Missed Agent Opportunity: Failure of Boards and Press

The ability to consume and use complex information is critical to leadership, especially in toady's' world. It is, in fact, so important that the society has evolved, through design and historical process, agencies that serve to help select the better of competing claimants to top jobs. That National leadership be well chosen is paramount, for lives of hundreds of millions of citizens and, in the case of US of A, of billions abroad, can be at stake.

That corporate heads be well chosen, especially for big Globals as GE, is no less critical, especially today, when these CEO's decide not just the livelihood of tens of thousands of employees across the globe, but represent revenues in excess of the GDP of many countries', and indirectly impact, by lobbying and sponsorship, the policy-process of local and national legislative bodies.

General Electric has a lengthy, and some say destructive, process of leadership-selection. The corporate behemoth uses a public horse-race to identify a CEO in cutthroat process, that ends, like some primal mating-dance, in the elimination of the unsuccessful contenders. The GE CEO, and the Board of Directors, serve as the agents that mediate this competition.

The US government has an electoral process, in which the Primary system, and the press, most directly through televised debates, seek to referee the process of selecting the President.

This complex "Public Square" sees the would-be claimants to Presidentship, with all its mighty power and grandeur, strut their stuff-- campaigns in tow, surrogates exchanging fire, even their spouses on display, and legions of fans cheering and funding the melee. Such is the exercise of Democracy today. And, in all honesty, and by any measure, it is a pretty successful process. The lofty here mingles, mostly in good measure, with the lascivious. The mischievous blood-letting keeps the process spiced up, while the debates and policy-papers help simultaneously help the candidate raise their own electability, and persuade the electorate, through the process of crafting and voicing platforms. Sphere: Related Content