Treating business units that book revenue as "profit centres" only makes sense if the revenue they book is entirely due to goods and services supplied by magic elves. Otherwise, <em>the work done to enable that revenue to be booked is part of the profit-generating business</em>. Letting internal cost accounting say otherwise is a recipe for bad business.

So the first part of the solution is to drop the cost/profit dichotomy, and actually have CEOs focus on understanding their business. This is an unrealistic suggestion, I know, but I can dream.