Everywhere we look we see corrupt, greedy, out-of-touch leadership. As customers become better and better informed, this narcissistic leadership is ushering in an era of deep distrust. That will have significant implications for design thinking.
The Irish Farmers Association (IFA) has had a long and successful history. It used to be that when you became head of the IFA you were paid enough to hire someone to run your farm while you were running the IFA. You also got paid basic travel expenses.
But something happened along the way and the ‘modern’ executives started giving themselves incredible pay rises until the head honcho was earning nearly half a million euro a year, not to mention lavish pension plans. Secrecy was everything to these boys. They absolutely scoffed at the idea of transparency, hiding behind the fact that some big accounting firm ‘audited’ them and agreed that, yes, these most super of supermen deserved to get paid super, super well.