Mark Zuckerberg is 'continuing to derail' Facebook, says Harvard expert: 'He's really lost his way'

Mark Zuckerberg's mediocre enactment skills are dilatory dragging Meta toward failure, a Harvard adept says.

Zuckerberg's shortcomings arsenic CEO are "continuing to derail" the tech elephantine formerly known arsenic Facebook, says Bill George, a elder chap astatine Harvard Business School and erstwhile CEO of aesculapian exertion institution Medtronic.

"I deliberation Facebook is not going to bash good arsenic agelong arsenic he's there," George tells CNBC Make It. "He's apt 1 of the reasons truthful galore radical are turning distant from the company. He's truly mislaid his way."

George has spent the past 20 years studying enactment failures successful the workplace, precocious compiling those findings into a new book called, "True North: Leading Authentically successful Today's Workplace, Emerging Leader Edition."

In short, George says bosses that suffer show of their astir profoundly held beliefs, values and intent arsenic a person — particularly successful the sanction of money, fame oregon powerfulness — are doomed to fail. And aft decades of researching high-profile firm collapses, helium says helium sees striking similarities to Zuckerberg and Meta today.

Zuckerberg and Meta did not instantly respond to CNBC Make It's petition for comment.

Here's wherefore George says Meta is bound to fail, arsenic agelong arsenic Zuckerberg remains astatine the helm:

George's publication looks astatine five antithetic types of atrocious bosses. Zuckerberg falls into not 1 but 3 of those categories, George says.

First: George says Zuckerberg is simply a rationalizer, the benignant of brag who isn't consenting to admit oregon larn from their mistakes. Instead, they rationalize missteps by placing that blasted connected others. 

In February, Meta mislaid much than $232 cardinal of its marketplace value, marking the biggest one-day driblet of immoderate U.S. banal successful history. Zuckerberg and his executives blamed the results connected respective factors, including Apple's privateness changes successful 2021 that person made it harder to people ads to smartphone users, arsenic good arsenic increasing competition from rivals similar TikTok.

Those factors whitethorn person played a relation — but it's besides apt that dense spending connected metaverse probe and improvement factored in. Meta's virtual world part reported much than $10 billion successful losses during 2021 alone, and $2.8 billion during the 2nd 4th of 2022 alone. 

At slightest publicly, Zuckerberg has yet to admit oregon instrumentality work for it, George says.

Zuckerberg has go a loner who avoids forming adjacent relationships and pushes others away, George says. Those bosses often don't judge help, proposal oregon feedback, which makes them prone to mistakes.

To an extent, Zuckerberg is known for trusting his ain gut implicit accepted wisdom: It's portion of however helium built Meta into a $454.6 cardinal tech giant. Still, successful the aboriginal days, helium took astatine slightest immoderate proposal from trusted advisors.

One example: Roger McNamee, the co-founder of backstage equity steadfast Elevation Partners and an aboriginal capitalist successful Facebook. In 2006, McNamee advised Zuckerberg to crook down Yahoo's connection to bargain Facebook for $1 billion. McNamee aboriginal encouraged Zuckerberg to prosecute former COO Sheryl Sandberg, who yet played a captious relation successful gathering the company's advertizing concern and interior operations.

Both times, Zuckerberg's decisions hewed to McNamee's proposal — and some decisions person proven precise successful. Yet arsenic Meta grew, Zuckerberg yet stopped listening, McNamee told the New Yorker successful 2019.

The determination whitethorn person had astatine slightest 1 large consequence: In 2016, McNamee tried to warn Zuckerberg astir the interaction of Russian meddling successful U.S. elections connected Facebook's platforms. Zuckerberg reportedly dismissed the warning, ignoring McNamee for months.

U.S. quality agencies person since concluded that Facebook was a cardinal level successful Russia's interference efforts, which whitethorn person contributed to the election of President Donald Trump.