Unless that salary was already at market rate, in which case you're then exposed to higher turnover along with the hits to productivity (and profitability) whic

Unless that salary was already at market rate, in which case you're then exposed to higher turnover along with the hits to productivity (and profitability) which that entails. If we were going to try to be scientific about it, we'd look to see what kind of people make genuinely outstanding managers and executives by analysing successful outlier organisations and looking at the composition of their management, board, etc. I strongly suspect most companies will benefit more from training a specialist within their business than they will from trying to get a generalist in.