The Ceo Pay Machine

The former top CEO examines the scandalous and corrupt reasons behind obscene pay packages for corporate executives—and explains how this hurts all of us--and how we can stop it. Today, the pay gap between chief executive officers of major U.S. firms and their workers is higher than ever before—depending on the method of calculation, CEOs get paid between 300 and 700 times more than the average worker. Such outsized pay is a relatively recent phenomenon, but despite all the outrage, few detractors truly understand the numerous factors that have contributed to the dizzying upward spiral in CEO compensation. Steven Clifford, a former CEO who has also served on many corporate boards, has a name for these procedures and practices— "The CEO Pay Machine." The CEO Pay Machine is Clifford's thorough and shocking explanation of the 'machine'--how it works, how its parts interact, and how every step pushes CEO pay to higher levels. As Clifford sees it, the payment structure for CEOs begins with shared delusions that reinforce one other: Once this groupthink is accepted as corporate dogma, it becomes infinitely harder to see any decision as potentially irrational or dysfunctional. Yet, as Clifford notes, the Pay Machine has caused immeasurable harm to companies, shareholders, economic growth, and democracy itself. He uses real-life examples of the top four CEOs named the highest paid in 2011 through 2014. Clifford examines how board directors and compensation committees have directly contributed to the rising salaries and bonuses of the country's richest executives; what's more, Clifford argues, each of those companies could have paid their CEOs 90 percent less and performed just as well. Witty and infuriating, The CEO Pay Machine is a thorough and incisive critique of an economic issue that affects all American workers.

Prodded by economists in the 1970s, corporate directors began adding stock options and bonuses to the already-generous salaries of CEOs with hopes of boosting their companiesÕ fortunes. Guided by largely unproven assumptions, this trend continues today. So what are companies getting in return for all the extra money? Not much, according to the empirical data. In Indispensable and Other Myths: Why the CEO Pay Experiment Failed and How to Fix It, Michael Dorff explores the consequences of this development. He shows how performance pay has not demonstrably improved corporate performance and offers studies showing that performance pay cannot improve performance on the kind of tasks companies ask of their CEOs. Moreover, CEOs of large established companies do not typically have much impact on their companiesÕ results. In this eye-opening exposŽ, Dorff argues that companies should give up on the decades-long experiment to mold compensation into a corporate governance tool and maps out a rationale for returning to the era of guaranteed salaries.

This is the most practical marketing book you will ever read. It outlines a six-step process that will bring clarity to marketing like you’ve never experienced before. It’s literally a step-by-step guide to more leads, higher sales and a stronger brand. ​The first step is simply being a competent marketer. As the CEO of your organization, this should worry you: Your marketing team knows a lot less about marketing than they let on. And you can prove it in an instant. Ask them to explain the difference between the marketing mix and the promotional mix. It’s a basic question but surprisingly most marketers don’t know the answer. Imagine asking your accounting staff the difference between a balance sheet and an income statement and finding out you stumped them. Now consider this: You can maybe ring another 20% in sales out of your current customers, but that’s offset by the hole in your customer bucket. Real growth comes from new business development and you’ve entrusted a good share of that to a marketing team that can't define a basic marketing term. Not good. I suggest you buy a copy of this book for yourself first. I’ll show you the six steps of Strategically Aimed Marketing or the SAM 6® process for short. It will get you up to speed quickly. Then buy copies for your staff and have them integrate the process into your organization. If you are a marketing manager, writer, graphic designer or anyone else who has a hand in marketing, you should buy this book and beat your CEO to the punch. I’m not kidding when I say The CEO’s Guide to Marketing will make you the smartest marketer in the room. You are going to wish you had this book years ago. Lonny Kocina

A timely look at how to evaluate and determine executive pay Recognized as the leading expert on executive compensation, Robin Ferracone combines her own 20 years of experience with interviews with executives and compensation committees to provide a clear examination of and guidance on determining pay packages, actions, and designs. and Over the past 25 years, the author has created a database of executive pay across 44,000 companies, broken down by company performance, company revenue and industry. Using this data, the author provides boards and individuals evaluating executive pay with the ability to analytically determine an appropriate compensation package. Provides real-life stories, perspectives, and insights from thought leaders on executive compensation Contains interview with compensation committee members, executives, academicians, government leaders, and shareholder activists Research based on 44,000 companies broken down by performance, revenue and industry Offers a timely resource on a hot button topic.

From the creator of the popular website Ask a Manager and New York’s work-advice columnist comes a witty, practical guide to 200 difficult professional conversations—featuring all-new advice! There’s a reason Alison Green has been called “the Dear Abby of the work world.” Ten years as a workplace-advice columnist have taught her that people avoid awkward conversations in the office because they simply don’t know what to say. Thankfully, Green does—and in this incredibly helpful book, she tackles the tough discussions you may need to have during your career. You’ll learn what to say when • coworkers push their work on you—then take credit for it • you accidentally trash-talk someone in an email then hit “reply all” • you’re being micromanaged—or not being managed at all • you catch a colleague in a lie • your boss seems unhappy with your work • your cubemate’s loud speakerphone is making you homicidal • you got drunk at the holiday party Praise for Ask a Manager “A must-read for anyone who works . . . [Alison Green’s] advice boils down to the idea that you should be professional (even when others are not) and that communicating in a straightforward manner with candor and kindness will get you far, no matter where you work.”—Booklist (starred review) “The author’s friendly, warm, no-nonsense writing is a pleasure to read, and her advice can be widely applied to relationships in all areas of readers’ lives. Ideal for anyone new to the job market or new to management, or anyone hoping to improve their work experience.”—Library Journal (starred review) “I am a huge fan of Alison Green’s Ask a Manager column. This book is even better. It teaches us how to deal with many of the most vexing big and little problems in our workplaces—and to do so with grace, confidence, and a sense of humor.”—Robert Sutton, Stanford professor and author of The No Asshole Rule and The Asshole Survival Guide “Ask a Manager is the ultimate playbook for navigating the traditional workforce in a diplomatic but firm way.”—Erin Lowry, author of Broke Millennial: Stop Scraping By and Get Your Financial Life Together

A powerful lesson in what is really important in business, this remarkable book by an ultimate insider takes the lessons of the peddler and reveals how they can be used by the rest of us. Reminiscent of bestsellers such as "Who Moved My Cheese?" and" The One-Minute Manager, What the CEO Wants You to Know" is simple, direct, and of immense use to everyone in business.

"Views differ on bitcoin, but few doubt the transformative potential of Blockchain technology. The Truth Machine is the best book so far on what has happened and what may come along. It demands the attention of anyone concerned with our economic future." —Lawrence H. Summers, Charles W. Eliot University Professor and President Emeritus at Harvard, Former Treasury Secretary From Michael J. Casey and Paul Vigna, the authors of The Age of Cryptocurrency, comes the definitive work on the Internet’s Next Big Thing: The Blockchain. Big banks have grown bigger and more entrenched. Privacy exists only until the next hack. Credit card fraud is a fact of life. Many of the “legacy systems” once designed to make our lives easier and our economy more efficient are no longer up to the task. Yet there is a way past all this—a new kind of operating system with the potential to revolutionize vast swaths of our economy: the blockchain. In The Truth Machine, Michael J. Casey and Paul Vigna demystify the blockchain and explain why it can restore personal control over our data, assets, and identities; grant billions of excluded people access to the global economy; and shift the balance of power to revive society’s faith in itself. They reveal the disruption it promises for industries including finance, tech, legal, and shipping. Casey and Vigna expose the challenge of replacing trusted (and not-so-trusted) institutions on which we’ve relied for centuries with a radical model that bypasses them. The Truth Machine reveals the empowerment possible when self-interested middlemen give way to the transparency of the blockchain, while highlighting the job losses, assertion of special interests, and threat to social cohesion that will accompany this shift. With the same balanced perspective they brought to The Age of Cryptocurrency, Casey and Vigna show why we all must care about the path that blockchain technology takes—moving humanity forward, not backward.