It’s no secret that Alteryx hasn’t done well these last three years and there are plenty of people here (rightfully?) bashing Mark for it. They refer to him as being unfit, culturally insensitive (often times racist) and blame him for destroying most of the company’s value on his watch. Some have even called for the board to intervene. The recent blind CEO survey was quite telling in the amount of confidence employees have in him. While I’m not trying to defend him by any means, as someone who works at the company with no direct interaction with Mark or anyone on the leadership team (or even VPs), and as someone who generally likes their job, I’ve been curious about something. What is it about Mark specifically that has makes him such an ineffective CEO (other than his obviously horrendous communication skills)? Is it that he has bad judgement? focuses on the wrong things? makes bad decisions? doesn’t hire the right people? doesn’t know how to execute? Is it because he doesn’t delegate or follow up appropriately? If so, why do you think that is? Could someone who has been close to him expand on this? Is he smart and analytical? does he focus and hone in on the right issues and ask the right questions? Does he think and act strategically? Does he work really hard for that ki-ler compensation package? Is he operationally and detail oriented? Is he customer centric and held in high regard by customer executives he interacts with? Does he negotiate well?
Outside of what we see of him in public settings like the all hands where he hasn’t shown up well, has he genuinely tried really hard in this job and just been unlucky or can we draw more of a direct line between his capabilities, efforts, decisions and the position the company is currently in? Could someone qualified please comment on this?