What your comment, in other words, boils down to this: managers, directors, VPs, etc, just build their empires by hiring more and people. That's why it is possible that "25% or 50% or 90% of that effort [personal productivity] is going towards things that ultimately don’t have impact for customers, it’s not very productive after all."

Maybe, time to trim the fat from the top: get rid of these empires by downsizing. Also, companies at very high level should look at the bad effects of empire building, which happens in every large organization. Now one can ask "who gonna bell the cat"? If executive vice presidents start empire building, who gonna stop that? After all, CEO should give free reigns to his underling EVPs. Maybe, the majority stock holders should bell that cat; however, they have delegated that to the board of directors, who are different set of cats.