In its April 2024 Issue, VideoAge wrote about corporate incompetence in a “My2¢” editorial. Then, on September 16, 2024, in its “The New Workplace” report, The Wall Street Journal ran two articles about corporate and management issues. The first article was titled “Would Companies Get Better CEOs if Employees Had a Vote?” and the second ran under the headline “Want to Be a Better Boss or Team Player? Watch 12 Angry Men.”
In its article, VideoAge wrote about Boeing’s disastrous business practices, the accordion-style strategy called right-sizing, the damaging Hollywood talent strikes, and many more calamitous decisions, such as moving manufacturing plants to China, pushing EV instead of hydrogen cars, trying to eliminate middle men, and being unable to even standardize telephone chargers.
One of the WSJ’s position was that CEOs are appointed by boards who are out of touch with their employees’ needs and expectations and, as an example, offered up the case of OpenAI, wherein the board had to reinstate the CEO that they had fired following protests from employees.
WSJ‘s second article stated that leaders should suspend judgment while exploring possibilities and assessing facts. In this case, the WSJ author reported her experience with a board whose directors didn’t listen to each other, talked over one another and pointed out what was wrong about other director’s opinions. After watching the 1957 movie 12 Angry Men, the directors learned from one of the film’s characters (played by Henry Ford) how to influence one another and collectively get better results.
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