Neurological Correlates

If you’ve worked at a company, you could go on all day about the dysfunction — but in the end, in any hierarchy, you survive by making decisions based on self-preservation, rather than good of the organization as a whole. So, once a company becomes successful, it is doomed to wallow in its own waste, because the people running it don’t want to give up the gig. To steal a short explanation from a former biopharma general counsel, “money attracts flies.”

So, it’s a Big Lie is that people running things know what they’re doing. So how do they get in charge? I’ve blogged about potential reasons for this before, for instance, here, discussing Mr. Ican’s view of corporate CEO’s (which he now blogs here, and sadly, has to have sanitized and lawyered up . No worries, the factually unsupported accusations chez Neurological Correlates, le dernier cri du rants about corporate narcissism and bullying can make up for whatever would be taken out. )

And how do these incompetent leaders get followers? Here’s the typical conversation:

Technical worker, “Let’s develop this technology, it works great and has a market.”

Boss, “No”

What Boss is thinking, “If I say ‘yes’, I’ll be wrong 50% of the time. If I say ‘no’, I’ll be correct 100% of the time. I don’t want to take a chance on getting fired, so I’ll just always say ‘no’ until my boss tells me to say ‘yes.’”

Anyway, maybe because the prosecutors have spent all spring putting together the cases and now want to go on vacation, the corporate fraud news is front and center, lots of perp walks — here it is, your Friday Dysfunctional Roundup.

Hundreds Arrested in Mortgage Fraud Sweep

Ex-Bear Stearns Fund Managers Indicted for Fraud (Update3)
Bloomberg - 41 minutes ago
By Patricia Hurtado and Thom Weidlich June 19 (Bloomberg) — Former Bear Stearns Cos. hedge fund managers Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin were indicted for mail fraud and conspiracy in the first prosecution stemming from a federal investigation of last …
AssociatedPress