Hacker Bits, April 2016

Companies going under
is a real pity, not only for the
founders and investors. The real
losers in those cases are the
employees, the suppliers and
the customers. They bet on the
wrong horse for something that
will now materially affect their
lives. They feel (in some cases
rightly so) that their trust has
been misplaced, and in some
cases, they will feel duped or
defrauded.
When the company is doing
ok, there is money in the bank.
When you’re hiring and the sun
is shining, anybody can be CEO
of a company. But when the
bank accounts are running dry,
when you have to fire people
company might have survived.
Before we go any further,
let’s take a look at what it is
that a CEO actually does, what
room to maneuver there is,
what you’re obliged to do, what
you are allowed to do and what
you’re explicitly forbidden to
do. Once that is out of the way,
we’ll get to some more general
advice.
The actual legal situation
of what it means to be a CEO
varies from country to country.
I’ve tried to keep the text
presented here general enough
that you should get some (or
significant) mileage out of it no
matter where you are. But if you
currently are CEO of a company
As a CEO, you are ultimately
responsible for whatever happens to
and in your company...
In this article I’m going to try
to give potential and actual
CEOs (and other C level execs
to some extent) some actionable
advice when it comes to how
they conduct themselves, in
the hope that this will at some
future date save some of you a
great deal of misery and in some
cases, charges of misconduct or
worse.
My hope is that this will
somehow help save a few companies
by causing you, the CEO,
to change direction before it is
too late to do so.
As seen from the outside,
the job of a CEO seems to be
composed of equal components
motivator, ambassador, networker
and the person that ‘sets
the example.’ And that’s all true
but there is also another side to
being a CEO, one that is much
more formalized and governed
by all kinds of rules.
In my practice I come across
all kinds of companies (and all
sizes) and unfortunately sometimes
I also come across companies
that are sick, some so sick
that they will not survive. The
reason I’m writing this article is
that recently I again was sent in
to try to save a company from
going under and I feel that if the
CEO of that company had read
an article like this maybe six
months ago, this whole disaster
could have been avoided.
and when it seems as if there
is just no end to the bad news,
it really matters who is in the
driving seat. It seems such a
great thing, to be the master
of a company but it is a double
edged sword. With all that freedom
and executive power comes
the flip side of that coin: executive
responsibility.
Companies being sick is in
and of itself not a rare thing,
but what bothers me is that, in
many of these cases, the company
is much sicker than it has to
be. The wounds are, to a large
extent, self-inflicted, and, if only
someone had had the presence
of mind to change direction
when it was still possible, the
and you are yourself unclear
about your role or if you feel
that anything here clashes with
the way you see things, then I
would strongly suggest you hire
a competent lawyer in your jurisdiction
for a couple of hours.
Let them explain as clearly as
possible (and where applicable
in your own language) what the
local situation is.
Quite a few companies
that end up dead do not die of
external causes. Plenty of them
are murdered from the inside,
either by bad decisions made on
purpose, by inaction, malice or
incompetence and it is frustrating
to see this happen when it
could have been so easily avoid-
hacker bits
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