A Twisted Chain of Command

摘要

It sure is. In fact, that sound you hear is the collective groan of hordes of people, just like you, who have watched this dysfunctional dynamic play out in their own organizations. And we're not just talking about IT getting buried or neglected until a crisis strikes, though that's bad enough. The more onerous problem suggested by your letter is the far-too-frequent Rasputin-like dominance of the CFO. O.K., maybe Rasputin is a bit extreme. But it's not going too far to say that chief financial officers can, and very often do, wield too much influence within companies. And if it's not the CFO, it's the so-called chief administrative officer who has excessive power, overseeing finance itself, human resources, and any number of other staff departments. Whichever it is, this extra management layer generates bureaucracy at its worst. The person holding