The Matrix

Friday’s Fiasco

Meta laid off 600 AI employees last week from the teams that built Meta AI. Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang's memo said cutting people would mean "fewer conversations will be required to make a decision." The cuts hit legacy research and product teams. The new division with expensive hires from earlier this year, TBD Labs, wasn't touched. Internal sources said the AI unit was bloated. Teams competed for computing resources. The division was oversized before the new hires even arrived.

Laid-off staff were told they're in a "non-working notice period" until 21 November with their access removed and no work required. Now they can spend their garden leave finding another Meta role with severance amounting to 16 weeks plus two weeks per year of service, minus the notice period.

Even a cursory read of the comms is jarring. Wang's memo read: "It's never an easy decision to say goodbye to colleagues. These are talented people who have worked extremely hard. This by no means signals any decrease in investment. In fact, we will continue to hire industry-leading AI-native talent."

If we were advising Meta we would advise them to:

• Be honest about the planning failure. If the unit was bloated before expensive new hires arrived, why didn't you address it then? Name the mistake: "We expanded too quickly without proper integration."

• Acknowledge the contradiction. You can't call people talented whilst laying them off and protecting costlier recent hires. Either the new talent brings something legacy couldn't, or you're protecting recent investments. Call a spade a spade.

• Address those who stayed. The 3,000 remaining employees are assessing whether their paycheck is worth it. When you cut 600 people for "efficiency," everyone left is wondering if they're next.

• Build trust through what comes next. "Fewer conversations" as justification suggests efficiency trumps everything. What does that mean for collaboration? For institutional knowledge? Great leaders don't just explain cuts, they explain what culture they're building afterwards.

Meta wanted to move faster and they have managed it with a trust deficit with the world watching.

Your reputation takes years to build and one crisis to destroy. We repair the harm before it becomes your legacy.

Fodder from the floor

We attended a fireside chat with economic historian Carl Benedikt Frey, author of How Progress Ends: Technology, Innovation, and the Fate of Nations, stated:

"None of the leading bicycle companies led the automobile revolution, none of the leading car companies are leading in EVs, none of the traditional media companies are leading social media, none of the original retailers are leading e-commerce. New organisations tend to be quite important in driving technological progress, and you need to make space for that entry and exploration."

Dear Leah

I’m Chief Executive and I’m at my wit’s end with our board dynamics. We have nine directors, and three of them are actively making governance impossible. One is a legacy appointment who hasn’t contributed meaningfully in years but has significant shareholding and refuses to step down. Another is brilliant but treats every board meeting like a consulting engagement, diving into operational details that aren’t board-level issues. The third is a family friend of our founder who asks basic questions that suggest they haven’t read the papers and constantly derails strategic discussions. The remaining six directors are excellent, but we’re spending more time managing difficult personalities than governing the business. 

Our Chair acknowledges the issues privately but won’t address them directly. I’ve had two board meetings where we didn’t even get through half the agenda because of these disruptions. Our institutional investors are starting to ask questions about board effectiveness, and I’m genuinely worried about our governance rating. 

I can’t exactly fire board members, but something has to change. Who do you think I should focus on moving first, and how do I approach this without creating an even bigger mess?

- The CEO vs. The Board

Dear CEO in Despair,

Board dysfunction is like a cancer - it spreads quietly until it becomes terminal. You're right to be worried about your governance rating because institutional investors can smell dysfunction from miles away.

Consider whether you want to be part of building something new or if it's time to move on!

Face the facts

We’re harm repair specialists at The WayFinders Group. We address what formal processes can't: the relational damage that fractures teams.

Through 90-day restorative interventions, we help organisations move from repeat escalations to genuine repair - rebuilding trust and capacity for collaboration that determines whether your business rises or falls.

The leaders who need us most rarely see it coming. Why not book Leah to speak at your next event about missed warning signs, harm caused, and how to lead differently so you don’t become the one calling for help.