> A colleague of mine put the problem more succinctly “what other industry is there where the top decision-makers have never done the basic work of the company?”

In pretty much any industry where the “basic work” isn't white collar professional work, executives tend to have very little if any experience with the basic work. Where the basic work is white collar professional work, that's somewhat less common, but it is still not unheard of to have executives with general management experience but not experience with the basic work of the industry (EDIT: Or even industry-specific management: recruiting executives whose qualifying experience is in a similar executive role in a different industry isn't uncommon; a CxO chosen who was formerly a CxO with the same value of x in a different industry is common.)