Does the New York Times Know How to Fire Someone?; Harvard Business Review, 5/16/14

Ben W. Heineman, Jr., Harvard Business Review; Does the New York Times Know How to Fire Someone? :

"In many organizations, top leaders have issues that emerge from 360-degree reviews or other systematic (and fair-minded) assessments. Often, boards or senior executives try to be clear about areas where a leader needs to improve. Assuming that leader has other very positive qualities (clearly so in Abramson’s case), he or she is then given a real opportunity over a reasonable period of time to address those issues, customarily with some guidance or assistance. And given that Abramson had worked for the paper for 14 years before her promotion to Editor, it would seem unlikely that her flaws – everyone has some – would be totally unknown to her bosses.

If the Times and Sulzberger want to make “management” the issue, then they have an obligation not to hide behind a vague sentence or phrase — or a non-disparagement agreement — but to explain what the problems were and whether Abramson was given a fair chance to correct them. At this point, with the expected media scrum — and with important issues very much in the public eye — Abramson shouldn’t be complicit in the silence.

This is a big story about an important event at a national institution: The firing of one of the most senior leaders in journalism. The Times would never let another major institution off the hook with such a cursory account of its reasoning."