Scott Adams on CEOs

Scott Adams, the Dilbert cartoonist, compared two studies. One said that happy workers are more successful, and the other said that sad workers are more productive. His conclusion:

Now, if you were to describe the job of a CEO versus the job of a lower level worker, I think you might say the CEO needs to be successful (as opposed to productive) whereas the lower level worker needs to be productive (as opposed to successful). Ideally, everyone should be both successful and productive, but in terms of importance, you would prefer a successful CEO over one who has more meetings, or however else you would measure “productivity” in that job. And a factory worker, for example, needs to be productive more than he needs to “succeed,” if success even has meaning in that sort of job.

So it follows from the science that grossly overpaying a CEO makes good sense. It allows the CEO to be happy, which increases his odds of success, which is good for the stockholders. And best of all, overpaying a CEO makes the workers sad, which makes them more productive, which is also good for the stockholders.

I appreciate Adams’s logic, but I don’t think shareholders would see things the same way he does.