May 17, 2010; Source: ChicagoBreakingSports.com | Stephanie Streeter managed to get a lot done in her short tenure as CEO of the United States Olympic Committee. Among other things, the former printing company exec “alienated nearly every USOC constituency soon after moving from the USOC’s volunteer board of directors to a job for which she was painfully ill-suited.”
Streeter opted out of the job after ten months amid calls for her ouster but still managed to net slightly more than $1 million in compensation. Although Streeter’s base salary was a mere $401,000 she was given a bonus (?!) of $558,000 . . . for a job well done? When she was hired there were protests even about her base salary but the chair of USOC’s board defended it by pointing to her valuable experience in dealing with the complexities and challenges of the corporate world. This experience proved insufficient and observers seem to believe her weakness was in her inability to create the relationships necessary to get the job done.
We recognize that this practice of awarding bonuses to the disastrously underperforming or to those who lay waste to an endeavor or its clients is the way business gets done in some large corporations but we are the first to admit, we don’t get the rationale. Maybe we need to go for that MBA after all.—Ruth McCambridge
