HTC head Peter Chou resigned from his position as CEO in 2015, and it wasn’t long before stories about his harsh management style started to appear. Former executives shared how Chou berated them and overruled their decisions and kept teams that typically worked together apart, such as sales and marketing, then created parallel teams for the same task. Managers never knew how Chou would pivot, and company morale plummeted, right along with HTC’s market value. With a lot of these high-level guys, when they started off and they were lean and agile, they went out and broke the rules, but in being so intolerant of mediocrity, they also don’t allow the staff to fail when they get bigger. So it creates a struggle. Super successful entrepreneurs with a “nothing is going to stop me attitude” have a courage that is needed in the workplace, where they are asking for forgiveness instead of permission. However when it is to the detriment of your people, and creates reputational damage to the company, it is counterproductive.