Generally, a CEO with sustained poor performance is -on average- let go after ~3 bad years, if not less. That’s been studied pretty extensively across medium-to-large NYSE-listed companies, and the stats are easy enough to find. Yet Goff Murka is still here.
The decision about a CEO’s employment and performance reviews is handled by a committee of the Board. And Geoff himself is also on the Board. That’s one of the reasons CEOs often sit on boards in the first place: to avoid being completely at the mercy of the Board and to maintain some degree of stability and influence.
Funnily enough, three MDT board members also came out of GE. Funny how that works. At the very least, there’s an element of mutual back-scratching and shared incentives.
Being on a Board is a great gig: incredibly lucrative and relatively low-risk compared to operational executive roles. Great money for comparatively little legwork, with the worst-case consequence usually just being the loss of the seat. Geoff has a pretty nice setup with the GE network: everyone scratches each other’s backs and keeps the machine running.
This is basically a textbook corporate-governance criticism: board interlocks, executive networks, and incentive alignment reducing accountability for underperforming CEOs. We can stop speculating on the mystery of why GM has his job. It's this simple.
There’s simply far more incentive for everyone involved to sit tight and protect the status quo and their own interests than there is to force a change.
And that's where Elliott has come in. That's why they've gotten seats on the Board. What they do with the seats remains to be seen: join in on the grift, or try to save MDT as a company.
There is no mystery. It's rent-seeking in plain sight and will not change until the GE faction leaves or is removed from the Board.