A CEO’s Dilemma: Should I Take My Burning Man Pics off Facebook?

I think his problem of persona mis-matches is a temporary problem we all will face. Are you a leader of your organization or are you a burning man guy? We all have limited time to understand your true personality, so we have to rely on our best generalizations and stereotypes.

However, not too long from now we will all either be a) so exposed that our simple notions of persona will break down. We can just be people and we can be judged in context instead of these pseudo-personas, or b) we will all be so scared about breaking our personas that we will just withdraw from expressing ourselves honestly.

In the meantime, yea its a broken system. If you want to express the persona of a successful business person, it might just mean you don't get to express yourself as burning man dude until you retire or something. Its a sacrifice because the rest of the world just is not ready to see you as both.

This guy is a genius.

I never heard of him before. I never heard of his company. I never heard of his book(s).

Now, I know about all this and he sucked me in to like him personally and made his brand much more human and likable.

This guy is a genius.

I think we need more CEOs doing stuff like this. CEOs are real people too.

Social media jumbles all our social circles together, where we used to keep them separate by physical location. Every application seems to assume I have one list of friends. In reality, I have friends among gaming contacts, friends among political junkies, friends from work, friends from the internet, friends from college, friends from church, friends from my old apartment building. They may have nothing in common with each other, and indeed may indeed be offended by mutually exclusive behaviors on my part. Interacting with all of them at once is awkward at best.

Perhaps an ability to organize and tag friends (and posts) by circle would help.

Employees were pissed off that their CEO was an actual person that likes to have fun like themselves?

The day that a picture of Bill Gates headbanging at an Iron Maiden concert gets leaked is the day that the internet will appreciate him in a "wtf, he's a real person" way.

I really don't see how he's setting double standards -- unless his trip to burning man was a business trip?

The rules, as I can deduce from the article, are that you can't compromise the privacy of guests. Was anyone at the company ever reprimanded for being shirtless on their Facebook profiles?

Who is to say that all clients prefer a CEO in a suit? Some might prefer the other CEO, so one can not just claim that pictures like that damage the company. Maybe there are just 100 potential customers who like suits, and 1000 who like half-naked men.

that's why you have two facebook accounts. One under your real name that's proper and has your business contacts. And one under some fake name that only your close friends know.

It depends.

If you're more like a Richard Branson type then keep em up.

If you're more like Steve Jobs then take them down..

I thought CEO's went to Bohemian Grove ??!

> Should a CEO be held to a different standard? Let me know what you think is right.

I don't know, dude. Aren't you also the owner and proprietor? I think that you can do whatever you feel like. But you should figure how much different things should cost you.