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I was at CaseIH when Bob Nardelli was brought in to 'fix' our division. The guy was a joke. In his first speach to the engineers he talked about 'Sky Blue' design. The term is 'Blue Sky'. It was obvious that he was clueless and that he was only sucessful at GE because he was able to follow Jack Welch's directions. He didn't last long, fortunately, and I don't know how much he took from us while failing, but it was certainly more than any of the employees at lower levels who were holding the place together.
He went back to GE and eventually rose to the #3 position. Even the great (and I mean it) Jack Welch promoted based on something other than competence.
Nobody who tries to argue that the best rise to the top, or that the pay is justified by the performance ever gives any data supporting their position. I'm sure that in Nardelli's case a trained monkey could have lead Home Depot to similar results and would have worked for bananas.
