<story><title>MoviePass Worked Out Great</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-08-07/moviepass-worked-out-great</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>CamelCaseName</author><text>&amp;gt;Lowe&amp;#x27;s happy-go-lucky persona marked a shift from the all-business Spikes, whom he had replaced in the company hierarchy as CEO. On the rare occasions Lowe made it into the office, staff would need almost an entire day to get him up to speed. His general attitude, as one source described, was, &amp;#x27;Well, what do you think we should do?&amp;#x27;&lt;p&gt;How do people like this make it so far in their careers?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>smacktoward</author><text>The writeup says that Lowe was installed as CEO by the company that bought MoviePass, Helios &amp;amp; Matheson Analytics, and that the shift down to the $10 price point was the brainstorm of H&amp;amp;M&amp;#x27;s own CEO, Ted Matheson.&lt;p&gt;Put yourself in Matheson&amp;#x27;s (presumably quite expensive) shoes for a moment. You&amp;#x27;re in the process of acquiring this company, MoviePass, and you have some Big Ideas™ for it. Who would you want to have sitting in that company&amp;#x27;s CEO chair? Not an independent-minded entrepreneur who&amp;#x27;s full of ideas of their own, that&amp;#x27;s for sure. No, what you&amp;#x27;d want is a yes-man, an amiable non-entity who can be counted on to do what you tell them to do while otherwise staying out of your way and letting you play with your new toy.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s not uncommon for wealthy people to have a few people like this in their entourage, people whose job is to fill a chair so as to prevent someone who could cause the rich guy trouble from filling it instead. It&amp;#x27;s a job whose only requirements are that you get along with the Big Guy and are willing to unquestioningly do anything he tells you to. In other words, it requires all the business savvy of a block of cheese. But it definitely pays well.</text></comment>
<story><title>MoviePass Worked Out Great</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-08-07/moviepass-worked-out-great</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>CamelCaseName</author><text>&amp;gt;Lowe&amp;#x27;s happy-go-lucky persona marked a shift from the all-business Spikes, whom he had replaced in the company hierarchy as CEO. On the rare occasions Lowe made it into the office, staff would need almost an entire day to get him up to speed. His general attitude, as one source described, was, &amp;#x27;Well, what do you think we should do?&amp;#x27;&lt;p&gt;How do people like this make it so far in their careers?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bumby</author><text>I agree in the context of not being in the office when his team needs guidance, this is bad.&lt;p&gt;But asking &amp;quot;what do you think we should do?&amp;quot; shouldn&amp;#x27;t be lambasted as an indicator of incompetence. In my experience, leaders who feel like they should have all the answers are the most incompetent ones.</text></comment>