Has Lew Cirne been a good CEO so far?
Lew Cirne had been a good CEO. He played all the fundamental roles single-handedly from developing core technology of Wily’s first product, showing product demos, raising early round of investments, driving initial sales, and later hiring right people for the job, building up work culture.
Should he fight to remain CEO?
Though Cirne met success initially, he still had a far way to go. Technology was his strong suit, not operations, though he wanted to grow as a business person and a technologist. Wily needed someone who had years of experiece and proven success in management and strategic decision making. This wasn’t possible in early stages due to lack of money. But it makes a lot of sense now to reach out and hire a new CEO to transform Wily from good to great.
What are the pros and cons of Wily’s approach to finding a new CEO?
Pros: Looking out for CEO, someone who is senior and easily fits in Wily’s work culture such that the founders remain to be comfortable and productive when working with new CEO.
Cons: The search period was quite long (13 months) to find the right person for this role. The company wasn’t big enough to interest the best of the CEOs.
As Lew Cirne, why would Dick Williams want to replace you as Chairman? The only reasoning that seems appropriate is that Dick Williams desired full autority over Wily’s operations and strategy. Strohm wanted to push Lew out of his role as CEO and accept the symbolic title of ‘CTO’ while Williams wanted Lew to leave his chairmanship. It does not make sense that both “key people” wanted Lew to relinquish any kind of control he has over Wily, despite the fact that Lew did a really good job from the very beginning
As David Strohm, if Lew rejects Dick Williams’ demand and threatens to leave Wiley, what would you do?
David Strohm already wanted Lew to leave the role of CEO, though offering him role of CTO. And as per proposed orgranisation chart, there were no employees directly reporting to Lew. So basically, Strohm just wanted Lew to be a part of Wily but with no substantial authority. If Lew threatens to leave Wily, it wouldn’t be that bad as a situation given the fact that Strohm already wanted him to leave the highly authorized roles and that Wily’s prodcuts were ready and needed driving sales only. As David Strohm, I would have let him leave if no negotiation or mutual agreement was possible.
