Back in August 2022, Braden Wallake, the CEO of social networking companies Hyper Social and Hyper Sphere, shared a LinkedIn post with a photo of him crying.
The post was about the companies laying off people and it starts with, “This will be the most vulnerable thing I’ll ever share”.
In the post, Braden takes responsibility for the layoffs even though he doesn’t use the word ‘responsibility’.
“We just had to layoff a few of our employees. I’ve seen a lot of layoffs over the last few weeks on LinkedIn. Most of those are due to the economy, or whatever other reason.
Ours? My fault.
I made a decision in February and stuck with that decision for far too long. Now, I know my team will say that “we made that decision together”, but I lead us into it. And because of those failings, I had to do today, the toughest thing I’ve ever had to do.“
Why did he share a photo of him crying? Because of this: “I just want people to see, that not every CEO out there is cold-hearted and doesn’t care when he/she have to lay people off“.
That was perhaps the most performative act by a CEO who, in order to showcase that he is not ‘cold-hearted’ by announcing layoffs, shares a photo of him crying in the layoff message to the public.
Just consider the possibility of the crying photo of a CEO going into the all-employees email announcing the layoffs that he may have sent internally. Sounds absurd? Of course.
So, shouldn’t a performative gesture like this in a public post on LinkedIn (where the employees, both unaffected and affected are merely incidental participants) be even more absurd? It sure is (was) and Braden was called out for that more than adequately, in the comments on his own LinkedIn post, and elsewhere.
But the post got so much traction across the globe that Braden even updated his bio to, “Just your friendly neighborhood viral crying CEO”!
Now, the performative part of Braden’s layoff communication was the photo of him crying.
But consider what the CEO and Co-Founder of the online furniture retailer Wayfair, Niraj Shah wrote in the same month in 2022 while announcing a layoff of 870 employees: “I take responsibility for the impact this decision will have on the nearly 900 Wayfairians who will be told today they are no longer a part of building our company’s future”.
Before Wayfair, Coinbase announced layoffs in June 2022. Coinbase CEO and Cofounder, Brian Armstrong wrote in his email, “I want to walk you through why I am making this decision below, but first I want to start by taking accountability for how we got here. I am the CEO, and the buck stops with me”, and “Both of these (need to manage expenses and need to increase efficiency) come back to my decision to significantly scale our team over the past two years, so this accountability rests fully with me”.
September 2022: Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson, in his layoff announcement, said, “Twilio has grown at an astonishing rate over the past couple years. It was too fast, and without enough focus on our most important company priorities. I take responsibility for those decisions”.
In early November 2022, Indian edtech firm Unacademy laid off 10% of its workforce. CEO Gaurav Munjal wrote in his all-employee email, “This decision has not been easy and I take complete responsibility”.
That week Stripe announced layoffs too. Stripe CEO Patrick Collison sent a note to all employees where he said, “For those of you leaving: we’re very sorry to be taking this step and John and I are fully responsible for the decisions leading up to it”.
Another company announced layoffs in the same week – NFT company Dapper Labs laid off 22% of its staff. Founder and CEO Roham Gharegozlou wrote in his email, “our company grew incredibly fast –– from 100 to over 600 employees in less than two years –– introducing operational challenges which prevented us from being as aligned, nimble and community-driven as we need to be. I take responsibility for that…”.
Also in November 2022, Mark Zuckerberg wrote on the Facebook blog while announcing the layoff of more than 11,000 employees: “I’ve decided to reduce the size of our team by about 13% and let more than 11,000 of our talented employees go. I want to take accountability for these decisions and for how we got here”, and elsewhere in the message, “I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that”.
The Dutch cloud communications firm, MessageBird, laid off 31% of its workforce in late November 2022. MessageBird CEO Robert Vis wrote in his email: “I’m very sorry to be taking this step and I take full responsibility for the decisions leading up to it”.
In December 2022, the CEO of Pluralsight Aaron Skonnard announced layoffs, and the message had, “As your CEO, I own this outcome and take full responsibility for the decisions that got us here”.
January 4, 2023: Salesforce CEO Mark Benioff’s note to the SEC while announcing layoffs had, “As our revenue accelerated through the pandemic, we hired too many people leading into this economic downturn we’re now facing, and I take responsibility for that”.
January 20, 2023: Google. Sundar Pichai. 12,000 employees impacted. The line: “The fact that these changes will impact the lives of Googlers weighs heavily on me, and I take full responsibility for the decisions that led us here”.
January 23, 2023: Spotify. Daniel Ek. 600 employees impacted. The line: “In hindsight, I was too ambitious in investing ahead of our revenue growth. And for this reason, today, we are reducing our employee base by about 6% across the company. I take full accountability for the moves that got us here today”.
By now, it almost feels like all these CEOs had their layoff communication written from the same agency because they all uniformly have the CEO (or the co-founder) take full responsibility (or accountability) in so many words.
Unlike the CEO apology mail I had written about last week, the cost of layoffs is far too high. In the earlier example, the cost was at best $15-$20 for a bottle of olive oil. Here, we are dealing with the lives and livelihoods of thousands of employees who have been told, “It’s not you. It’s me!” by their CEO while easing them off their employment.
Interestingly, all through 2020 and 2021, CEOs did not ‘take responsibility’ for layoffs because they had a convenient reason for that: the pandemic. But this is the post-pandemic period entering into what is widely believed to be a recessionary time.
So, the obvious question: what happens when the CEO owns up ‘full responsibility’?
Unfortunately, and quite ironically, it doesn’t mean anything, in any absolute terms.
It feels like a ‘buck stops with me’ statement but without any commensurate meaning or actual accountability. So, to spell it out – for something the CEO is taking responsibility for, thousands of employees are laid off? I’m not sure it reads well at all and I wonder why and who started this ‘I take responsibility’ addition to these layoff emails!
It’s one thing to say, “We/I am sorry to see this day” (when we had to let go of so many of our talented colleagues), but it’s totally something else for the CEO to ‘take responsibility’ for that decision and not spell it out what he/she is intending to do about it now that the responsibility has been clearly nailed (by self).
If, for instance, the ‘I take full responsibility’ was followed by, just as an example, “and I intend to take a 10% cut in my annual pay”, that means something tangible, not just for the people impacted by the layoffs but to the entire organization and the company’s overall perception given how lopsided leadership pay is, in general.
Or, if the ‘I take full responsibility’ was followed by ‘and will be presenting this decision to the board of directors personally and would seek an appropriate measure of accountability for my actions from them’, it amounts to some direction.
But if the ‘I take full responsibility’ is not backed by anything concrete on part of the CEO, it’s perhaps as performative as Braden’s crying photo because, in reality, all it means is this: “I take responsibility for this decision and XX number of employees would be made to pay for it”.
It’d be far more productive and meaningful to not get into this false responsibility posturing without explaining what it entails and simply laying out the reasons for the decision, and focus more on what the company intends to do to ease the pain of the retrenchments. This last part has almost become a template by now. I first noticed it and wrote about it in 2020 (using Airbnb and Zomato as examples) and even spoke about this recently in The Ken’s Cost to Company podcast.
It looks like ‘I take full responsibility’ is the new, misguided template considering so many companies and CEOs falling for it without thinking it through.
For context, consider Satya Nadella’s email when Microsoft announced laying off over 10,000 employees:
“Today, we are making changes that will result in the reduction of our overall workforce by 10,000 jobs through the end of FY23 Q3. The senior leadership team and I are committed that as we go through this process, we will do so in the most thoughtful and transparent way possible.
U.S.-benefit-eligible employees will receive a variety of benefits, including above-market severance pay (highlight by me), continuing healthcare coverage for six months, continued vesting of stock awards for six months, career transition services, and 60 days’ notice prior to termination, regardless of whether such notice is legally required.”
There is no ‘I take full responsibility’ in Satya’s email, and it lays out the truth directly with some empathy added in the form of “in the most thoughtful and transparent way possible” and backing it up with “above-market severance pay”. This email does not feel performative simply because he doesn’t intend to perform through a layoffs email at all; he simply explains the situation, the impact, and the way forward.
‘Taking responsibility’ was perhaps started as a way to add a human element to an otherwise tough piece of communication but I believe it may do more damage to the leader’s persona and the company’s reputation if it is not backed by explaining what the at ‘taking responsibility’ would lead to on the part of the one ‘taking’ it.