One of the things that I'm hoping to do a better job on is getting people from the private sector-who've been in the private sector their whole career-who also spend a couple years in government at some point in their career, and learn something.
When the CEO held a virtual town hall in 2020 and said there needed to be layoffs, I knew I would be one of the first to go because I served zero purpose at that point.
Costa's then-manager told him that ServiceNow would not pay this commission because the Sales Compensation Department had concluded that Costa had 'overachieved to a degree that was outside normal' in relation to his sales quota. In other words, ServiceNow believed Costa had made too much money, notwithstanding that his commission was only a small percentage of the revenue recognized and received by ServiceNow.
To successfully repair after a mistake, you need to acknowledge and name the mistake, validate the other person's feelings and viewpoint, and create a plan for the specific actions you will take to prevent this mistake from occurring again.
When you're working on CEO succession, with the clients we serve, there's less of a debate about whether people are qualified. It's much more about: 'Can they scale; can they adapt; can they evolve?' This reflects the fundamental shift in how organizations evaluate leadership potential in uncertain times.
