We all succumb to the annual ritual of making a bunch of resolutions about how we will change our lives with the start of the New Year: eat better and healthier foods, exercise more, reorganize our rather hectic and stressful lives in order to live longer, and learn to enjoy what we have. In most instances, regardless of how dedicated we are to these resolutions, most of our good intentions give way to the realities and pressures of everyday living, and before we know it, we are pretty much back to where we were on December 31.

Executive compensation is, in many ways, treated very much the same way. Boards and their Compensation Committees set forth their resolutions on how they will tighten up the criteria for governing and determining executive compensation going forward. Some of this idealism is internally generated based on reasonableness and a strong sense of responsibility on the Board