Yeah it's insane how many people are like "bro affairs are totally normal!" (they're not) or "affairs have nothing to do with the business!" (of course they do)
Look at the NVDA stock chart. There you go! That's why affairs are relevant to business! Business is always about trust, and someone who isn't deserving of their own spouse's trust certainly isn't deserving of anyone else's.
> Yeah it's insane how many people are like "bro affairs are totally normal!" (they're not) or "affairs have nothing to do with the business!" (of course they do)
Why? I'm playing a bit devil's advocate here, but why? Because society think it's bad and a leader should be associated with positive views? Because if they got caught they are not smart enough to be the leader?
Why just this specific thing is to be considered? Why, for example, all the Musk's "extravagances" are not ground for a CEO termination? I'm pretty sure many other CEOs have many of those "extravagances" and manage to keep their position but yet, if you have an affair, you're 100% toasted.
Maybe I don't understand enough the US culture.
You cannot tell from the NVDA stock crash if it's because the CEO had an affair, or because NVIDIA illegally sold GPUs to China and is in huge trouble.
Somehow, that wasn't an issue for Eric Schmidt, who was shagging some publicist while he was Google's CEO (and while happily married). Wonder why.
(Agreeing, with an asterisk.)
Markets care about predictability.
To that end, it's the secret and the reveal of that secret that's the issue for a leader. If a CEO is open about his socially-unacceptable behavior from the beginning, there's no shock to absorb.