It's just the money. The stakes are simply too high. You are dealing collectively with millions of dollars in total compensation between just a few people in a room having a meeting. Every single gesture or slight or brilliant idea or suggestion made can have a direct consequential impact measured in hundreds of thousands of dollars. It becomes completely impossible to be truly open and honest and collaborative when that's the case. Everything becomes a life and death struggle of competition. People with $800,000 mortgages and $70,000 car payments to make are thinking about very little else. It's pure game theory at this point, where any productive work is a side effect.