Should Mark Zuckerberg step down?

THE CEO HAS changed. That’s no longer a secret. For the first time in history, chief executives and business leaders are virtually expected to be in the public eye, communicating with the customer and offering opinions on social and political issues.

This can have commercial benefits. People buy from other people: therefore if organisations leverage the power of their CEO to give the company a human face, that can translate to greater engagement and greater sales. It also benefits companies when a crisis strikes. The public are more likely to give a fair hearing to someone they ‘know’. If a chief executive has taken the time to establish a relationship with their customers and shown themselves to be decent and honest, those customers won’t jump to conclusions in the event of a scandal.

But the changing role of the CEO has also had a seismic effect on individual business cultures and brand reputations. For example, you can’t think of Apple or Tesla and SpaceX without thinking immediately of Steve Jobs and Elon Musk, whose personalities are closely tied with their creations. Steve Jobs, with his counter-cultural, hippie background and love of computers, could only have made Apple, still a symbol of creativity and rebelliousness in tech, while Elon Musk’s limitless ambition could only be reflected in his futuristic cars and space rockets. Since Steve Jobs’ death, it has been one of Tim Cook’s main aims to impose his own personality on Apple.

You could also mention Mark Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg is Facebook and Facebook is Zuckerberg, But recent events have made the position of the world’s most untouchable boss suddenly seem uncertain. Fake news, falling stock and glaring data breaches have damaged his brand. There was Sean Parker, the former president of Facebook, who admitted the site was made to exploit human vulnerabilities. And there was Chamath Palihapitiya, a former executive, who said Facebook is ‘ripping society apart’. #DeleteFacebook has trended on Twitter.

Scott Stringer, an investor with a $1 billion (£712 million) stake in Facebook, said this week that Mark Zuckerberg should step down as chairman of the technology giant, citing the Cambridge Analytica revelations and what it meant for democracy. Felix Salmon, writing for WIRED, the technology and culture magazine, said that he believes that resigning is ‘exactly what he [Zuckerberg] should do now.’ Devin Coldewey of the tech industry publication TechCrunch wrote in March that ‘now would be a good time for Mark Zukerberg to resign.’

Sometimes, the CEO must fall on their sword. Just as the tradition that a captain goes down with the ship holds that the captain is responsible for that ship and everyone on it, a CEO must sometimes step down even if their company’s failing has nothing to do with them. For Zuckerberg, this must be looking more and more like the only course of action. His hasty apologies have not had the intended effect. After so many Facebook failings, the public have grown cynical about the technology giant.

If Mark Zuckerberg does resign (and since he has the majority of shareholder votes and controls the board, he can’t be fired) then Facebook will have the opportunity to restore its reputation. But he will have to make his mind up quickly. Should he decide to step down, the longer he hangs on, the harder the job will be for whoever follows him. Dara Khrosrowshahi, who replaced Travis Kalanick at Uber, is doing a good job at repairing the damage his predecessor did, supporting the ‘DREAMers’, offering free rides in earthquake-stricken Mexico and emphasising diversity and inclusion. But he is still making only slow progress––and he was hired because he was ‘the exact opposite’ of Kalanick. Whoever follows Zuckerberg if he quits will already have a hard task in separating the company from its ultra-famous founder in the eyes of the public. And only then can they start to restore the tech giant’s reputation.

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