That said, I've seen some board members try this out by offering to help/chat with some under-performing teams that they have expertise working with and asking light questions/giving advice... but having been on the receiving end of a conversation like that, it often feels like there is a lot of politics going -- you don't know if someone genuinely wants to be helpful, is vetting your capabilities and fit for the role (based on the trickle-down responsibility), or is trying to do independent fact finding (trickling it back up).
To guarantee that the board would lose their shirts if they make decisions completely opposite to reality, thus motivating a more thorough investigation of what they see and hear.
Excluding external board members, by definition.
There was another post on HN a few weeks back with an article that looked into it and the numbers were really staggering.
https://www.strangeloopcanon.com/p/some-things-to-learn-from...
and the HN discussion is
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32710002
(but I am not MichaelZuo and it's possible that I've got the wrong thing).
The powerful really love rigging stuff in their favor huh
???
You say that like there's anybody that doesn't. The powerful just have more scope to actually do so.
What seems to happen often is blurried lines: the ceo founder is majority shareholder, the board is his family, friends and paid lawyers, the shareholders are asleep at the wheel as long as some profits rain in, the regulator finds no law broken (because they re so monitored they dont even try playing games at the board).
Tesla is a model of bad governance, to the point the harshest sanction a regulator could levy against their chairman/ceo for manipulating the stock price, a capital sin, is to make him only CEO, while not removing his family members from the board... a systemic european bank is the model of good governance: you can see epic ceo vs board fights, shareholder revolutions etc etc.
You mention Europe but for instance in France it has been a corporate tradition too have both merged and separation has statistically lead to a significant underperformance.
FYI it is called the agency vs stewardship theories and currently it seems like a academically the stewardship is slightly favored.
Such structures should ultimately be up to the shareholders.
I like the structure of bee colonies.
The queen controls the temperament, the workers control the queen and adjust the rate of growth or contraction. Periodically workers replace her with one her of daughters (via regicide).
I'm not sure what the takeaway here is though, as I don't like the idea of a monarchy or of communism.
Let’s dig into this.
- Queen stops producing workers and is replaced by workers (regicide) or replaced by beekeepers (ie. shareholders)
- Bees due to disease or other calamity don’t provide enough honey for their shareholders and they lose their hive and possibly life more than likely
I’d prefer not to lose my life if I don’t produce at work if workers or shareholders aren’t happy
I think there might actually be some interesting things to consider if a hive-like approach was used for a business, but I'm not sure your assessment really gets to the heart of it.
In some ways, it's kind of like a co-op.
Certainly a fun idea to play with
First, its not like bees get to negotiate their salaries and seek employment elsewhere.
Secondly, at scale you have to consider large beekeeping operations or even small ones which all have…shareholders.
So either the co-op needs to take into consideration societal and personal needs (ie. crime, health, housing) or your comparison needs to be rooted in basic economics (ie. supply, demand, labor markets).
Which is what the OP meant by “monarchy or communism” because fundamentally bee societies are more akin to government than business.
BUT, lets ask the bees what they think. I’m sure they’d prefer modern Westernized human employment over a labor camp like existence ;)
They switch hives by accident, the beekeeper can cause it (to beef up a weak colony or by accident) and sometimes they do it intentionally, the males in particular.
I'm not sure why you jump to this extreme. Being removed from your job sounds about right.
Everything I Need to Know in Life, I Learned from Mobster Movies
It is characteristic of all committee discussions and decisions, that every members has a vivid recollection of them, and that every members recollection of them differs violently from every other members recollection, consequently we accept the convention that the official decisions are those, and only those which have been officially recorded in the minutes by the officials, from which it emerges with an elegant inevitability, that any decision that has been officially reached will have been officially recorded in the minutes by the officials, and any decision which is not recorded in the minutes is not officially reached, even if one or more members believe they can recollect it, so in this particular case if the decision had been officially reached, it would have been officially recorded in the minutes, by the officials and it isn't, so it wasn't.
The Plan
In the beginning, there was a plan, And then came the assumptions, And the assumptions were without form, And the plan without substance,
And the darkness was upon the face of the workers, And they spoke among themselves saying, "It is a crock of shit and it stinks."
And the workers went unto their Supervisors and said, "It is a pile of dung, and we cannot live with the smell."
And the Supervisors went unto their Managers saying, "It is a container of excrement, and it is very strong, Such that none may abide by it."
And the Managers went unto their Directors saying, "It is a vessel of fertilizer, and none may abide by its strength."
And the Directors spoke among themselves saying to one another, "It contains that which aids plants growth, and it is very strong."
And the Directors went to the Vice Presidents saying unto them, "It promotes growth, and it is very powerful."
And the Vice Presidents went to the President, saying unto him, "This new plan will actively promote the growth and vigor Of the company With very powerful effects."
And the President looked upon the Plan And saw that it was good, And the Plan became Policy.
And this, my friend, is how shit happens.
However, having been on a team that prepares board materials and also having presented to a company board, I can tell you that the information they receive is extremely carefully managed in a way that allows responsibility to seem to flow downwards rather than upwards. What you see as an IC or as a manager or ever director is extremely different from the cause and effects a board sees in a monthly or quarterly update. Hence they often come to different conclusions than the people in the trenches would. That said, I’m sure this is true for any large organizational unit (government, military, corporations, nonprofits, etc).