It’s official: AOL CEO Tim Armstrong said 350 of its Patch.com employees will be fired and an additional 150 will likely lose their jobs by October. Apparently, the employees were notified American Idol style, with the winners notified in one room and the losers huddled in another.
Armstrong, a co-founder of the struggling and unprofitable Patch.com, composed of 900 local news web sites, alerted employees and investors just over a week ago that he would be shutting down about one-third of his sites. Since then, employees have been just waiting for the ax to fall even though Armstrong hinted at an all-employee meeting on Aug. 9, during which he also opted to publicly chastise and fire another Patch.com executive, that he might be able to save everyone’s position.
Wishful thinking.
Guess what? I wasn’t the only one critical in a post of Armstrong’s handling of the communications around Patch’s woes. In “What CEOs Can Learn From AOL’s Tim Armstrong’s Awful Week,” I called out Armstrong’s lack of humanity, his ambiguity and his otherwise Draconian handling of the situation — all of which could have been avoided with the right counsel.
There’s no doubt that Patch.com’s financial situation requires urgent and decisive leadership, action and clear direction. But in his communications to employees, Armstrong ignored all five of the key elements to preserving a CEO’s reputation: honesty, respect, care, integrity and humility.
Here’s what a few “reputation communications” experts are saying about Armstrong’s handling of recent events including his “Apprentice” style firing of Patch.com executive Able Lenz for taking this photo during the all employee meeting/conference call on August 9:
“It looks like big business being a bully,” said Jim Webber, who conducts workplace training and runs a human resources advice blog called Evil Skippy at Work.
Ron Ashkenas, a senior partner with Shaffer Consulting, Stamford, Conn., said: “If he was trying to make himself out like Donald Trump, then this isn’t the way to do it. ‘The Apprentice’ is a staged television show.”
And from Bill Murphy, Jr., an ex-Washington Post reporter and author of “Breakthrough Entrepreneurship”: “Dramatic firings can be useful, but impetuous moves overshadow everything. The way you handle this decision reflects the kind of leader you are.”
What impact do you think Armstrong’s communications approach will have on his reputation? If you need a reminder of how Armstrong handled the all-employee meeting, here it is again.
What It Takes | Jim Barbagallo 