Free Republic

We have been inundated with messages responding to our posts on the graduation remarks by PepsiCo president Indra Nooyi at the Columbia Business School MBA recognition ceremony of this past Sunday. Many readers (approximately a third) have written to comment that, unlike our rapporteur -- graduating Columbia MBA Wes Martin -- they did not find Ms. Nooyi's remarks objectionable. I am grateful that PepsiCo posted the remarks today (together with the accompanying statement) and that we can all determine the issue for ourselves based on "the ocular proof." The Harvard-Yale game this year was played in Cambridge. Consistent with some...

<p>"For a list of all the ways that technology has failed to improve the quality of life, please press three."</p> <p>Twenty years ago, the majority of newly recruited executives failed. Now, thanks to two decades of evolving human-resources philosophy, research, testing and execution, the majority of newly recruited executives "leave to pursue other opportunities."</p>

The Peter Principle: In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence. The author provides an insightful analysis of why so many positions in so many organizations seem to be populated by employees who exhibit signs of incompetence which is a most disturbing since we all tend to all rise to our own level of incompetence. This concept is likely to be ignored by most senior managers and consultants since to admit it is to admit that we may also be at our own level incompetence. Ignorance is bliss? The end result is that non-growing companies...

The Peter Principle Proven In case you've ever wondered why ignorance rises to the executive level, here is a simple explanation that is also a mathematical proof: Knowledge is Power. Time is Money. And, as every actuary (with some physics training) knows: Work ---------- = Power Time So, if Knowledge = Power and Time = Money then through simple substitutions, Work ---------- = Knowledge Money Solving for Money, we get: Work -------------- = Money Knowledge Thus, If Work is held constant as a positive number (no matter how small!) Money approaches infinity as Knowledge approaches zero. What this means is:...