The Saviour-Industrial Complex

The Saviour Industrial Complex0:00/600.2641×The moment of appointment is the moment of the fraud, if there is to be one. You have very likely watched it happen. A board sits opposite a candidate it has flown in at considerable expense and asks the question that will govern the next three years: can you deliver this? One kind of executive pauses. They ask for the diagnostic, request a fortnight with the operating model and four years of financials, and return with a counter-proposal in three parts—what is achievable, what is not, and what would have to be true for the impossible to become merely difficult. The other kind holds the room's gaze and says yes. You know which one was hired, because you were there, and because some part of you was relieved.It is not stupidity that produces this preference, nor even ordinary credulity. The system is doing precisely what it was built to do. The board needs a story for its shareholders. The candidate needs the role. The search firm needs the…