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More companies need to learn to treat their employees like an asset instead of a liability. Executives are far less valuable than the boots on the ground actual

More companies need to learn to treat their employees like an asset instead of a liability. Executives are far less valuable than the boots on the ground actually running the businesses. Take care of those people and they will take care of you.

GiorgioG 2y ago
We can thank Jack Welch and the MBAs who aim to be like him. Loyalty is a two-way street.
- 29athrowaway 2y ago
  A MBA program is the equivalent of installing wormable malware into the human mind. https://youtu.be/vEWGrc0eHLw https://youtu.be/vEWGrc0eHLw
  - pbronez 2y ago
    Interesting video. When I got an economics degree, there was a lot of discussion about externalities. The focus was something like “here’s what we can model, here’s what we can’t. Be careful, because the stuff outside your model can really matter!” Then the conversation moves on to how to build better models that integrate a more complicate understanding of the world we live in and our effects on it. This is why the Carbon Tax is/was such an interesting concept. It’s an attempt to enhance the financial system with the ability to price in climate change. Fundamentally, Economics is about make good decisions about how to allocate scarce resources. Certainly the Lords of Finance have taken it to some pathological places, but prices and markets remain extremely powerful tools. One great example of this is how Feeding America created a market to allocate foodstuffs among food banks: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/09/11/565736836/episode-665-the-free-food-market https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/09/11/565736836/epis...
    - 29athrowaway 2y ago
      Carbon credits are rarely audited and often do not truly offset the amount of carbon they claim to capture. If externalities were important to the economists, after many decades, there would be a high sense of urgency to model the most important processes and assimilating them into the theory, but after many decades all the work has been put into how to eat the pale blue dot and turn it into money, an abstract concept that won't be useful when the worldwide famines start.
- sydbarrett74 2y ago
  We can also thank Lewis F. Powell, Milton Friedman, Paul Weyrich, and others of their ilk.
  - mostlysimilar 2y ago
    How about Adam Smith, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, Richard Nixon, Margaret Thatcher.
    - sydbarrett74 2y ago
      Smith has mostly been taken out of context and selectively quoted. I don't lump him in with the others.
  - robertlagrant 2y ago
    I'd be interested to see a clip of Milton Friedman saying that executives are the most valuable employees.
    - sydbarrett74 2y ago
      Friedman wasn't the least bit sympathetic to non-management workers' plight. All he cared about was the owners. And executives usually own a disproportionate number of their company's shares.
      - robertlagrant 2y ago
        Executives are not owners. They may not own anything. An owner could also be a plumber working for himself. That's not at all like Jack Welch. To my limited understanding, Friedman's approach to workers was we should make it so competitors can spring up, as your best job security and working conditions and salaries come from the existence of other companies. And additionally that when companies do well, their customers (also most non-management workers for most companies) get better and/or cheaper products, as people are customers of other businesses as well as employees of their own company.
nine_zeros 2y ago
> More companies need to learn to treat their employees like an asset instead of a liability. Executives are far less valuable than the boots on the ground actually running the businesses. Take care of those people and they will take care of you. Hey hey, think about the poor executive. Toil and grind until they lay you off. That 3rd yacht isn't going to buy itself.
- FredPret 2y ago
  To be fair, the job of executive and especially CEO is extremely demanding because evaluating executive performance is nearly impossible. To say nothing of legal liability and popular opprobrium. Any random event can sink a company, and the CEO will be blamed for not foreseeing and preparing for it. Good times can carry your company along even if their policies suck. Bad times can kill a great company with great leadership. Which means bad CEOs can sometimes go for years without the feedback they need to get better, and great CEOs will never get the recognition they deserve. Some measures of good leadership are concrete and measurable, but lots are very abstract and only manifest over years and decades. So if a CEO does a great job at these, the profits might only show up for their successor, or even their successor. I'd only do that job for a ton of money.

GiorgioG 2y ago

We can thank Jack Welch and the MBAs who aim to be like him. Loyalty is a two-way street.

29athrowaway 2y ago
A MBA program is the equivalent of installing wormable malware into the human mind. https://youtu.be/vEWGrc0eHLw https://youtu.be/vEWGrc0eHLw
- pbronez 2y ago
  Interesting video. When I got an economics degree, there was a lot of discussion about externalities. The focus was something like “here’s what we can model, here’s what we can’t. Be careful, because the stuff outside your model can really matter!” Then the conversation moves on to how to build better models that integrate a more complicate understanding of the world we live in and our effects on it. This is why the Carbon Tax is/was such an interesting concept. It’s an attempt to enhance the financial system with the ability to price in climate change. Fundamentally, Economics is about make good decisions about how to allocate scarce resources. Certainly the Lords of Finance have taken it to some pathological places, but prices and markets remain extremely powerful tools. One great example of this is how Feeding America created a market to allocate foodstuffs among food banks: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/09/11/565736836/episode-665-the-free-food-market https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/09/11/565736836/epis...
  - 29athrowaway 2y ago
    Carbon credits are rarely audited and often do not truly offset the amount of carbon they claim to capture. If externalities were important to the economists, after many decades, there would be a high sense of urgency to model the most important processes and assimilating them into the theory, but after many decades all the work has been put into how to eat the pale blue dot and turn it into money, an abstract concept that won't be useful when the worldwide famines start.
sydbarrett74 2y ago
We can also thank Lewis F. Powell, Milton Friedman, Paul Weyrich, and others of their ilk.
- mostlysimilar 2y ago
  How about Adam Smith, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, Richard Nixon, Margaret Thatcher.
  - sydbarrett74 2y ago
    Smith has mostly been taken out of context and selectively quoted. I don't lump him in with the others.
- robertlagrant 2y ago
  I'd be interested to see a clip of Milton Friedman saying that executives are the most valuable employees.
  - sydbarrett74 2y ago
    Friedman wasn't the least bit sympathetic to non-management workers' plight. All he cared about was the owners. And executives usually own a disproportionate number of their company's shares.
    - robertlagrant 2y ago
      Executives are not owners. They may not own anything. An owner could also be a plumber working for himself. That's not at all like Jack Welch. To my limited understanding, Friedman's approach to workers was we should make it so competitors can spring up, as your best job security and working conditions and salaries come from the existence of other companies. And additionally that when companies do well, their customers (also most non-management workers for most companies) get better and/or cheaper products, as people are customers of other businesses as well as employees of their own company.

nine_zeros 2y ago

> More companies need to learn to treat their employees like an asset instead of a liability. Executives are far less valuable than the boots on the ground actually running the businesses. Take care of those people and they will take care of you. Hey hey, think about the poor executive. Toil and grind until they lay you off. That 3rd yacht isn't going to buy itself.

FredPret 2y ago
To be fair, the job of executive and especially CEO is extremely demanding because evaluating executive performance is nearly impossible. To say nothing of legal liability and popular opprobrium. Any random event can sink a company, and the CEO will be blamed for not foreseeing and preparing for it. Good times can carry your company along even if their policies suck. Bad times can kill a great company with great leadership. Which means bad CEOs can sometimes go for years without the feedback they need to get better, and great CEOs will never get the recognition they deserve. Some measures of good leadership are concrete and measurable, but lots are very abstract and only manifest over years and decades. So if a CEO does a great job at these, the profits might only show up for their successor, or even their successor. I'd only do that job for a ton of money.