I’m a CEO, I was not given a magic ring to predict the future when I took the role, I make the best decisions I can as a totally flawed human being.
Businesses have natural expansion and contraction cycles. New products are built and iterated on with a hope of finding product market fit, but most of these endeavours fail.
I am paid to make the hard decisions. Sometimes that hard decision is to scale down the workforce. Yes, it sucks, but a large majority of those impacted end up financially ahead (rehired quickly and one, two or three months ahead because of the redundancy payout).
Penalising a CEO for making hard decisions is a great recipe for stagnant companies. What would have happened to Kodak or Blockbuster if they had a CEO with enough grit to cut the workforce and pivot the businesses before they collapsed?
Businesses have natural expansion and contraction cycles. New products are built and iterated on with a hope of finding product market fit, but most of these endeavours fail.
I am paid to make the hard decisions. Sometimes that hard decision is to scale down the workforce. Yes, it sucks, but a large majority of those impacted end up financially ahead (rehired quickly and one, two or three months ahead because of the redundancy payout).
Penalising a CEO for making hard decisions is a great recipe for stagnant companies. What would have happened to Kodak or Blockbuster if they had a CEO with enough grit to cut the workforce and pivot the businesses before they collapsed?