How to get fired as a CEO

Over the last few weeks, everyone's been asking me about Carol Bartz and what happened at Yahoo! 

In short, she was predictably fired.  She followed the natural path to failure, which should have got her canned in the first year (it took over 2).  That's why Roy Bostock needs to step down as the Chairman Of the Board ASAP.  

When I lived in the Silicon Valley (2000-2005), I witnessed this failure phenom several times. The most notable one was Carly's slow motion #fail at HP. In both cases, it wasn't financial performance that preceeded the firing.  It was the style of leadership that hampered the innovation and execution cultures necessary to achieve financial performance.  

Fortunately, we can all learn from history.  It's no fun to be fired as a CEO, regardless of the severence to follow.  Both Carol and Carly wanted to succeed and I'm sure they experienced emotional trauma after being fired and publicly ridiculed. But, if you are a glutton for punishment, and would like to follow in their fired footsteps, here's what you should do: 

1 - Ignore The Founder's Values.  Carly did this, especially when it came to the founding members of HP.  She took down their pictures, disregarding some of their early success stories and attempted to reboot the culture her way (Carly's Way).  That is no way to make friends with the long time stakeholders or fans of the company.  Carol was much the same, as unJerry&David as it gets.  When I was at Yahoo we described our culture as: Fun, Human, Friendly, Easy To Work With and Fast. Carol was none of those. 

2 - Treat your new team like they are on probation. Many of my Yahoo friends told me that Carol's attitude coming in was, "these kids need adult supervision - to be help accountable for once."  That was NOT the reason Yahoo was in it's situation.  Sure, the delay of the Panama self-service project was a black eye, but the ship had already sailed by that point.  Yahoo's fall had to do with missed opportunities (merge with Ebay, buy Go-To before paid search took off, purchase Google when it was cheap to buy.)  It wasn't because the kids were acting fools. 

3 - Crush The Group's Collective Spirit.  Apple came back from the dead over the last 15 years because Jobs injected enthusiasm and drive into the culture, which produced stunning product breakthroughs. The employees brought all of themselves to work and when they hatched a brilliant idea - they gave it to their company out of a fierce sense of loyalty. At Yahoo, under Carol's rule, if you had a great idea, you left the company to start one that's fun to work for.  Just saying. 

4 - Manage With A "What Are You Doing?" Style.  When you first met with Carol, she'd wrinkle up her nose and with obvious consternation ask you, "So, what do YOU do!?  What have you made for us that makes money??"  That's no way to trigger emotional engagement.  If she was concerned about accountability, she should have lifted a page from Google lore and adopted OKRs (objective key results) and made them public via the employee's profile on the Intranet.  That would have positively done the trick.  That's what Eric Schmidt did in his successful tensure at Google.  The great leader, instead, mixes "How Are You Doing Here?" in the leadership lexicon, which employs the tool of empathy to create bonds instead of silo'd divisions. 

For more of this rant, in a collective academic tone, read The Top 10 Mistakes Leaders Make by Hans Finzel.  

 

Comments

[Doug Smith]

Thank you for this article! I am a young leader and to have the opportunity to read about the lessons that leaders are learning from CEO's at the 30,000 foot level has been extremely beneficial for me.

Doug