Decapitation!

Doing comms when a leader is ousted. Also, travel fun!

I just got home from a trip that took me around the world, from San Francisco to Amsterdam, from Amsterdam to Taiwan, and then back home.

I arrived in Amsterdam at 6AM on a Monday morning with a full work day ahead. It’s always a treat to stay awake and productive after a sleepless flight and an early arrival. By the afternoon my eyeballs are vibrating like tuning forks. Finally going to sleep after one of these days is the purest bliss. It’s like rediscovering the whole idea of a bed. It’s so soft and welcoming and flat!

The hotel in Amsterdam was joined to the airport by a long corridor, which was convenient for everyone flying in for our event. But I stayed in a room with an inward-facing “atrium view” and for three days I saw little unfiltered daylight. This creates a space-station vibe that is bad for your body clock. Who cares what time it is when you’re unshackled from Earth’s natural rhythms like a Morlock?

After a long-haul flight, the thing I want most is a shower to remove the film of plane-sweat and the lingering scent of disposable upholstery and economy class ravioli. The hot shower is one of the crowning creations of industrial civilization, something so pure and good it seems impossible that you could fuck it up. Unfortunately, some malignant tinkerer invented the “rain” style shower head, the kind mounted in the ceiling directly above you.

I assume hotels install rain showers out of sadism. The shower cubicle is inevitably designed so you have to stand directly under the shower head to use the valves. These will be elaborate, like the controls of a steam locomotive, and nothing will be labeled. Just a collection of unmarked brass cranks and levers. I guess wrong 100% of the time and get blasted from above by the initial rush of cold water. What’s wrong with on/off, hot/cold? If I wanted horrifying Victorian plumbing, I’d live in London.¹

Then it was on to Taipei, a brutal 18-hour travel day. I had a three-hour layover in Munich, so I tried to talk my way into a Star Alliance lounge on the back of my outrageously expensive airline-affiliated credit card. According to my inexpert reading of the alchemical matrix on the credit card’s website, this should have worked, but the woman at the counter wasn’t having it. There is no walk of shame longer than the one after you’ve been tossed from the rope-line of a middlebrow airport lounge by a woman with a German accent. No cheese cubes for you!

Flying from Europe to Taiwan is weird now due to the need to wind around various war zones and hot spots. The flight path looked like the pilots were slightly drunk and having trouble flying in a straight line. The world is troubled and unstable and everywhere there is strife and tension. If only there were something—some kind of Forum—where leaders from government, business and civil society could come together to discuss meaningful solutions and collaborate to make the world a better place…

Hold that thought.

Decapitation!

Some years ago I was the spokesperson on duty when the CEO of my then employer was fired. Technically, the board of directors asked for his resignation but, you know, that’s fired.

I found out about this during my evening commute when the head of investor relations called me and asked if I was alone. I was, and he told me the news and that the press release would go out pre-market the next morning. I was the only person on the in-house PR team who knew. I assumed the head of IR had called me because I led crisis comms and was the kind of hardass pro you want for a tight spot. But he just needed someone who knew how to manage the distribution of the press release over the BusinessWire service.

Hilariously, I did not know how to send a release over BusinessWire, so he also had to read-in our newsroom editor, who did that sort of thing. We were both grimly informed that our heads would join the CEO’s on the block if we breathed a word to anyone.

Let’s talk about your severance.

Neither of us broke the cone of silence and the announcement went off as planned the next morning. Even though it was for the wrong reason, it was good that I was tagged in as I was able to be prepared and on-station early to manage the incoming press calls. My boss, the chief communication officer, joined me in a conference room the moment the news broke and we worked the phones together. It was awkward that she hadn’t been informed beforehand, but she was a pro and didn’t blame me for that.

Rather than work with the in-house PR team, the board had retained our then issues and financial comms agency to help prepare for the announcement. I understood why. CEOs often work closely with comms teams and the web of allegiances and obligations might not be clear. Also, outside comms advisors specializing in financial and crisis comms probably aren’t going to gab to their colleagues or leak to the press and start a fire of market-moving rumors. (That’s the bankers’ job.)

I can’t take credit for the strategy, but it was sound. The press release was transparent enough about the reasons for the departure that it removed most of the impetus for reporters to scratch around for “the real story.” That was important. Departure statements are often negotiated, and sometimes there are compromises in the messaging, but the goal is to clear the air in one news cycle so the company can move forward. A sense of unresolved tension or obfuscation can motivate reporters to dig for a backstory and draw out the news cycle. If a bunch of other execs is eager to settle scores through anonymous sourcing, you might be in for a rough time and it won’t help the company’s reputation.

There were some creative theories about the departure, but they stayed at the fringes of coverage. A credible interim CEO was named and there was strategic continuity. The departing CEO didn’t litigate. Life moved on. A good outcome, under the circumstances.

You know how people sometimes discover at awkward times that the HR or legal team at their company is there to defend the company’s interests, and not theirs? That’s true of PR teams as well.² Working directly with CEOs and senior executives is one of the privileges of my job. But I am interested in working with them only insofar as they are vessels for advancing the company’s reputation.

I’m a corporate reputation person, not a personal publicist. That will become clear the moment an executive’s interests diverge from the company’s. Occasionally, I’ve had to develop contingency plans to go to PR war with execs departing in tense circumstances. Fortunately, these plans have all stayed in the realm of “break glass in case of…” and none was ever triggered. Everyone loses when a departure turns into a public shitfight.

But sometimes a departure is messy. A year ago, the Wall Street Journal published an exhaustively reported story alleging a toxic work culture within the World Economic Forum (WEF) and implicating the founder and executive chairman, Klaus Schwab. I expect the editorial and legal review on that story was rigorous, given how connected Schwab is. Indeed, the story notes:

In a memo to staff on May 21 [2024], Schwab announced that he planned to step aside as executive chairman, which he indicated was part of a long-planned transition. He said he will stay on as nonexecutive chairman of the board of trustees. The announcement came after Schwab sent a letter to the Journal’s publisher and editor in chief to share concerns about the reporting for this article.

I have complained to beat editors (usually futilely), but I don’t have the juice to go straight to an editor in chief. Klaus Schwab does! He’s probably brunched with lots of EICs and publishers, though going to publishers is fraught at reputable news organizations that separate business and reporting. But I guess if the crisis is existential you pull every lever you have.³

At the time, the Forum defended Schwab vigorously. Their interests were apparently aligned. Indeed, Schwab seems likely to have been dictating the PR strategy, as we’ll see. WEF’s statement, published on their website the day after the Journal’s report, is a zero-contrition knuckle-duster that accuses the Journal of “knowingly publishing demonstrably false assertions to mischaracterize our organization, culture and colleagues, including our founder.” It also laments the “the Journal’s steady decline” and threatens a defamation lawsuit.

In April of 2025, the Journal, apparently unintimidated, ran another WEF story. This one reported that the Forum had opened an investigation into new whistleblower allegations that Schwab had misused Forum funds and real estate and ignored credible reports of sexual harassment in the organization. The Journal also reported that Schwab resigned as non-executive chairman when the Forum’s board of trustees decided to proceed with the investigation, against his wishes.

Suddenly, Schwab’s reputational interests and the Forum’s were diverging. The Forum’s statement to the Journal abandoned the punchy tone of a year ago for a more measured approach:

[T]he Forum said its board unanimously supported the decision to initiate an independent investigation “following a whistleblower letter containing allegations against former Chairman Klaus Schwab. This decision was made after consultation with external legal counsel.”

The Forum said it takes “these allegations seriously, but they remain unproven, and will await the outcome of the investigation to comment further.”

The Forum’s newsroom statement is similarly restrained and focuses on an orderly leadership transition.

Meanwhile, Klaus and his wife Hilde Schwab now have their own spokesperson, and some familiar-sounding messaging:

The Schwabs said through a spokesman that they deny every allegation in the whistleblower complaint. To protect their reputation, Klaus Schwab intends to file a lawsuit against whoever is behind the anonymous letter and “anybody who spreads these mistruths,” the spokesman said.

There’s the aggressive tone of the statement from a year ago, and a clue as to who was setting the PR strategy then.

Completing its reporting trifecta, the Journal ran a story on May 13th with the spectacular headline, “The Unraveling of the King of Davos.” It confirmed that Schwab had gone to war with the Forum’s board of trustees over their planned investigation of the whistleblower allegations:

[By] Friday, April 18, the trustees’ audit committee recommended opening a probe into a new wave of whistleblower allegations against Schwab and his wife, Hilde.

Incensed, Klaus Schwab fired off a two-paragraph message to the board’s audit committee, threatening trustees with an investigation into how they were carrying out their duties and accusing them of risking the future of the organization.

“You have the opportunity to withdraw your note to the board in the next 24 hours with the specific regret to have put into question my reputation,” his email said. He offered some advice: “To facilitate such a move, you could refer to the fact that I will file a criminal complaint.”

Schwab has his own PR strategy now, designed to protect his reputation rather than the Forum’s. He spoke to the Financial Times (conspicuously, a rival to the Wall Street Journal) on May 29th, saying that his lawyers were filing a criminal complaint against the still anonymous whistleblowers. The Forum declined to comment.

In justifying some of his management decisions to the FT, Schwab also outed European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde as considering cutting her term short to become chair of the Forum. This forced the ECB to issue a denial and the Forum to decline to comment. Awkward!

The allegations against Schwab and the Forum’s culture cut to the heart of the Forum’s image as a worthy organization that, in the words of its mission statement, strives to “bring together government, businesses and civil society to improve the state of the world.” Whether you believe that, or think that WEF is a bunch of swells descending on a Swiss resort town in private jets to grease each other up and talk about le décarbonisation, that’s the brand.

By fighting his case publicly and dragging out the story, Schwab risks more damage to the reputation of the organization he created, and I don’t think he’s helping himself either. The tension radiates like a bug-lamp for reporters. Accepting responsibility might be too much to ask, but Schwab is 87 and was already working on a leadership transition. He could have made a personal sacrifice to preserve the legacy of the Forum and his own dignity, perhaps with (just spitballing) a statement like this:

“While I have always endeavored to act with integrity, the most important thing is that the World Economic Forum is able to focus on its mission to improve the state of the world. Effective immediately, I am relinquishing my responsibilities and stepping back from Forum activities. It is time for fresh leadership that can bring the Forum into the future and ensure that it remains vital to world affairs for decades to come.”

But Schwab’s nature is evidently to fight, publicly if needs be. That puts the Forum in a difficult position. Ideally, the Forum would vigorously distance itself from Schwab and move forward. This is the moment when it’s about the organization, not the executive. Break the glass and activate the “in case of emergency” PR battle plan!

But Schwab wasn’t just chairman. He’s the founder and for fifty years the incarnation of the World Economic Forum. Schwab made the Forum, and the Forum made him a global statesman. That’s a trickier situation than severing the relationship with a professional CEO or senior manager. And Schwab might still command loyalties within the organization and among partners and other outside stakeholders with whom he has built relationships.

But the break with Schwab is an opportunity for WEF to visibly reset its culture for the future. Perhaps the best strategy for them is to take the highest road possible and capitalize on the useful parts of Schwab’s legacy while letting him fade into the background as much as his PR campaign allows.⁴ It will help to name a new permanent chair with a mandate to champion the organization’s evolution and step into the public advocate and convener role that was Schwab’s for so long.

The Forum itself is a kind of PR triumph. A private organization, it has ascended from its 1971 origins as a management symposium to occupy mental space adjacent to multilateral bodies like the United Nations, World Bank and International Monetary Fund. CEOs, journalists, public intellectuals and heads-of-state attend in droves. Companies use the Forum for PR, business development and executive positioning, and they pay lavishly for the privilege.

Organizations that concentrate wealth and power can breed imperial leaders who become entitled and gloriously detached from earthly concerns like ethics and treating women and junior employees as human beings. WEF has modeled itself as a virtuous global NGO committed to human betterment. But there is a grubbier model lurking in the shadows, that of the international sporting bodies that combine otherworldly glamor with ludicrous entitlement and serial corruption.

I sometimes wonder if the Forum will lose its luster. Is there a gnawing unease among its executives and attendees that there is somewhere a more rarefied and exclusive gathering for the real power brokers? Sun Valley? The Bohemian Grove? That one tent at Burning Man? Something you haven’t even heard about because you don’t own a boat with a postal code and a helicopter pad?

Over an Indonesian dinner in Amsterdam—a WEF-coded phrase if ever there was one—I and a European friend who works for a strategic comms agency discussed this. We agreed that the Forum still has critical mass. Everybody goes there because everybody goes there. That gravitational pull will survive Schwab’s departure, even if that departure is messy and protracted.

As for me, I’ve never been to WEF.⁵ Hell, I can’t even get into an airport lounge in Munich. But my idea for improving the state of the world is simple and actionable:

Get rid of the fucking rain showers.

1. I once stayed in a fabulously expensive Airbnb in Hampstead where the shower head was so calcified it shot a scalpel-like stream of water directly into my face, as well as in several other random directions. I had to take sponge baths for four days. Just as well because the misdirected water from the shower would then drip onto the couch in the living room below. But the location was amazing.

2. A good rule of thumb is that ALL corporate functions, including those nominally devoted to employee welfare, are there to defend the corporation’s interests. This might sound cynical, but I think it’s basic capitalism. Unions are one response to this, but in the US that’s an ever smaller share of the workforce. Also, companies can be ethical to greater or lesser degrees within this framework, and culture matters.

3. Theranos tried going all the way up to Rupert Murdoch, but he declined to interfere in the reporting. As long as we’re talking Wall Street Journal, then Journal reporter John Carreyrou’s reporting on Theranos, and his book on the company, “Bad Blood,” are amazing.

4. Don’t miss the Forum web page exhaustively listing every single honor that Schwab has ever received! It’s a good thing honorary degrees are weightless or he’d be buckling under the load.

5. Disclosure: My prior employer was a Forum partner. My current one is not. I have never attended a Forum event, though I have met with Forum representatives.