Posted on 01/30/2020 7:52:09 AM PST by Perseverando
My view on this subject is not based on any “book” but rather personal experience.
I have the good (or bad) fortune to be able to spot the sociopaths a mile away—and inevitably they are either at the very top of organizations or are “rising stars”.
I had a couple of bosses who fit the bill—and have known the heads of a few non-profits who were sociopaths as well.
They are very slick—so if you don’t have the proper “antenna” they can be hard to be spot—until they burn you.
There are many examples of sociopaths leading to spectacular corporate disasters.
Recent likely candidates include Boeing (shortcuts taken by senior management), Volkswagen (more shortcuts eventually caught by regulators), drug company execs who make big profits before going to jail for stock fraud and product fraud (several examples), insider and phony trading investment bankers, etc.
These folks are in almost every type of industry.
They can be found in every workplace—easy to find, particularly if you have forensic accounting skills.
Because they are an unacceptable risk.
They are not interested in the company but in their own impulses and desires. So having them in charge means that if selling out the company means they would get one of their own desires satisfied they will do so without hesitation.
So there goes your billion dollar company down in flames because your psychopath in charge wanted to have sex with a rattlesnake.
But if politicians want to get elected and reelected, they usually have to show some degree of discipline and impulse control. They can't let their impulses run wild or they crash and burn. We hear about the politicians who do mess up like that, but they are the one's being weeded out.
I'm skeptical about the idea that politicians tend to be psychopaths. There were a lot of mid-20th century ideas about normality and health that look a little naive now. Not everything wrong in the world can be attributed to personal psychopathy.
There is a fine line between being crazy and being brilliant. Some of these people manage to cross over and back at will.
Yep. That’s who. Real let down from Gordon Bethune. Worked for him when he was put in charge of IT. He was such a jackass.
They work out for short term objectives but typically destroy long term. They come in, meet some objective and the smart ones book it before the SHTF. Since most boards are made up of these vampires, they hire them regardless of long term consequences.
“There are many examples of sociopaths leading to spectacular corporate disasters.”
Perhaps, but again, simple logic dictates that this can’t be the general rule, or the system would have already self-corrected and we wouldn’t be discussing the issue.
“So there goes your billion dollar company down in flames because your psychopath in charge wanted to have sex with a rattlesnake.”
That seems to conflict with your initial statement that they are an “acceptable risk”.
“Since most boards are made up of these vampires, they hire them regardless of long term consequences.”
Well, that’s at least some kind of explanation, but it still doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. After all, if they are so damaging to the business, then the business eventually fails. A bunch of psychopaths on a board protecting other psychopaths still can’t protect them from the ultimate consequences dictated by the market.
I have been reading your posts.
Think about this.
Look at the fifty largest companies from say, 1970, and compare them to the fifty largest companies today.
Most are different—many of the older largest companies have failed.
Now, one can claim it is due to changing technologies, competition, bla bla bla—but consider the other possibility being discussed on this thread.
It is very difficult to maintain a board of directors and management team that is both smart, innovative, and ethical—over the long term.
Imho the sociopaths are the largest cause of corporate demise, though I acknowledge there are other factors.
“Imho the sociopaths are the largest cause of corporate demise...”
If that is true, then the companies that hire them are hobbling themselves in competition with the companies that don’t hire them, and over time the companies that don’t hire them will run the other companies out of the market. Problem solved.
If that hasn’t happened, then why not?
I just don’t see how you can claim psychopaths are destroying all the companies that hire them, but then also claim that hiring of psychopaths is some very prevalent thing that many successful companies are doing.
I can certainly see that there is a potential downside to hiring psychopaths and giving them a lot of power. However, it seems there MUST also some positive benefit that is strong enough to outweigh the potential negatives, or the simple dynamics of the market would have corrected this already.
Because they are an unacceptable risk.
What I said. Exactly.
Read the book years ago forgot the particulars.
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