Tend to see articles about the damage that bad hires can cause, but never about bad CEOs who have more impact on company finances and your job stability. What is the rate of bad worker hires to acceptable worker hires and bad CEO hires to acceptable CEO hires? How about the exit package for a CEO?
They say firing a CEO after hiring them once realized they are not good is a bad look and costly for a company. For some reason, a CEO is hired in and giving an exit package not tied to their performance, yet the worry is about "bad workers". Somehow it's not bad enough to contain damage of your CEO hire? Risk company finances and stability just because you want to save face in the media? You can't do hard things.
Silicon Valley/Bay Area startup scene tends to be of the hire and fire fast mentality when it comes to workers, but bad executives? No no, we have to mitigate any damages they can do. Not when they are CEO. How do you contain the damage of a bad CEO when they can literally hire and fire people on the spot without your input? It's not typical to have proper governance in place because that's "too much work and bureaucracy" when you need to "move fast and break things".
Elon Musk is a bad CEO. He only has a cult of personality. Firing tons of workers and then rehiring them? Why would you ever do that? Who would want to cause just chaos on a whim and who would want to be hired back without demanding a pay increase. Talk about bad business.
Tim Cook is a good CEO as he doesn't get into the nitty gritty like hiring and firing people. He lets the teams take control, have impact and show off the jewels of their collaborations. Tim Cook is there to facilitate and build relationships to make sure work can progress.
Satya Nadella, a good CEO. Trusts his direct reports to move in a direction. He gets involved in the nitty gritty when he can, but he is focused on setting direction and building relationships.
Anyway, the article that spawned this though was about the new Washington Post CEO Will Lewis. Apparently, he's been involved with covering up Rupert Murdoch (WSJ, Fox New owner)'s scandals involving hacking and what not. You have to admit to yourself, if you were on the board and got this information after you hired the guy that you would be perturbed enough to want to fire the guy and find another CEO. How will your readership climb under a CEO who has that scandal under his belt? Placing people he knows into positions to solidify his position? Good luck, Washington Post because I do not believe for a second that they will get out of the financial hole they are in without burning whatever good will they had. The newspaper will survive and downsize, but the CEO will get his payout either way.
Bad CEO hire, fire fast can it work? I think so as long as any compensation is tied to their performance. No exit package until a certain performance is reached or how about just no exit packages. The salary, stock compensation and relationships a CEO receives is typically ENOUGH for one person. An exit package is just icing on the cake. I don't know if it is tradition that brings about exit packages, but it is needs to end.