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Business schools like to boast about how many of their graduates have become CEOs—Harvard especially, since it has the most. But how do these people do as CEOs: are the skills needed to perform there the same as those that get them there?
MBA students enter the prestigious business schools smart, determined, and often aggressive. There, case studies teach them how to pronounce cleverly on situations they know little about, while analytic techniques give them the impression that they can tackle any problem—no in-depth experience required. With graduation comes the confidence of having been to a proper business school, not to mention the "old boys" network that can boost them to the "top." Then what?
[...] Joseph Lampel and I studied the post-1990 records of all 19. How did they do? In a word, badly. A majority, 10, seemed clearly to have failed, meaning that their company went bankrupt, they were forced out of the CEO chair, a major merger backfired, and so on. The performance of another 4 we found to be questionable. Some of these 14 CEOs built up or turned around businesses, prominently and dramatically, only to see them weaken or collapse just as dramatically.
[...] Both sets of companies declined in performance after those cover stories—Miller commented later that "it's hard to stay on top"—but the ones headed by MBAs declined more quickly. This "performance gap remained significant even 7 years after the cover story appeared." The authors found that "the MBA degree is associated with expedients to achieve growth via acquisitions...[which showed] up in the form of reduced cash flows and inferior return on assets." Yet the compensation of the MBA CEOs increased, indeed about 15% faster than the others! Apparently they had learned how to play the "self-serving" game, which Miller referred to in a later interview as "costly rapid growth."
[...] MBA programs do well in training for the business functions, such as finance and marketing, if not for management. So why do they persist in promoting this education for management, which, according to mounting evidence, produces so much mismanagement?
The answer is unfortunately obvious: with so many of their graduates getting to the "top", why change? But there is another answer that is also becoming obvious: because at this top, too many of their graduates are corrupting the economy.
MBAs are good for you personally, but bad for companies, bad for the economy, and bad for the country.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday April 02 2017, @06:20AM (8 children)
The mantra of an army officer seemed to be "it matters if the decision is good or bad, as long as there is one when is needed".
Maybe CEO(fficer) is not a misnomer as I thought?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday April 02 2017, @09:17AM (7 children)
Mmmmmmmmm - there is some truth to that. "Do something, right or wrong!" I've heard that all my life, even before I joined the military. But . . . let a junior officer really bungle things with a crap decision, and he'll never see another promotion. Unless, of course, he was a politically assigned officer to start with. Watch that movei about the fire aboard the USS Forrestal again, bearing in mind that the pilot who started all the shit was a young man named John McCain. Officers with political connections are pretty much untouchable.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 02 2017, @10:23AM (1 child)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Forrestal_fire [wikipedia.org]
Sounds fake. Care to change your answer?
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by jmorris on Sunday April 02 2017, @05:07PM
It is #FakeNews. I hate John McCain, do not think he is a much of a "hero" (suspect his prisoner nickname of "songbird" is probably apt) and his constant need for affirmation by his nominal foes and urge to betray his nominal allies is pure Stockholm Syndrome acquired as a result of surviving being a POW; thus is is unfit for public office. He doesn't believe in the 1st Amendment and is generally a menace to our form of goverment. But the rumor that he somehow caused that Kaboom! doesn't pass the smell test. It isn't like we had a lot of carriers operating in that war, a good percentage of our naval aviators would have been on Forrestal.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday April 02 2017, @11:08AM
(achhh... it should have been "it matters less if the decision is good or bad")
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday April 02 2017, @12:27PM (3 children)
The day before the accident (28 July), Forrestal was resupplied with ordnance from the ammunition ship USS Diamond Head. The load included sixteen 1000-lb AN/M65A1 "fat boy" bombs (so nicknamed because of their short, rotund shape), which Diamond Head had picked up from the Naval Base Subic Bay and were intended for the next day's second bombing sortie. Some of the batch of AN-M65A1s Forrestal received were more than a decade old, having spent a portion of that exposed to the heat and humidity of Okinawa or Guam,[7] eventually being improperly stored in open-air Quonset huts at a disused ammunition dump on the periphery of Subic Bay Naval Base. Unlike the thick-cased Mark 83 bombs filled with Composition H6, the AN/M65A1 bombs were thin-skinned and filled with Composition B, an older explosive with greater shock and heat sensitivity. Composition B also had the dangerous tendency to become more powerful (up to 50% by weight) and more sensitive if it was old or improperly stored. Forrestal's ordnance handlers had never even seen an AN/M65A1 before, and to their shock, the bombs delivered from Diamond Head were in terrible condition; coated with "decades of accumulated rust and grime" and still in their original packing crates (now moldy and rotten); some were stamped with production dates as early as 1953. Most dangerous of all, several bombs were seen to be leaking liquid paraffin phlegmatizing agent from their seams, an unmistakable sign that the bomb's explosive filler had degenerated with excessive age, and exposure to heat and moisture.[8]
According to Lieutenant R.R. "Rocky" Pratt, a Naval Aviator attached to VA-106,[9] the concern felt by Forrestal's ordnance handlers was striking, with many afraid to even handle the bombs; one officer wondered out loud if they would survive the shock of a catapult assisted launch without spontaneously detonating, and others suggested they immediately jettison them.[10] Since no one wanted to be responsible for scrubbing the next day's missions, Forrestal's ordnance officers reported the situation up the chain of command to the ship's commanding officer, Captain John Beling, and informed him the bombs were, in their assessment, an imminent danger to the ship and should not be kept on board.
Faced with this, but still needing 1000-lb bombs for the next day's missions, Beling demanded Diamond Head take the AN-M65A1s back in exchange for new Mark 83s,[11] but was told by Diamond Head that they had none to give him. The AN-M65A1 bombs had been returned to service specifically because there were not enough Mark 83s to go around. According to one crew member on Diamond Head, when they had arrived at Subic Bay to pick up their load of ordnance for the carriers, the base personnel who had prepared the AN-M65A1 bombs for transfer assumed Diamond Head had been ordered to dump them at sea on the way back to Yankee Station. When notified that the bombs were actually destined for active service in the carrier fleet, the commanding officer of the naval ordnance detachment at Subic Bay was so shocked that he initially refused the transfer, believing a paperwork mistake had been made. At the risk of delaying Diamond Head's departure, he refused to sign the transfer forms until receiving written orders from CINCPAC on the teleprinter, explicitly absolving his detachment of responsibility for the bombs' terrible condition.
With orders to conduct strike missions over North Vietnam the next day, and with no replacement bombs available, Captain Beling reluctantly concluded that he had no choice but to accept the AN-M65A1 bombs in their current condition. In one concession to the demands of the ordnance handlers, Beling agreed to store all 16 bombs alone on deck in the "bomb farm" area between the starboard rail and the carrier's island until they were loaded for the next day's missions. Standard procedure was to store them in the ship's magazine with the rest of the air wing's ordnance; had they been stored as standard, an accidental detonation could easily have destroyed the ship.[12]
I guess some bad decisions are worse than making no decision at all.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday April 02 2017, @02:05PM (2 children)
Watch the first few minutes of the video. There is a jet that guns it's engines, only moments before that first weapon leaves it's cradle, and lands on the deck. That wash of fire is what starts the whole thing going. And, McCain is sitting in that pilot's seat.
There is a lot of truth in the article you quote, of course. But, ultimately, the hotshot who guns his engines is the person "most responsible" for starting that fire.
A little more insight into those bombs you talk about here: http://sonorannews.com/new/2016/10/05/uss-forrestal-july-29-1967-worst-accident-aboard-us-navy-surface-vessel-since-wwii/ [sonorannews.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday April 02 2017, @02:41PM (1 child)
Watch the first few minutes of the video.
I watched several such videos including one that claimed a "wet start" (jet gunning its engine). I did not see the alleged act or its consequences. Further, from your linked story:
WMR has been informed that crewmen aboard the Forrestal have provided additional information about the Forrestal incident. It is believed by many crewmen and those who have investigated the case that McCain deliberately “wet-started” his A-4E to shake up the guy in the plane behind his A-4. “Wet-starts”, done either deliberately or accidentally, shoot a large flame from the tail of the aircraft.
In McCain’s case, the “wet-start” apparently “cooked off” and launched the Zuni rocket from the rear F-4 that touched off the explosions and massive fire. The F-4 pilot was reportedly killed in the conflagration. “Wet starting” was apparently a common practice among young “hot-dog” pilots.
Crew rumor has been elevated to fact. There's no mention of the fact that the Zuni rocket shouldn't have launched under that condition. Wikipedia had this to say about that:
At about 10:50 (local time) on 29 July, while preparing for the second strike of the day, an unguided 5.0 in (127.0 mm) Mk-32 "Zuni" rocket, one of four contained in an LAU-10 underwing rocket pod mounted on an F-4B Phantom II (believed to be aircraft No. 110 from VF-11[1]), accidentally fired due to an electrical power surge during the switch from external to internal power. The surge, and a missing rocket safety pin, which would have prevented the fail surge, as well as a decision to plug in the "pigtail" system early to increase the number of takeoffs from the carrier, allowed the rocket to launch.
The rocket flew across the flight deck, striking a wing-mounted external fuel tank on an A-4E Skyhawk awaiting launch,[1] aircraft No. 405 from VA-46, piloted by Lieutenant Commander Fred D. White.[2][13] The Zuni rocket's warhead safety mechanism prevented it from detonating, but the impact tore the tank off the wing and ignited the resulting spray of escaping JP-5 fuel, causing an instantaneous conflagration. Within seconds, other external fuel tanks on White's aircraft overheated and ruptured, releasing more jet fuel to feed the flames, which began spreading along the flight deck.
Even more damning (or rather the lack thereof), is this diagram [wikipedia.org] of the planes which shows that McCain's plane #416 was oriented so that the rear of the plane pointed seaward rather than towards plane #110. How would a "wet start" cook off the missile when the jet was oriented in almost the opposite direction to do so?
More likely is that McCain wet start shortly before the accident, some of the surviving crew blamed him for the accident as a result of the timing, and he got transferred to keep the peace. Maybe he was a real dick too and this was an opportunity to get rid of him. But again, there's evidence to indicate he didn't cause the accident.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday April 02 2017, @06:28PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVgocdvcG0A [youtube.com] At 3:30 the Zuni takes off. The narrator says, "There, somehow a Zuni rocket has been ignited" which is bullshit, because everyone knows how the rocket was ignited. Unfortunately, this is a public release version, and it fails to show the wet start. Let me look some more - I may have to pull up one of the veteran's groups to find those critical few seconds . . .
Sorry, can't find those critical seconds. I've watched that wet start, and then watched the Zuni launch after being washed by the wet start flames. Yet - there are multiple videos on Youtube that suggest that the Zuni was launched by an electrical signal because someone failed to position a safety correctly. Those videos make no mention of the wet start at all. Was there a signal sent to the missile? Maybe, maybe not - but the fact is, that missile was washed in flames from the wet start. Occam's razor says that if you bathe a high performance rocket engine in flames, there is no need to search for some mysterious electrical cause for that rocket to ignite . . . .
Watched another video that really kills me. Some self important person is busy explaining how and why the fire was started, but he places that damned Zuni on the wrong part of the flight deck. More public consumption video, full of disinformation. The Zuni flies from port side amidships, toward starboard side, aft, but this guy places all of the Zuni-armed aircraft starboard and aft. FFS - disinformation out the ass.
This reminds me of the attack on the Liberty, and all of that disinformation. Oh yeah - McCain's daddy was in overall charge of that fiasco, as well. But don't mind me, I'm just another conspiracy nut.