO is a she, and she's one of the most brilliant and intelligent person I know.
I'd fire the whole middle management staff, though.
We've all done it at some point -- fired our boss by leaving for another firm.
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
The late Iain Banks wrote about characters in a large business that was run democratically, but didn't go into much detail about the workings of the democratic process. It was little more than mentioning that they voted for their bosses.
This brings to mind that phrase from Crimson Tide, when Capt. Ramsey (Gene Hackman) tells Commander Hunter (Denzel Washington): "We're here to preserve democracy, not to practice it.".
For allowing off topic clickbait articles like this.
I come to work in order to work and make money. I don't come to work to play politics all day.
Love sees no species.
The biggest problem out there is the next quarter mindset of public companies. Today, public companies are too focused on the end of the quarter and maximizing shareholder returns which means that the employees and customers be damned if they can be squeezed to get another point of EBITDA over the next three months.
The best company I ever worked for was a wholly owned subsidiary in which the CEO/top manager and senior managers worked as a very effective team in keeping employees and customers happy - I should point out that we had a very flat organizational structure which kept things running very well.
We then got bought out and the investors put us up for an IPO. As founders, there was some money thrown our way, BUT the CEO's total focus was turned to what the investor's wanted which meant he had almost no time to devote to the day to day running of the business (which he was excellent at) and, to fill the void, more new executives, who didn't know the business, were brought in along with more than doubling the number of management levels. After a couple of years, the CEO, decided to call in rich and we had a series of new CEOs (and their hangers on) that proceeded to destroy the company.
All the work we had done creating a business that was destroyed in about three years and what made us special was lost along with more than two thirds of the employees with what was once a happy, proud workplace becoming a place for temporary employment.
So, find a place that is wholly owned, doesn't worry about it's stock price, with a small, competent management team.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Look to Sears. The CEO there is Eddie Lampert, who used various financial manoeuvres to first take over KMart and then Sears. He has zero retail experience. He is known for only attending board meetings via videoconferencing (where he yells at board members). He has passed down illogical orders to the stores that have turned the skeleton crews into Lord of the Flies.
So why haven't they fired him? They can't. His moves placed him as majority share holder as well as CEO. The board has no way to fire him. He is in a can't-lose situation now as with very few exceptions Sears owns the land their stores sit on (even in malls) so once he drives the ship under he has millions of dollars of real estate that he can sell.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I'd put him and all CEOs I've worked for in front of a firing squad.
Captcha: interned
I am the CEO
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
The problem with democracy is that it emphasizes appearance over reality, and that appearance is interpreted by people with both no ability to make decisions of that level, and no skin in the game. They vote, the consequences are socialized and externalities passed on to the group, so either way the consequences to the voters are minor.
If anything is wrong with leadership now, it is that the average company is too democratic in that appearance matters far more than reality/results at every level. They are choosing CEOs who can manage public relations disasters, not keep a company stable or drive it to new heights.
As much as I hate Apple, Steve Jobs was a great CEO in that he always forced improvement of the product where possible. He had his missteps, but he was able to as a fascist do things that a democrat could not.
Alternative Right.
Believe it was Sarah Silverman who said along the lines of, 'if all you've ever had are bitchy roomates, you're the bitch'
If Google were to elect a CEO to replace Sundar Pichai,
- they would end up with someone interested in campaigning for the job, so it wouldn't have to cost $200,000,000/yr.
- they would distract employees with the election, which may be a significant cost.
- they would change CEOs more frequently, which can cause burnout and hurt morale and retention: decades of people's life work on proprietary software gets tossed in the bin because "strategy".
- they may end up with someone the employees rightfully trusted, who therefore might not have the skill necessary to contain the sociopath-infested management chain.
I think the main problem in most large companies is the last bullet. Election could help with that, but the transition between the elected and unelected portion of the management tree might become the danger zone.
With Napalm. I'll even bring marshmallows and crackers for the team, to make smores on his burning corpse.
Smaller company, though. We'd keep the president, CFO, and probably the VP of Engineering (perhaps sketchy with those outside the office). I guarantee we'd fire the VP of Manufacturing (at least 3 years ago), VP of Field Service (probably never would have met him), VP of Projects (not a single person that has worked with the guy, even in a very marginal way, feels he should be in that position), and the VP of R&D. How we ended up with so many in a company of 80 people is beyond me.
Our CFO is leaving and I suspect that, had she not been hired, our Controller would have been promoted. I'd still expect that, as our Controller is quite skilled and respected.
Thinking back, my former employers would have fared much more poorly. My last employer had nobody with a VP or higher title that was actually competent, which ultimately resulted in them going out of business within a year of my jumping ship (a bunch of top talent followed suit).
That sort of thing already exists. Not sure if co-op or association is the right term in english, but man, wtf, why do people reinvent the wheel all the time, there is already a legal model for electing and firing your leadership.
Median CEO pay is only $160k. That includes bonuses, stock options, etc.
You're probably thinking of the ridiculous amounts made by CEOs of the biggest companies (Fortune 500, S&P 500, etc). Yes they're mostly not worth it. But they only make up less than 0.02% of all businesses with employees (roughly 6 million). And only about 5% of all businesses employing 500+ people.
The media wants to make a story out of the poor-rich pay gap, so they cherry-pick the data which best supports their argument. While that data is relevant to the subset it's picked from, don't make the mistake of extrapolating it to the other 99.98%. Or even the other 95%. That's stereotyping and prejudice. Some people get all upset when you take a trait present in only 5% of, say, African-Americans and extrapolate it to the entire population. But are more than happy do the exact same thing when it comes to something like CEOs. You know that thing about CEOs being psychopaths? It's only 4% of them (vs 1% for the general population). Yet some people gleefully use that stat to justify their insults, prejudice, and bigotry against the other 96%.
I would suggest that given the the low levels of product quality and worker satisfaction indicate that those driven to be bosses have great skill at getting to be bosses. However, by and large, those skills seem to be incompatible with good management skills. This same pattern applies to politics. Those driven to be in power are woefully incompetent at managing the reins they control as witnessed by the current state of the world and its direction. Which points to the electorate being part of the issue in electing those in power.
I work at a large company. Even though I listen to key notes, etc... I don't have the background to make the decisions that are made, or know if they are any good. Maybe given a couple of months of research in determine how good the decisions are, I might be able to make an informed decision, but not today.
If I had to decide, I would say no, purely for the reason that replacing a CEO causes disruption.
Or maybe psychopaths have a finely-honed ability to become CEO of companies.
Silverman is hardly a person I would consider as having keen insight into the nature of humans.
In many companies I have seen a much more subtle person who needed to go. The CEO was often a gungho type who pushed hard for progress and whatnot. But there was often one person who most people knew were sabotaging their efforts, that one person who everyone knew was keeping things down. That was the person who walked into the room and all conversations stopped, as they would use any spitballing conversations against you. Someone might say, "I should learn python" and suddenly that person was talking about how a certain programmer doesn't know one of the foundational languages. But on the other side programmers might be saying, we need to expose our software through a python API and suddenly this person was saying that exposing things was a huge security hazard. Even though this was all the competition was doing and customers were being lost.
Or another company where one of the senior managers had formed a little club. You were in and great, or you were out and shit. Highly destructive. Or the vague promise executive, who was always dangling imaginary carrots. Eliminating them would have made each of those companies a far better place.
Although I can name a couple of CEOs who's sudden departure would have been a prettywell instant party. Not metaphorically, but there would have been a huge blowout party where the employees would have gone so far as to all dress up like the departed CEO.
(Posting as AC for my own protection, since I'm going to be seriously bad-mouthing someone who might recognize my normal username)
My company's CEO is the biggest thing dragging us down right now.
After a messy divorce, he crawled into a bottle. He usually shows up late and hung over, and leaves at lunch for the bar and rarely makes it back. Add to that an addiction to Adderall, and probably more drugs outside of work. I don't care what he does out of the office but when it impacts your work this heavily, it's become everyone's problem.
He's stopped being a leader. He used to be involved with most of the projects. Now? He only works on one, single project, and it's one that is constantly losing us money. Any CEO with half a brain would have cut the project months ago - it's a maintenance contract at this point, we could (and should) cancel it at any time. But apparently he's doing it as a personal favor to the client - to the tune of several thousand dollars a month.
His strategy for the company is a crapshoot. He dreams of landing the Big Project that makes us all millionaires. He almost had one once before, but sheer incompetence by the partner companies tanked it, after years and years of struggling. Now he's got half the company working on another idea some rich guy brought to us - and isn't paying us for until it's done. When I (as a shareholder) raised some questions about it, he said we were only working gratis for four weeks, and then we'd stop until the "client" could raise some investment capital and start paying. That was two months ago. This is a guy who buys and trades in Senators - he could easily afford to build this thing on his own cash, but since he's got a better understanding of risk, he went looking for a patsy to take the risk for him.
He wastes money like crazy, for a company this size. In a rare fit of sobriety, he hired a project manager to try to keep everything on track. Sadly, said PM is a) completely out of his depth on any technical matter, b) lazy enough that he frequently orders others to manage themselves, c) wastes everyone's time in company-wide meetings, and d) is *also* a drug addict. He hired a "secretary" who has been on medical leave for most of the past year - for three different back-to-back reasons. (We suspect she has blackmail material on him).
He's got everyone on their toes. Thrice now, he's nearly fired people for petty reasons. Once he asked for input on how the company could improve, and then nearly fired the one person who voiced criticism. Not even of him personally, just his favorite CMS. Another nearly got fired for refusing to give an hours estimate until he actually knew what the task was. The most recent was someone calling out of work because his car broke down - this despite his own ten-hour workweek and multiple impromptu vacations, or his favored employee's constant absences.
The only thing keeping him in power right now is that it takes a 2/3rds majority to remove a shareholder from the company or elect new officers, and he still owns 40%. And even that can't protect him forever.
Modern corporations operate not to maximize employee satisfaction, but to maximize profit. CEOs have a mandate to appease shareholders and not employees. This often means doing things like freezing bonuses, cutting jobs, salaries that don't keep up with inflation, and cutting benefits. Of course employees would fire their CEOs. This is subjective. What are the goals of the corporation (99 out of 100 times it's to make money folks)? Are they being met thanks to decisions made by the CEO?
Exactly. The job attracts psychopaths. The hiring process looks for psychopaths.
Sometimes the question is more interesting for other C-level executives.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
I'd put a bullet in his head. Better safe than sorry.
-Signed,
permanently disabled & unemployed.
I'm in a company that was acquired by a competitor, where the resulting company was in turn acquired by a much larger, overseas firm. That latter firm knows little I think except the balance sheet, so things are really managed by the CEO of the first acquiring firm. He isn't at all from our field, says the right things, and much of it bullshit. Most of the firm I came with is gone, on their own or when much of it got closed suddenly. So yeah, many of the employees he had would fire him, but it's probably 50-50 on those that are left.
And If he is to fat cut him down
love to be a freelancer...
I work for the Federal Government.
Or maybe psychopaths have a finely-honed ability to become CEO of companies.
Why is that a bad thing? There is evidence that psychopaths actually make better leaders because they don't let their emotions cloud their judgement. They will dispassionately make the hard decisions for the good of the organization, rather than dithering out of misplaced compassion.
and democracy? Anarchy/capitalism works now with an inactive CEO; why would it stop functioning just because the CEO is gone?
My CEO has only been on the job for about three years, and frankly, he is a vast improvement over the previous guy. He's doing a great job, and moving the company in the right direction. He clearly understands the industry a lot better than I do, so I'm not complaining.
- Necron69
You mean the asshat CEO of a Fortune 500 company who got a 60% raise for having a lousy fiscal year and implemented a 10% layoff that put me out of work for eight months?
But, in reality, not everyone can be a CEO. First, if the company is of any appreciable size, being CEO is a 24/7 job. The phone can ring any time, and you have to drop what you're doing and deal with whatever it is. Contrary to what organized labor thinks, CEOs are not lazy people who just sit around and rake in the money.
I don't give a shit if the CEO:
1. Hates their employees and makes it known at every opportunity
2. Hates customers are makes it known even to them at every opportunity
3. Pays shit and offers piss poor working conditions
4. Actually worships hitler, stalin, satan and natas
5. Routinely makes decisions you believe to be absurd
What I absolutely refuse to tolerate is a CEO who is lazy and or incompetent. I've walked three times and counting for this. There is no future in companies run by lazy idiots and no point working for them.
And what if the organization is an LLC, so the CEO is "making the hard decisions" for the good of his bank account?
Sympathy for the devil. Who are you sucking up to?
So if ALL your CEOs are an issue, perhaps the issue is you.
No doubt I've chosen to work for places I'd have been better off avoiding. But look around. Tech company CEOs not worth a dime are a dime a dozen.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Does "fire at" count?
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
And the CTO too. The level of inefficiency in my place of work is mind boggling. Too much corporate politics. It's costing my company a fortune. We go through binge and purge fire/hire cycles and well as outsource/insource cycles. I can't even imagine the annual bill for this mess.
Nothing new for years except his big stock options.
By definition, they will make decisions that aren't hard for them for the good of themselves.
You might have them confused with sociopaths, but either way, not caring about others in the company quickly spreads downwards and there goes productivity when everyone starts just caring about how important they look.
I haven't seen any mention of co-operatives. They exist and operate among capitalistic competition. Some co-operatives thrive and some crash. And some thrive and then crash.
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
Many CEOs are claiming "your boss doesn't owe you anything". Those CEOs, with a guaranteed payment after driving down the value of the company, they're the ones I'd fire. But what's the next step? Others are talking about the problem of politicizing the workplace but everyone has ignored a big problem; one can't get a better CEO from the supermarket: For elections to work, there must be a training scheme for CEOs, not the de facto royalty scheme of: Went to an Ivy league institution and was an above-average mid-level manager. It's ridiculous that bottom-level employees must be trained (to flip burgers or mop the floor) before they're given a job but the position of CEO is awarded to someone without commensurate training and skills. It is the Peter principle in action again and no surprise, the result is an empire of mediocrity. The job of CEO needs to be filled the same way other jobs are: From a trained and experienced labour market.
"Why is that a bad thing"
Because of your own text.
"There is evidence that psychopaths actually make better leaders"
Maybe you are right, but that's part of the problem. Hitler was surely a great leader. The problem "merely" was where he was leading to.
"They will dispassionately make the hard decisions for the good of the organization"
For the good... !? Wait, wait, wait... have you read what you yourself wrote down? Why the damn hell in hell would a psychopath (you probably were thinking about sociopaths, but anyway) think at all on the good of any organization? If he were, he'd be neither psychopath nor sociopath to start with!
Mondragón is the world's largest worker owned corporation. It's executive board are hired and fired by its workers. It's been running as well and as competitively as any other corporation (but less growth during booms but also less shrinkage during recessions) since shortly after WWII. US Economist Richard Wolff gave this presentation on them here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKbukSeZ29o and there's an article in the Economist here: http://www.economist.com/node/13381546 What's not to like about authentic Socialism doing well out in the real world?
Welcome to the main problem with democracy. The people who vote do not understand the minute details fo what they are voting for. See Brexit and the election of Hitler for good examples.
Which is why a representative democracy is always better. Direct democracy is a baaaaaaaaad idea.
The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
How about democratically electing for all positions. In a hospital, nurses and medical assistants will interview IT staff and decide in a democratic vote which candidate qualifies. HR and sales will interview software engineers, and entry level QA will interview software architects and bizdev people. Cause everybody is qualified to judge other's work.
Our previous CEO? Hell yes, he was no good. Promoted way too far up for his skill level, and although he wasn't an outright PR disaster, it was very cringe-worthy.
Our current CEO seems a lot more level-headed, I'd definitely keep her.
Eat the rich.
For small organizations, this could work. For large enterprises (4+ layers of management; 2-5+ yr product development cycle, etc.) no.
Emergent behavior of the organization leads to stable "Dilbert points" where the right thing (even mandatory, career-wise) actions for individuals are demonstrably the wrong things for the company in the long run. In this environment, no CEO would ever last part the first year.
"Would you fire your cow orker?"
I don't know what "orking" is, but I'm guessing no one should be doing it to cows.
IBM Employees know Rometty is a clueless IDioT as well as most of the C-level execs. If the employees had a say Rometty would be out so fast her head would be spinning and so would all the C-level execs. IBM doesn't seem to get the fact that sales-weasels don't have a clue how to run a tech company, they only think about getting their bonuses for the next quarter.