In the worst case, the extreme willingness and patience to waste years of your life on writing a thick paper that has a high chance of never being read by more than a handful of people and then pile on dust in the closet — and choosing that path over creating tangible real-world solutions in the same time.
Not discounting the hard work that goes into a PhD thesis at the slightest and the fact that I know brilliant PhDs with game-changing papers that went on to excel in their jobs, this framing might still give a clue on why, after having hired over a hundred engineers and seeing them develop, I have yet to see a positive correlation between academic performance and job performance.
Same goes for removing impediments. Having gone greater lengths to remove impediments for employees early in my career than any other manager I know, I can attest that even that doesn't motivate certain personality types to "flower". If anything, it motivates them to find more impediments. All the while the employees who just removed the first few impediments themselves are already crushing the next task.
"Whoever wants something finds ways, whoever doesn't want something finds reasons." - Götz Werner
It depends on the field, but however much effort it takes to get a PhD it's at best a weak proxy for how much value a particular employee provides to the business.
> and you will see your people take off
Yes, you'll see your best employees take off to an employer where they are paid better than their time-serving colleagues.
Compensation is almost never based on what value employees provide to the business but what the market will pay for them. If PhDs get paid more it’s likely because the market is willing to pay more for people with those skills.
Fwiw: I don’t have a PhD. But I do find the lazy PhD bit pretty tiring too.
For the same reasons you cite, equal pay is important. Some employees are better than others, and this is very hard to qualify, and the effect is that those who have less skill at negotiation, are underpaid, completely independent of skill, while those who are better at negotiation are paid more, completely independent of skill.
If skill is not going to be a factor in how people are paid, then pay for the role and not the person.
Any given person can and will grow in their role, potentially earning more (but not getting paid more) than they did a month prior; even moreso if they don't have to stress about money all of the time, and can just have all of those concerns alleviated even a little by higher pay.
Most people want to be better at their career, and are bogged down by the myriad of troubles that tight budgets generally cause. Remove these impediments for those who have reached a point in their career where they've earned the right to be without these troubles, and you will see your people take off, like how plants bloom when they haven't seen water in 10 days.