Good morning,
Boards don’t like to be in the news. It’s unseemly.
Directors are supposed to work behind the scenes, providing a company with guidance, occasionally managing orderly succession plans, not out there massively bungling a CEO’s firing, putting business and investments at risk, and attracting attention. But OpenAI’s board dominated headlines this weekend for apparently doing all of the above when they cut loose former CEO and cofounder Sam Altman on Friday afternoon, then watched public opinion—and the employees at the company—turn against them. (Read a full recap of the events here.)
Governance experts who spoke to me about the entire debacle said they couldn’t judge, based on available information, whether or not the board made the right call when it fired Altman. This board, it should be noted, oversees the company’s non-profit research arm and is tasked with overseeing the organization’s mission to develop AI safely and protect humanity, not protect investors or the company’s multi-billion dollar business interests. That said, several experts said they did see problems with the way the decision was executed—in a Friday afternoon video call, without the board chair present, among other issues—and that even given the company’s unusual ownership structure, which has its supporters and detractors, this was a story of governance gone wild.
But there was one executive, besides Altman, who was overwhelmingly praised for his leadership this weekend: Satya Nadella, CEO and chair of Microsoft. Frances Frei, a Harvard Business School professor of technology and operations management, who sits on the board of Robinhood and previously worked as a leadership strategist for Uber, says Nadella offered other business leaders a masterclass in moving quickly and carefully. Many boards and business leaders, she says, need to see that speed doesn’t have to mean blowing things up and losing your employees, customers, and investors’ trust. People act as though “you can either take care or you can go fast,” she says; in fact, “you can go fast and take care."
(Full disclosure: Frei and Altman both sit on the same board of a small alternative energy firm.)
For context, Microsoft has invested $13 billion in OpenAI, which meant Nadella was motivated to safeguard his company’s partnership with Altman, the face of OpenAI, following Friday’s surprising events. First Nadella reportedly led a push to have Altman reinstated. Then, when those talks apparently broke down on Sunday, he hired Altman and Greg Brockman, an OpenAI cofounder and former board chair, directly. He has been called the weekend’s winner.
Nadella’s moves this weekend broadly align with the framework that Frei outlines in her new book Move Fast and Fix Things, coauthored with her wife Anne Morriss, a noted leadership coach. The tech leader identified a problem, then came up with a “good enough plan” to solve it when he hired Altman and Brockman back, leaving room for others to follow. He also told a great story to explain his decisions in a late-night tweet, and perhaps most importantly, he moved quickly. Altman was in the Microsoft fold just two days after his initial ouster, before the markets opened on Monday and Microsoft’s share price popped.
Frei also recommends that people solving problems when time is of the essence still pause long enough to seek the input of diverse views and build trust. Details are still emerging about how exactly Nadella made his new high-profile hires, but based on her experience with him, Frei says he often seeks the opinions of Kathleen Hogan, Microsoft's chief people officer, and Amy Hood, Microsoft CFO, “which is, I think the best triumvirate in all of business.”
The Altman saga is still unfolding, and every day has brought a deluge of news. Time will tell whether Nadella’s fix is a long-term solution, or whether Altman will still return to OpenAI. Nadella said on Monday evening that he was “open to both options.” For now, however, Frei sees his quick response as this weekend’s real leadership lesson.
Lila MacLellan
lila.maclellan@fortune.com
@lilamaclellan
