Senior executives undermine simple rules for several reasons: They don't trust their team to develop or use the rules, they don't want their personal discretion constrained, or they prefer to keep decision criteria vague.
On Friday, a taskforce established by independent thinktank the Big Innovation Centre and the Bank of England published a paper that was progressive in spirit and contained elements that chimed with May's agenda, such as the need to make executive pay simpler and linking it to long-term performance.
Companies like Johnson & Johnson's Health Management Inc., the Travelers Corporation's Center for Corporate Health Promotion, Staywell Health Management Services and dozens of smaller players offer an array of products and services, from health resort vacations for executives, to simple twice-a-week aerobics classes in company conference rooms and cafeterias.
According to Leahy, Jordan wanted his old life back, too: 'He felt empty without games and so his comeback was never so much a tale of longing as it was of loss, which is a very different thing.' But the decision also grew out of his failures as an executive: the simplest solution to the Wizards' problems was for the owner to step on the court again.
At a congressional hearing a couple of weeks ago, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine asked a lineup of current and former Goldman Sachs executives a simple question: Did they have a duty to act in their clients', not their firm's, best interest?
By simple executive order, Mr Obama brought in a policy that did just that.
Some of these reforms could be achieved through executive order or simple regulatory changes.
The reasoning, one Tyson executive said, was simple: John Tyson, at the time, was thoroughly messed up.
They also have guests like Jill Blashack, chief executive of Tastefully Simple of Alexandria, Minn., which sells food through home parties.
He said that soon after he took up the job, he gave NBC Universal's chief executive, Jeff Zucker, a simple message: "We're going to have to pay".
