Comment on: Fun With Statistics, CEO Life Edition

Wouldn’t being “less and less critical to the long-term success of the organization” make it more and more difficult to justify salaries that would make a King jealous? If the USA CEO’s are less critical why are the USA CEO’s paid the highest (and most unbelievable crazy) amounts? I have thought for years CEO pay in the USA has nothing to do with their “worth,” this seems one more piece of evidence for that belief.

Today, in the USA, CEOs are basically win the lottery when they start and then either win some more and stay or don’t win and are let go. The lottery performance appraisal aspect Deming talked about (rewarding whoever random variation or macro economic and micro economic trends smiled upon during the period). So if a market (housing, oil, steel, investment banking, microchip, hotel…) is booming why give all the CEO’s in that market huge payoffs? What do they have to do with the economic boom in the entire market? Why pay them a lottery sized payout when a boom occurs? Occasionally a CEO may help make decisions that position the company to take advantage of a predicted boom particularly well (such a case could at least trigger a discussion on the worth of that action).

We also have to recalibrate Deming’s comments to say regular performance appraisal raffle winners. CEO’s are now actually getting $40,000,000 - lottery sized - annual pay so using the term lottery is a bit misleading for everyone else. The same issue hold though rewarding people for what is often just micro factors similar to the macro factors listed above for CEOs.

Warren Buffett on overpaid CEO’s:

Related: Deming on performance appraisal - Excessive Executive Pay - Obscene CEO Pay - No Excessive Senior Executive Pay at Toyota