YouSaid · the spoken record

Steven Clifford

lines on the record: 104
first: 2017-08-25
most recent: 2017-08-25
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Well, no, because everybody bled people. I mean, this is what doctors did. So, this is the way a lot of people think about, well, this is how we do compensation. This is how a board's supposed to work.”
2017-08-25 · Masters in Business · Steven Clifford Says You Don't Need a Compensation Consultant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, if I had known all of this twenty or thirty years ago and seen it at the start, I might have been able to do something to arrest it at that time before it got amazingly out of control. I mean, it's so blatantly insane. I say it's kind of like doctors who used to bleed people. Why did they bleed people? Bleaches and what have you. Why did they bleed people?”
2017-08-25 · Masters in Business · Steven Clifford Says You Don't Need a Compensation Consultant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I'm not that guy. Actually, at age 74, I'm playing the best golf of my life, but what I do is the courses I live in in the city of Seattle, but I belong to a course that's about five minutes from my house.”
2017-08-25 · Masters in Business · Steven Clifford Says You Don't Need a Compensation Consultant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, well, I work out, I do about 40 minutes on the elliptical every morning as I read the newspaper. Then I do about a 40 minutes strength stretching strengthening and then I play nine holes of golf most days.”
2017-08-25 · Masters in Business · Steven Clifford Says You Don't Need a Compensation Consultant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, thank you. As you age, physical exercise is the absolute key. It sends messages somehow to your body that, hey, you got to stay alive, you got to stay alert. So I do a lot of exercising.”
2017-08-25 · Masters in Business · Steven Clifford Says You Don't Need a Compensation Consultant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Lesson though. I failed when I didn't consult enough people and I failed when I consulted a lot of people. So I've had, as a CEO, you're going to fail a whole lot.”
2017-08-25 · Masters in Business · Steven Clifford Says You Don't Need a Compensation Consultant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm not sure I learned anything. I failed because I was too bold and then I failed because I was too timid at different times.”
2017-08-25 · Masters in Business · Steven Clifford Says You Don't Need a Compensation Consultant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They might have been a little more nervous. Exactly, exactly. And if you get, you kn If in the next Democratic primary you get a you get another socialist Sanders type candidate who's not quite a little to the right of Bernie but starts saying if elected I'm going to do something about this then I populists then I think boards might”
2017-08-25 · Masters in Business · Steven Clifford Says You Don't Need a Compensation Consultant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Political issue already with. I don't see it as a political. I don't think boards are scared. Boards are going to have to get scared and say to themselves, you know, if we don't reform ourselves, somebody else is going to. That's when it will start. They're not in that position now. You don't see anybody threatening legislation. I think it's got to get to the point that where they say, you know, if... We better do something.”
2017-08-25 · Masters in Business · Steven Clifford Says You Don't Need a Compensation Consultant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would have to, you know, the most influential books that I've ever read, I would say that Richard Dawkins' a selfish gene, probably influenced my thought. More than any other book I've run across. Now it's 1975.”
2017-08-25 · Masters in Business · Steven Clifford Says You Don't Need a Compensation Consultant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I never thought, I love a book that all of a sudden makes you think the way I've been thinking all my life is wrong on this particular issue.”
2017-08-25 · Masters in Business · Steven Clifford Says You Don't Need a Compensation Consultant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Doctor, I enjoyed your book, but I think you got one thing wrong. 10 minutes later 110 Princeton time. I get back an email saying, Thanks for the kind comments about your book. Your explanation would seem to be pretty good. However, we checked before we did this. And here's why our explanation is right and yours is wrong. And I said, here's a Nobel Prize winner, 110 answering an email from somebody he's never heard. I just found out astonishing.”
2017-08-25 · Masters in Business · Steven Clifford Says You Don't Need a Compensation Consultant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I don't need to go into it. I sit down, and this is at 10 o'clock Seattle time, 10 a.m. It's one o'clock Princeton time where he is. I write him an email. I said, dear Mr. Conneman, I enjoyed it.”
2017-08-25 · Masters in Business · Steven Clifford Says You Don't Need a Compensation Consultant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, so Daniel Kahneman, Nobel Prize winner, wrote this brilliant book. I thought he had one thing wrong. I thought he had made, I thought I had a better explanation for one of his examples than he did.”
2017-08-25 · Masters in Business · Steven Clifford Says You Don't Need a Compensation Consultant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Related or not? Okay In the last Three years I would save my Two favourite books were Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Thinking Slow. Sure. And I'll tell you a story about that. Why nations fail?”
2017-08-25 · Masters in Business · Steven Clifford Says You Don't Need a Compensation Consultant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, nobody steered me. I just kept, as I, you know, I was doing this at a company level to try and say, look, this doesn't make any sense. I mean, the incentives are all wrong and they're perverse and they're going the wrong way. And then as I got into it and into it, I said, this is an outrage. And, you know, I like to write. And so I started to write about it. But no, I steered myself.”
2017-08-25 · Masters in Business · Steven Clifford Says You Don't Need a Compensation Consultant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Has been the most successful bank stock among all banks. It's grown at about 20, 20% a year from. Forever. And then I just had lunch with him and I just had lunch with another one of my former men, Jay Golden, who was the controller of the brilliant, brilliant guy. New York City.”
2017-08-25 · Masters in Business · Steven Clifford Says You Don't Need a Compensation Consultant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, I would say the two early mentors I had were when I was in government. In New York, one was a fellow named Bob Wilmers, who is now a longtime CEO of M&T Bank and the most”
2017-08-25 · Masters in Business · Steven Clifford Says You Don't Need a Compensation Consultant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Going to do with that? Were you there during the introduction to that? Yes, I was. That was quite a period of time. My father-in-law, who's no longer a little bit of a Was a great investment”
2017-08-25 · Masters in Business · Steven Clifford Says You Don't Need a Compensation Consultant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was fascinating. I mean, the cast of characters I was working with and the issues I was working with, and I was a kid, I was 34 years old. So that was a lot of fun.”
2017-08-25 · Masters in Business · Steven Clifford Says You Don't Need a Compensation Consultant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, if the Soviet Union, I'm Soviet Union, that shows out my age, if Russia wanted to truly... Debilitate the army, the military in the United States, it would introduce an annual bonus system.”
2017-08-25 · Masters in Business · Steven Clifford Says You Don't Need a Compensation Consultant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, they're not self-motivated. They're not responsive. And we need to, you know, they'll perform better if we give them a bonus. Well, that's the same that you have. I mean, it's so absurd.”
2017-08-25 · Masters in Business · Steven Clifford Says You Don't Need a Compensation Consultant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And the analogy that I used to show you how absurd an annual bonus system is. The analogy I use in the book is... Think of setting a bonus system for generals in wartime, right? Because we need to motivate them.”
2017-08-25 · Masters in Business · Steven Clifford Says You Don't Need a Compensation Consultant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Where you are. Well, one of the problems is with the bonus system, you get an annual bonus, as if everything important falls. Within the calendar year. Within a calendar year.”
2017-08-25 · Masters in Business · Steven Clifford Says You Don't Need a Compensation Consultant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Your interests truly are aligned, and you're a long term shareholder because you can't even get out the day you quit the company. And there's a complicated way of how you can reduce this over time. And your test is that during that period you have to perform better than the other guys or half your restricted shares get forfeited.”
2017-08-25 · Masters in Business · Steven Clifford Says You Don't Need a Compensation Consultant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And there's only one performance requirement. Long term plus five, that stock has to perform better than the SP five hundred.”
2017-08-25 · Masters in Business · Steven Clifford Says You Don't Need a Compensation Consultant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To be a CEO. Let me tell you, I've lived very well I've lived very well and I belong to a very nice golf club and I've never made $2 million a year.”
2017-08-25 · Masters in Business · Steven Clifford Says You Don't Need a Compensation Consultant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You could, although that would be highly complicated. I prefer a much simpler system, which would be my system is you get a salary.”
2017-08-25 · Masters in Business · Steven Clifford Says You Don't Need a Compensation Consultant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There is never that test in everyone I've ever looked at. Once you set your base at 75% of the peer group, you are not held for any performance. You may have Your compensation may be linked to your stock price. It may be linked to earnings per share, but nothing about beating these peers.”
2017-08-25 · Masters in Business · Steven Clifford Says You Don't Need a Compensation Consultant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Those are at least 70%, if not more If that much. If that much. And so, hey, if you're in the right industry, in the right market, you're going to get big stock option gains, even if you perform much below your peer group. This is another thing that stuns me. Say they always say, okay, we're going to pay according to a peer group And then they say, But you're going to be paid at the 75th percentile because we're a good company. They never, ever test that you have to perform at the 75th percentile or you have to beat your peers at anything.”
2017-08-25 · Masters in Business · Steven Clifford Says You Don't Need a Compensation Consultant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is amazing. I look at these company proxies, and you know, they have 40 pages on executive compensation. And the word alignment is used at least 20 or 30 times in each proxy. And you're absolutely right. There's no alignment at all. I mean, heads I win, tails I break even with an option.”
2017-08-25 · Masters in Business · Steven Clifford Says You Don't Need a Compensation Consultant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, and that's why, and you combine that with the theoretical justification of shareholder value. And this is one of the, I think this is one of the worst things that's happened to American industry.”
2017-08-25 · Masters in Business · Steven Clifford Says You Don't Need a Compensation Consultant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's so powerful that, and by the way, this has been shown in study after study and in experiment after experiment, that for all All except repetitive tasks or really distasteful tasks like knocking on doors and selling magazines. Financial incentives tend to harm performance. You perform best, and I'm sure you perform best when you are motivated by your conception of want a job well done is.”
2017-08-25 · Masters in Business · Steven Clifford Says You Don't Need a Compensation Consultant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, $30 million is a powerful motivator there, right? You can ruin your show, but it's going to be a million dollars.”
2017-08-25 · Masters in Business · Steven Clifford Says You Don't Need a Compensation Consultant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You'll figure out a way to make that work. You were going to make that. I mean, look, I could always make earnings Bruce Air jump up and dance the macarina with a few accounting changes. But you're going to make that. I don't care what you have to do. You're going to make that. You are going to neglect everything else. You're going to focus totally on that. Suppose I... Your performance measure next year is How many headlines your radio story makes in the New York Post? You're going to get $30 million if you make. You're going to be interviewing anybody who'll make a headline. You don't care what, right?”
2017-08-25 · Masters in Business · Steven Clifford Says You Don't Need a Compensation Consultant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A pay system should only channel the motivation properly. Now financial incentives at the CEO level tend to have because they're so powerful tend to narrow your focus completely. You're a CEO. You can make $30 million this year if you increase earnings per share by X percent. Let's say your whole bonus is based on. Going to make that, you're going to make that”
2017-08-25 · Masters in Business · Steven Clifford Says You Don't Need a Compensation Consultant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The same situation. It goes back to 20, and all of a sudden you're making money because it's been repriced. Because we had to give you the incentive. Now, this is one of the worst parts of it. The idea that these huge option packages and various other pay packages are necessary to motivate you. Now, CEOs are highly motivated to start with. You don't get to be one would imagine. You don't get to be a CEO if you show up at 11 o'clock every morning.”
2017-08-25 · Masters in Business · Steven Clifford Says You Don't Need a Compensation Consultant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's either dilutive or expensive. The shareholder loses But according to the company, this money came from the Tooth Fairy. He just came in in the middle of the night, put $30 million under your pillow, and very nice of him.”
2017-08-25 · Masters in Business · Steven Clifford Says You Don't Need a Compensation Consultant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Really well. So you now cash in your million options for a gain of $30 an option. You pocket $30 million. That's not considered compensation. When you read, these ratios 351”
2017-08-25 · Masters in Business · Steven Clifford Says You Don't Need a Compensation Consultant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, they finally forced him to say, yes, it's compensation. So this is the way then the accountants and the companies got around that. They said, well, when we're going to give you a million options at 20. Stock is currently at twenty now. So those million options will run it through a black shoals model or something like that. And we'll say, okay, each option is worth a dollar today. So we say, you got compensation of a million dollars. You got a million options. Now, seven years later, the stock is at 50, not because you've done a good job, just because the market's.”
2017-08-25 · Masters in Business · Steven Clifford Says You Don't Need a Compensation Consultant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, because nothing else has worked, I'm saying you need a very blunt instrument. And what I'm saying is you need a luxury tax. I'm taking a page from Major League Baseball. Really? Luxury, you know, the Major League Baseball says, look, if your payroll gets over X, you got to pay a tax. So I'm going to say if you pay your CEO everything over $6 million to any executive. You got to pay a tax to the federal government. Dollar for dollar. And by the way, I'm going to include everything.”
2017-08-25 · Masters in Business · Steven Clifford Says You Don't Need a Compensation Consultant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Hey, I've been looking at our insurance, you know, the cost of real inflation-adjusted cost has gone up a thousand percent, 10 times. Our coverage is worse. Why are we listening to these consultants? That's the position they're in with CEOs, but they won't ask that question.”
2017-08-25 · Masters in Business · Steven Clifford Says You Don't Need a Compensation Consultant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Your top quartile. And by the way, then we'll set for the insurance company, we're going to set performance goals. And if they hit those goals, we'll double our premiums. That's a cost. So you accept that. The company accepts that. It's now 2017. You're on the board. And you say,”
2017-08-25 · Masters in Business · Steven Clifford Says You Don't Need a Compensation Consultant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Media pressure impacted or not? Corporate directors would have to be brain dead not to know that their CEOs are wildly overpaid. I mean, how can you realistically go to, you know, attend a meeting and say, oh, yeah, okay, so we're paying Jotha. So Joe's made $40 million this year. Well, that's all right because, you know, his peers are all paid that. Let me give you an example. Suppose in 1980 we had insurance consultants. And they came to the boards and they said, hey, we got a great new way to do insurance. See, we're going to have a peer group. We're going to see what all your peers are paying for insurance. Right. Okay. And then we're going to have you pay at the 75th percentile because you're horrible. Well, no, no. This is a great idea. You're a good company. You'll pay there. And by the way.”
2017-08-25 · Masters in Business · Steven Clifford Says You Don't Need a Compensation Consultant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I could not find a number on that. There's nothing public. All of these companies have, all big companies have compensation consultants, and they're paid million to $10 million at these places. And really, the only thing they do is give you a big report and a lot of slides and a big PowerPoint and Goose's CEO's pay. It's that simple.”
2017-08-25 · Masters in Business · Steven Clifford Says You Don't Need a Compensation Consultant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Compensation consultants come in and say, We're going to give you all sorts of studies in an objective way to pay your CEO. They're very uncuous and pretend to be very serious and basically what the CEO knows they're going to do is juice his pay. That's all these competence communications can come. You don't even have to wink and nod. You just look at the record.”
2017-08-25 · Masters in Business · Steven Clifford Says You Don't Need a Compensation Consultant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly. So, you know, when you're fit, when you have the right fit for the right time in the company, you'll look pretty good. What are your skills? So I'm a fanatic”
2017-08-25 · Masters in Business · Steven Clifford Says You Don't Need a Compensation Consultant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, I was a moron. Most of success is being in the right place in the right time or something called fit that you can That your skills, the particular skills you have fit for what that company needs at that time. So let me take an icon of American business, Henry Ford. Henry Ford was a superb fit for the automobile industry when mass production and manufacturing efficiency were what was critical. When it became a question of customer styling, Henry Fort was a terrible fit.”
2017-08-25 · Masters in Business · Steven Clifford Says You Don't Need a Compensation Consultant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It would appear to me that Baseball players, let's say, seldom go from superstars to bums in a single season. This happens all the time with CEOs. I mean, we've seen CEOs crash and burn. They're brilliant. They're the new poster child for top CEOs. Next year, they're out of a job. Most, look, I was a CEO for 14 years. When I was in the right place at the right time, I was a genius.”
2017-08-25 · Masters in Business · Steven Clifford Says You Don't Need a Compensation Consultant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now, when I got into that, it turned out that first of all, if I took the base four baseball players with the highest batting average, you would have heard of them.”
2017-08-25 · Masters in Business · Steven Clifford Says You Don't Need a Compensation Consultant · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source