So you lose the company $100M and you shouldn't be accountable either?
Also, think about this, these people were promoted multiple times for going "above & beyond". They just weren't an optimal fit for their last roles.
Also, think about this, these people were promoted multiple times for going "above & beyond". They just weren't an optimal fit for their last roles.
Please explain to me exactly how it was that one director's fault that the movie lost $100M.
Because in reality, it's going to be a lot more than one person's fault that a movie was a dud. Especially when there are so many moving pieces behind a piece of content's popularity.
It was a bad idea from the start, and was never given a chance to correct.
Steve McConnell was a big proponent of the worst bugs start in the Requirements Phase.
Same goes for almost any project.
The people that greenlight garbage are frequently fired, too, but that usually means they need to delay buying that second private island.
People further down the food chain, might actually end up having to put their kids to work at McDonald's, instead of sending them to college.
It's impossible for you to say with certainty that a single decision caused the movie to flop and it's disingenuous to think so. Especially disingenuous to say it's one person's fault that an entire movie was pitched, greenlit, made, and then flopped. There are literally thousands of people who made decisions along the way, starting from the initial greenlight which would have been given by multiple people.
That's a rather bold statement (mine was equally rash).
I suspect the reality comes in, somewhere between.
In any case, I am not into excusing the top management, when it comes to these failures. I think that lower-echelon bus-fodder hunts can be symptoms of terrible, unaccountable, higher-level managers.
Even if someone lower down the chain made the error, it can often be determined that the environment (maybe even the reason they have the ability to screw things up), was because of top management.
When I was a manager, successes were owned by my team, and the failures were 100% mine.
Managers are critical, and I have come to learn that the vast majority of them are ... shall we say ... works in progress?
Perhaps part of the problem here is new leadership rushing things out the door or succumbing to sunk cost fallacy.
Yes, it would require extreme buy-in from senior management.