Dear Ned,
Two words: tough love.
Now is the time for radical change, not weeping.
After reading the latest Steemitblog article and then the response from @alexvan , one thing is glaringly clear: it’s time for you to find a very capable CEO replacement, and then take on an advisory role.
Very few people in the world can manage business, people and be a competent leader for a large organization. I commend your desire to take on such a huge challenge. This bear market is actually a blessing in disguise. It’s revealing weaknesses in a way that can no longer be avoided.
In order for you to do the right thing and step down as CEO, the following steps will be necessary:
I want to say that I don’t mean anything malicious or hurtful in this guide. That’s not my intent. I, along with many others have simply put too much time and energy into this project for it to go up in smoke. It’s time to put the guitar down and finally listen to critical thinkers, people who have skin in the game but who are a bit older and have experienced some major failures in life.
Failure is the best teacher, not success.
If you don’t pay attention to failure, it will come back to bite you in the exact same place on your ass over and over again. Failure shows us the way.
Step one: Face yourself and your shortcomings as CEO. Cry if you have to, but please don’t record this on video.
Step two: Order an Ego Lessening pill from the online store Don’t Let Egos Destroy The Village.
Step three: Spend some time feeling the pain as you open your ears to those who are actually telling you the truth. There are a lot of us now. Stop surrounding yourself with Yes Men and Women. This will not help you long-term in business or in life.
Step four: Do an exhaustive search within the Steem community to find an intelligent, compassionate, business-savvy, passionate about Steem, ultra communicative and very senior CEO replacement (find someone with a good track record of successfully turning around a company, maybe a 40 year-old + person).
The fact is that the Steem blockchain has fundamental strengths, but leadership from Steemit Inc is not a strength currently. The good news is that there are capable people willing to turn everything around and the Steem community will come together in ways unimaginable.
To be completely honest, here’s what I would do if I were in your shoes: I would let the Steem community decide who should be the next CEO of Steemit. Get the developers involved in this process, get the community leaders involved, hell, get every damn person involved who cares about the future of this platform. If people had the feeling of having a voice in deciding who the executive team of Steemit Inc. is, can you imagine how much of a change that would make? It would be radical change that we need the most right now.
And now is the best time for a complete restart. It is possible with the right people. The only thing standing in the way of moving in the right direction is your ego and immaturity (I know you’re going to reject these words, but I have your best intentions in mind, otherwise, I would just be ignoring you instead of giving any energy).
Do what’s right for everyone.
Swallow the pill.
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Wish I could upvote this more than once. Being forced to face the music is one of the many blessings in disguise that bear markets bring. In his latest livestream, through the haze of disappointment and malaise, I glanced the first glimmerings of a budding humility. It was encouraging, but I believe the condescension and poor leadership will re-emerge at the first upswing. It's not a defeat to admit you are not cut out to be the CEO of a company. He can still have a major role in this ecosystem doing something that is truly his forte. I hope Ned will do what's right and announce his intention to step down as Steemit's CEO.
Totally agree with the ideas you laid out here. Time for a hard reset. Development has obviously been happening here on the Steem blockchain, but it seems to me that 99% of this development is from the individual DApps themselves and not from Steemit, Inc.
I have a question I would like to pose to you (something I’ve been pondering lately).
Why do we need a Steemit, Inc. at all? I know it may sound harsh, but why not take this opportunity to focus on building out individual communities of developers and supporting the DApps of Steem. Why not have individuals and individual teams build out the core code of Steem and launch SMTs... community-source the project rather than leave it up to Steemit, Inc. to deliver.
I’m no developer, so I speak out of complete ignorance of how SMTs and other core changes to the Steem blockchain are brought about, but it seems to me that there is a severe branding issue when it comes to Steemit, Inc. versus the Steem blockchain itself. Having no Steemit, Inc. or at least one with less authority and influence could alleviate this “eclipse” that they have over the Steem blockchain “brand”.
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Kudos to you for putting this out there Stella! Someone needs to tell the hard truth. When the community cares more about what @nedshair is doing rather than what @ned is doing, this is a problem. Capable leadership gets in front of things and tackles the big problems, rather than just brushing everything under a rug.
Actually, laying people off is one of the "tough calls" that I would not have expected Ned to be capable of making, but that does not absolve him of all the lack of leadership that brought us to this point.
Fresh blood would be a welcome change around here. Let Ned focus on this solo project of his, and let someone with experience turning things around on a corporate level take the reigns of Steem Inc. There is a lot here to be proud of, and the building blocks are present, if not exactly in place.
Steem is once again being laughed at in Crypto Twitter following the announcement, but I guess what else is new. Something has to be changed to make Crypto Influencers take this platform seriously.
Unfortunately, I think your tough love is going to fall on deaf ears. Maybe Ned will prove me wrong, but I don't get the impression he is capable of admitting that this platform needs more leadership than he has the ability or even desire to give.
lol 😂
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When we stop ourselves from saying the truths we feel inside, everything dies.
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Lol
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I don't know much but I don't think Steemit is representative of STEEM anymore, if it ever exactly was. Now is the time for changes though, for sure, we are going into the next phase of blockchain/crypto. Like you say, focus on fundamentals and what it takes to make things attractive and productive for developers and the heady crowd will follow.
Peace
Fundamentals are there, but it’s time for a complete restart.
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Fully agree. We need another kind of leadership here...and let me tell as well that a leader never can post a video as that, in the middle of a bear tempest.
After 17 months here it was the last thing I expected from him...specially after a dramatic HF20 and continues lack of SMT information but a regular development progress report, showing delays...
WE ARE STEEM, not Steem inc
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I haven’t posted in months but resteemed this.
Wow @stellabelle such hard truths there and I know like you said you mean well which I totally agree I only hope @ned will humble himself to take your advise. Well done ma.
If everyone can see the same things and also realize that I don’t have any malicious intent, then that is something worth taking a look at. Honestly I didn’t wan to say these things because they are not something that anyone would want to hear. The thing is, we cannot afford to be likable and telling lies to ourselves or to each other anymore. There’s so much at stake and being “nice” isn’t going to cut it. If we cannot say our true feelings on here, and effect change then this has failed. I no longer care if I get flagged for speaking my truth. Only in speaking our truth can we actually learn anything new.
Steem is in a stagnant state and is ready for a massive reset.
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Absolutely ma'am, absolutely. I couldn't agree less and people who have got the right amount of sense up there will affirm to all what you have said.
Great post @stellabelle! I agree with your respectful (I read it that way) advice to @ned, save one aspect. Although it may sound great, having the Steemit community choose a business savvy leader, it probably would not work so well. Too many inexperienced voices rarely identifies a quick path down the road to success. You really want seasoned business professionals to make such a decision.
I suggest doing what most large businesses do, form a Board of Directors and Board of Advisers. The BoD should be business savvy professionals from a diverse background (business, marketing, legal, product dev, operations, etc.) while the BoA should be technology luminaries, vision leadership (@Ned), community representatives, etc. Let the BoD pick a CEO. Let the BoA recommend innovations, work on strategic technical directions, etc.
Ned and team have brought the platform up from nothing. He deserves a huge round of applause for his groundbreaking work. But the needs of Steemit moving forward are changing, if we want the platform to professionally grow and take a place among the top social apps and blockchain usages. It is time.
Excellent refinement of Stella's suggestion, this is a good idea. Do you know who holds stock in Steemit Inc.? It would be time to print this an mail them.
Your advice is very sound. I’m not much of a business person, more of a community person so I think a blend of our ideas would bring optimal results. I think the community managers could easily be chosen by the community and the rest as you described.
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I agree with this growing sentiment from the community. One of the best bits of advice I ever got was 'Get others who are better than you to do the job'. Neds heart doesn't seem to be in it for the survival and success of steem as evident from the recent videos I've seen.
Maybe on the Witness voting page there could be a vote for a CEO from the community. There are so many worthy users that have been building the steem community and have their respect.
We need an evangelist with a good business sense and unfortunately Ned seems to be neither.
Like you stellabelle I don't mean this as a personal attack I just think that being willing to pass on the job to someone who could do it better would show true leadership.
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Exactly my thoughts too.
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The sooner steemit inc gets out of the witnesses way, the better.
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Honestly the witnesses are more than happy to be shepherded, it's that attitude which needs to change.
YES PLEASE!
I've been away from steem(it) for a while since it was nor profitable and NOT FUN :s I also have more important and time consuming things going here (starts with "b" and ends with "aby" haha) ... so it become stressing I had to think what to post to be "worth" of the autovotes I already have ... and then getting 0 comments... what reason did I have to keep posting? D:
And now things in steemit only seem to be getting worse... ALSO I am NOT a social person !!!
And I don't know why I wrote this here...
Greetings, Stella.
SteemIt Inc is a private company that is now going back to developing the blockchain only. Something which they have done quite well at.
While I agree the relationship is awkward, we have no say in how a private company is managed.
In theory the solution is that we have other development companies building on Steem, which we don't. Compound that by Ned being one of if not THE biggest stakeholder.
It's hard to imagine thinking it is possible to request he steps down. Instead SteemIt, Inc needs to be made irrelevent. Via community efforts.
Not so, they are a social app company (by their revisionist recounting) and are concentrating on that, as @ned said in his latest live stream. Unless I missed something else?I sure did misremember that. @ned says the main thing is to get crypto into people's hands, and takes this as a self evident good.They seem to be motioning in the direction of making Steemit more irrelevant but to be honest it does feel like posturing. That stake is not going away any time soon.
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I'm sure @ned is a great guy and it would be very tough to manage Steemit Inc. I have written about many solutions overtime and voiced my opinion yesterday in a post as well.
To be honest if I was @ned would I step down?
NOPE
I'm not 40+ but I feel like I could lead a platform like this to its potential.
Part of being a great leader is knowing your own weaknesses and strengths. Smart people find and surround themselves with people who are smarter than them. Weak people surround themselves with people who are not talented.
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Preach @stellabelle 👍🏾
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A great post, we need business leadership from the most comfortable people on Steemit, we need to make a team of software developers and businessmen as soon as possible.
Well said @stellabelle I saw this on Ned’s post. I have to agree. Steemit Inc is a business - that has problems at the top - the community (customers) can not fix, or be expected to fix those problems. That is NOT how business works. If they do not figure this out, someone will come and take their place. And yes, most of the time, in order to grow a business, you have to put the right people in the right positions. Ned’s strength may not be in the CEO position, but somewhere else in the company - nothing wrong with that ...except if he lets his ego get in the way of what’s best for the company.
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