How to Lose a Boardroom in 5 Days!!!

In November 2023, the board of OpenAI did something that should have been impossible.

They fired their CEO, Sam Altman, and within five days, the board itself was gone.

FIVE DAYS!

The man they removed was reinstated. The people who removed him were removed. And one of the most powerful AI companies in the world went through a full-blown coup..... led by its own employees.

It was the governance equivalent of a controlled burn that turned into a wildfire.

So, what went wrong?

People tend to think of boardrooms as pillars of stability; the grown-ups in the room who bring order to chaos. But in reality? A board is just as fragile as the company it oversees.

And if a board doesn’t evolve as the stakes get bigger, it can find itself outmatched or worse, irrelevant.

Let’s break it down.

1. Power Without Credibility is Just Noise

A board exists to govern. But governing isn’t just about making decisions, it’s about making decisions that others will accept. The OpenAI board blindsided its key stakeholders, Microsoft (a $10B investor), OpenAI employees, and its leadership team.

What happened next was predictable:

• Microsoft threatened to walk.

• 700 of 770 employees signed a letter demanding Altman’s return.

• The board’s authority evaporated overnight.

Because here’s the thing: Power is fragile when it’s not respected. A board that ignores its key stakeholders will, sooner or later, realize that it governs nothing at all.

2. No Exit Strategy is a Governance Death Sentence

Firing a CEO isn’t just a decision, it’s a transition. And transitions require a plan.

You need to be able to answer, clearly and convincingly, the only two questions that matter:

1️⃣ Why now?

2️⃣ What happens next?

The OpenAI board had no good answer to either. Why now? Something about Altman not being “consistently candid.” Not exactly confidence-inspiring. What happens next? They didn’t seem to know.

That vacuum of leadership destabilized the entire company.

Because here’s another lesson boards often learn the hard way:

👉 You don’t fire a CEO unless you’re 100% sure the company will be more stable without them.

3. Boards Must Adapt Or Become Irrelevant

OpenAI’s board was originally built for a nonprofit research lab. But by 2023, OpenAI wasn’t a research project, it was a $90 billion AI juggernaut shaping the future of technology. And yet, the board hadn’t evolved. No clear alignment with its biggest investors. No structured approach to corporate governance. No real understanding of how to manage a high-stakes leadership transition. What happened wasn’t an accident. It was inevitable.

Because boards, like the companies they oversee, either evolve or they collapse.

What Every Board Can Learn from OpenAI’s Implosion

The OpenAI crisis wasn’t just a one-off governance failure. It was a case study in how boards lose control.

And it teaches us four clear lessons:

1. Boards can’t operate in a vacuum, stakeholder trust is everything.

2. Firing a CEO is the start of a transition, not the end of a problem.

3. Crisis communication isn’t optional, if you don’t control the narrative, someone else will.

4. Board structures must evolve as a company grows or they’ll collapse under their own weight.

The OpenAI board thought they were making a bold move.

Instead, they set themselves on fire.

👉 What’s your biggest takeaway from this? Let’s discuss.