[ternaryoperator]

It's very, very difficult to shrink a public company until the board fully accepts that it has to happen.

The problem Gelsinger faced is one that many similarly placed CEOs face. A company is bloated when they come in; they have to make the company smaller; they become the sacrificial lamb for reducing its size and temporarily its income; so another CEO is brought in who recognizes the need to do the same thing; they are also fired; finally, the board brings in a white knight (typically someone with a moniker like "Chainsaw Al") who makes them see that the company has to shrink even more to get the turnaround. That CEO gets to keep the job and, if successful, win all the plaudits.

[sheepscreek]

The point you’re missing is urgency. Convincing the board is also an important part of the CEOs job. They need to use all the tools at their disposal. They have to build the necessary relationships to smoothen out the board approvals for their plans. Better yet, they could reach out to major shareholders, pitch their plan to them, and use their influence to get the board in line. There is more than one way to achieve this. Pat must have tried some of this but didn’t succeed.

[silvestrov]

The movie "Margin Call" has an excellent scene where this happends: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hhy7JUinlu0

It is clear how it is setup that "to survive we must act now, not in a week, and we must do this expensive sell-off"

The whole movie is very well worth watching: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1615147/

[01HNNWZ0MV43FF]

Nit: "they" reads better