What makes The Yankees special is that there are millions of baseball players, and thousands of teams around the world, and they all do
exactly the same thing, so there is an objective measure that says the Yankees are the best.
However when it comes to companies and executive functions there are as many job descriptions as there are companies. We can quibble all day about the definition of world-class, but I think the article draws the right distinction between executives and employees. The rank and file will converge to average for any large company, but executives will always be a handful and receive outsized compensation, so it is reasonable to demand more from them than you could expect from everyone else.
