Facebook might be facing an existential crisis, and its leadership is failing to address it.
Successful leaders admit mistakes, apologize quickly, show up where they’re needed and show their belief in the company by keeping on its toes.
Facebook executives, in contrast, react to negative news with spin and would instead attempt to bury it. Throughout last year, Facebook has come face to face with a problem, executives have hushed it down.
Look at its public statements regarding how many people had seen Russian-bought election ads for instance, first it was 10 million, then it was 126 million.
Top executives dodged Congress when it was asking questions about Russian interference.
The actions of Facebook executives at Nokia and Blackberry reacted after the iPhone emerged. Their revenues kept growing for a couple of years, and they disregarded the threats.
This doesn’t exactly help Facebook’s stock status, and its executives are not exactly sending a reassuring message to invest by unloading their shares to a rapid clip.
Last summer, after Zuckerberg’s plan to create another class of stock to solidify his control of the company, he announced that he would be selling up to 75 million shares about 18 percent of his shares, worth nearly $13 billion, by mid-2019. The money will support the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), his other company that is dedicated to good works.
Facebook is facing real problems, instead of giving answers to those problems, top execs are selling spinning and staying silent.