Over the course of my career, I've interacted with a fair number of coworkers who clue in to the fact that certain executives are brought in for very specific purposes. Some are (shudder) turnaround artists, some are there to milk the last penny of revenue and profit from aging capital, and more. Well, I had the opportunity to talk with a man yesterday who apparently is a psychologist whose company goes a few steps beyond "Strengths Finder" and Gallup testing to help select executives for these specific purposes.
We had a nice talk, and he was gratified to see that his take on the executives of my company was shared by myself, but one thing that struck me was that if I had this man's skills in psychology, and I were asked to select an executive to be the proverbial "Chainsaw Al Dunlap", I'd have to say "no, thank you, doing so involves too much cruelty to ordinary workers."
Now I don't know whether this man has the exact same perspective as I or not--I'm guessing he has at least some moral code given some of what he told me--but it is nonetheless sobering to think that there is a group of people out there whose specific job is to do this kind of things, and might not have that moral guide. It reminds me of the time when a former company let a lot of people go, and people were openly wondering who was going to "go postal". At some point, someone needs to tell elites "this is way too far."
Additional thought: it strikes me that one of the key issues we've got going here is that if an executive is significantly or mostly responsible for managing changes in business, locking in a specific set of psychological profiles for one short term goal is going to be one of the most harmful things for a business that I can thinkof.
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