Supermanagers

In a previous post I alluded to the loss of N’Golo Kanté as a possible factor in Leicester City FC’s dismal performance in the season at that time (only five wins in 25 league games), in contrast with their winning the Premier League championship the previous season. This poor record led to the firing of the celebrated coach Claudio Ranieri, who previously had been widely praised for last year’s miracle finish.

But something funny has happened since. Under the management of the unheralded Craig Shakespeare, who had never been anything but an assistant manager (and, for one game, a caretaker manager), the club has won not only three straight League games, but overcame a first-leg loss to Sevilla to win on aggregate and advance to the UEFA Champions League quarter-finals, the only English team to do so.

I have long been skeptical of the value of “supermanagers” (be they sports coaches, company CEOs, city managers, police chiefs, school superintendents, or university presidents), typically hired by the institution’s governing board amid great fanfare and after a national or international search, and usually based on the candidate’s supposedly stellar performance at another institution.

The hiring of celebrity architects for public buildings falls into the same category.

What such individuals have in common is a talent for self-promotion (I have written about one such specimen here and here, and another one here).

And what I used to find surprising is the ease with which the boards fall for the spiel. After all, corporate and institutional boards, city councils and the like are supposed to be made up of smart people, who — one would think — could see past the bullshit, as glibly as it may be presented.

But I am no longer surprised. They are, I have found, not all that smart. Typically, they have attained their positions as a reward for  some success in life, and this success (often due to luck) has led them to believe that they are smart. So that they are, in fact, under the same self-aggrandizing illusion as the candidates that they interview for management positions.

That makes it hard to see past the self-promotion.

 

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More I squared

This a continuation of my musings about insurance incompetence, which I call I². In the first post on the subject I discussed Social Security. This issue has by now been resolved; the undue (post-mortem) payments to my mother’s bank account have been deducted by the Treasury.

Now I come to my experiences with private insurers occasioned by my mother’s recent death. First, the health plan.

I phoned the healthcare-insurance carrier to inform them of her passing four days after it happened, and after a wait on hold for a reasonable length of time I reached a representative, who took my information and assured me that it would be taken care of. When I saw, a couple of days later, that her bank account was billed for a premium payment, I assumed that this was to cover the previous month, and gave the matter no further thought.

A month later, though, there was another premium deduction. By now it was January, and when I called again the wait on hold was an hour. When I finally reached someone to talk to, she seemed to know nothing of the cancellation, and said that she would put me on a brief hold to discuss the matter with someone. After twenty additional minutes I gave up.

I used my mother’s data to set up online access to her insurance account, and found that it was still active.

I phoned again a few days later — again, with a long wait — and this time reached someone who did see a record of my original call. This time I was told that a cancellation takes 30 business days to take effect. That, I calculated, would be some time in late January. When that date came around, I checked again, and again found “active.”

Another phone call, another long wait. This time I got apologies for an overly busy staff, and was asked to wait another couple of weeks.

I checked again today, and the account is still active. However, this is the time of the month when deductions have been taken, and so far there has not been one. Maybe there is hope for a refund at some point..

Note, also, a big difference: while the government giveth but is slow to take away, the private sector taketh away but is slow to give back.

I squared

A couple of years ago I published a post titled I, meaning not the subjective first-person singular pronoun but an abbreviation of “incompetence.” I focused on the California Department of Transportation, and mentioned in passing the CIA and FBI, where I interpreted the I in the abbreviations as just that.

My discussion in that post was based on observation, not personal experience. But since my mother died, two months ago, I have had the opportunity of experiencing institutional incompetence first-hand, and specifically with respect to institutions dealing with insurance of one kind or another. I’m therefore calling this post I², for Insurance Incompetence.

There were three institutions that gave me this opportunity, one governmental and two private. The governmental one is, of course, the Social Security Administration (SSA), and this is the one I will discuss today.

On January 28 I received this letter, addressed to my mother:

Now, my mother died last December 3, and, since I was told by both her social worker and the funeral director that the mortuary would inform SSA of her death, I didn’t think that I needed to bother doing so, until, some time in early January, I noticed that a Social Security payment had been credited to her account. I immediately called SSA, and when I finally reached a representative, I was told that they had not been notified of her death, but that it would be registered right away. So, imagine my surprise at receiving the letter, sent about three weeks after that.

Since the letter gave me the direct line of Mrs. X, I called it as soon as I could. Of course I got her voicemail, and left a message to call me back (which the outgoing message promised to do “as soon as possible”). There was no callback, so I called again the next day, and this time I got her. When I identified myself there was no acknowledgment of my message, and, once again, I was told that there was no record of her death. Would I please fax a copy of her death certificate? After I did that I was assured that there would be no more payments, and that the surplus payment would be deducted by the Treasury.

Guess what? Today another payment appeared in my mother’s account.

Next time: private insurers.