Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Would You Fire Your CEO? (cio.com)
As America celebrates a national holiday honoring organized labor, long-time Slashdot reader itwbennett shares this story about the modern workplace:
Three years ago, talent management and human resources company Haufe U.S. created a workplace democracy in which C-level leadership is elected by the employees for a one-year term. In an interview with CIO, Kelly Max, who is currently serving as Haufe's CEO, explains how the company got to this point and what they've learned from the experience.
"If you're going to talk about how your employees 'own' the company, if you're going to tout how they all have a voice, why not go all the way and see what happens? Because why not? You already have people working for and with you who elect you every day, who either agree or disagree with you and follow you, so we wanted to make it very transparent," says Max.
This raises an inevitable question for Slashdot readers: would your own organization work as a democracy? So leave your answers here in the comments. Would your company's employees fire your CEO?
"If you're going to talk about how your employees 'own' the company, if you're going to tout how they all have a voice, why not go all the way and see what happens? Because why not? You already have people working for and with you who elect you every day, who either agree or disagree with you and follow you, so we wanted to make it very transparent," says Max.
This raises an inevitable question for Slashdot readers: would your own organization work as a democracy? So leave your answers here in the comments. Would your company's employees fire your CEO?
Which begs the question: are people using "begs the question" wrong too often?
Arthur: Please, *please*, good people, I am in haste! WHO is your CEO?
Woman: No one is.
Arthur: Then who is your board?
Woman: We don't have a board!
Arthur: (suprised) What??
Man: I *told* you! We're an anarcho-syndicalist commune! We're taking
turns to act as a sort of executive-officer-for-the-week--
Arthur: (uninterested) Yes...
Man: But all the decisions *of* that officer 'ave to be ratified at a
special bi-weekly meeting--
Arthur: (perturbed) Yes I see!
Man: By a simple majority, in the case of purely internal affairs--
Arthur: (mad) Be quiet!
Man: But by a two-thirds majority, in the case of more major--
Arthur: (very angry) BE QUIET! I *order* you to be quiet!
Woman: "Order", eh, 'oo does 'e think 'e is?
Arthur: I am your king!
Woman: Well I didn't vote for you!
I don't think it makes a whole lot of difference whether the parachute is golden or lead if you're going to fire them out of a cannon. The irony factor will be higher with the gold parachute, so I'd go for that.
Bitten Apples are still better than dirty Windows...
Why would any company want C leadership these days, when C Programming Language's Tiobe Rating [has] Drop[ped] To Lowest Level in decades? Surely some Python or even a modern Perl leadership would be far superior.
Can we all vote to fire HP's CEO's. Retrospectively.
In retrospect, you meant retroactively, I think.