Angry Physicist

Matching Management with Culture: How the Wrong CEO Can Ruin a Company

I seem to remember a study which showed how low-key, promoted-from-within CEOs resulted in better company performance than expensive, outside recruited flashy CEOs.

Of course the second group got much larger options and compensation packages.

There seems to be some kind of primitive, unintelligent apeish-genetic urge to give leadership power to the toughest, most arrogant, sounding man (and usually it is a man, not woman who is this sort).

Of course being an asshole will be a bad "fit" for just about any corporate culture.

Nardelli wasn't actually the real boss at GE. Perhaps his true nature was kept in check there?

Another potentially relevant example: Microsoft seems to be doing far more poorly with the loudmouth, aggressive, and arrogant Ballmer running things versus the semi-autistic Gates.

Five years of billions of dollars of revenue and we get Vista---mostly a downgrade from XP?

Of course there are difficulties with industry maturity but one of Microsoft's biggest present problems, one that they never used to have, is the major exodus of many of their best technology employees---especially to Google. That's clearly a sign of spreading disease in the corporate culture.

Microsoft Research is doing great by paying academic-style researchers more money and letting them do whatever they want. Few of their inventions have any relevance to Microsoft's products and Ballmer ignores them.