One of the real problems with having trophy managers in aviation businesses is that they really have no idea about what is going on so they build large teams around them and massively increase the bureaucracy and thereby increasing their inefficiency and the cost of running an airline. Aviation seems to suffer from this issue of us/them in management in that management think only they can do it so they breed people to be 'managers' and block folks with actual operational knowledge and skills from being in senior roles who don't need a cast of thousands propping them up.
The best example of this was a advertisiment for the CPA which was online recently where a young woman who had just graduated and because of her newly minted qualification she is now able to run a engineering department in Qantas despite having zero idea about what goes on. She actually admits this during the ad, to which I just shake my head. No wonder we see so many ludicrus expensive mistakes made by airlines if this is how it is done.