Outsized compensation is to acquire and retain talent, not to ensure jobs are done well.
This seems like a question that can be answered with data. My gut feeling is no, based on how bankers kept their golden parachutes intact during the Great Recession, but maybe I'm wrong.
At some level of compensation, the only people motivated to pursue it are sociopaths. Are these the people you want running your company?
Maybe I've worked at all the wrong companies but in my experience any comp that's based on "data" will be gamed until it's meaningless. There is no "data" because reading impact data is often like reading tea leaves.
Frankly, what I think is going unsaid here is that corporate executives make a disparately large amount compared to the people who do and plan the work. While executives can make a great difference, so can a great manager or a great engineer. I wish we'd see executives as just another role, taking on different tasks rather than something substantively more valuable when it's not, especially in large orgs.
So, not much benefit even if we blow the lid open and show a much better way to make more money. That is important for a publicly traded company, but far from their only consideration.
[1] http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/OG-AE821_ExecPa_NS...
My point was just that you can probably tease out some idea about the relation between executive compensation and company performance from available data. Personally I would not even consider shareholder return to be a good metric to begin with, I think companies should be judged by something like customer satisfaction as this is what companies are for, satisfying the needs of customers, not making shareholders rich.
1. Have an incentive to see their company be managed well and
2. Are probably passionate about the company, its industry, and its mission
Isn't that sufficient motivation and incentive for retaining talent on the board?
It is better to say "dedicated to the company and its mission". Dedication is a matter of reasoned decision and consistent activity for the good of something. How you feel is irrelevant. If you wake up cranky one day, you still go do what you need to do. You don't wait until you "feel" like it.
>> Les passions sont les seuls orateurs qui persuadent toujours. Elles sont comme un art de la nature dont les règles sont infaillibles; et l'homme le plus simple qui a de la passion persuade mieux que le plus éloquent qui n'en a point.
>> The passions are the only advocates which always persuade. They are a natural art, the rules of which are infallible; and the simplest man with passion will be more persuasive than the most eloquent without.[0]
If we agree our age is dominated by marketing and propaganda, and if La Rochefoucauld was right that the passions never fail to persuade, I think we've found our age's totemic god: the passions.
I somehow keep it together, as a sample size of one.
Don't see much point in playing word games. You can call it "obsession" or "investment" or simply "greed". The point is they have a strong intrinsic factor that keeps them around and makes them strongly opinionated on how to best make money.
>It is better to say "dedicated to the company and its mission".
that implies they won't take the next golden parachute 12 months out if they fail, as opposed to trying their best to keep the company they "are dedicated to" afloat. I think that gives too much credit. Wheras like you say, passion can quickly burn out.
And their feelings on the company is very relevant to how much of a damn they give. They can say "I quit" and never work a day in their lives again, they don't have any "dedication" to working. You can very much tell in many cases when leadership stopped caring about the company and are looking out the door.
perhaps, but I think the previous point is more poigninant. If you make a billion dollars, many would care less about making 1 billion more than maybe making $200 million more and a way to start influencing others. You don't buy a large website for tens of billions because you expect to turn that into hunderds of billions. You do that because you now have the eyes and ears of billions of people.
Money correlates with Fame, but by itself isn't fame. It's a tool to gather fame or power or simply leisure. Collecting money for money's sake probably isn't unheard of, but extremely unlikely.
Apart from Elon, each has less than 0.05% of the shares of Tesla, they are far from large shareholders.
If the board was to meant to represent shareholders and not to rubber stamp their mates decisions as CEO it should be comprised of representatives of the large institutions that hold the majority of the shares.
1. Have an incentive to see their company enrich the shareholders, not be managed well
As directors they
1. Have an incentive to set their own pay as high as possible
Best decisions for companies and best decisions for shareholders, best decisions for individuals are not always aligned.