Firing a CEO took 50 minutes. Living with the replacement's signature will take a decade.
THE SIGNAL
On September 9, 2026, Automattic’s board voted to put founder and CEO Matt Mullenweg on paid leave and named CFO Mark Davies interim CEO.
Mullenweg says the resolution reached him 50 minutes before the meeting and that his request for a few hours of outside legal review was refused.
Mullenweg himself. Voted No.
In his Slack message, he named Mark Davies, who he said had "conspired" with other board members Ann Dunwoody, Toni Schneider, and Sue Decker to vote to put Mullenweg on a paid leave of absence, and wrote that he voted against it.
He was back in the job 33 hours and 20 minutes later, by the company’s own count. Mullenweg removed one of the directors who voted against him, and the other two left.
Inside that window, Davies and chief legal officer Andy Missan signed each other’s severance agreements, effective September 10. Each package pays a year of salary up front and accelerates equity vesting.
Mullenweg fired both on his return.
TechCrunch puts what Automattic would now owe at $8.15 million. The company is deciding whether to pay or fight.
As of September 16, the board had offered no public explanation for its vote.
THE FAILURE POINT
The break came at the handover, not the vote.
Davies signed Missan’s agreement and Missan signed Davies’s. Each man stood on both sides of the other’s paper.
Nothing in the reporting shows a limit on what an interim CEO could commit the company to on his first day.
TechCrunch calls the signing not necessarily improper but noteworthy given the fight.
Louis Brandeis wrote in 1913, “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.”
The board had offered none.
SIGNAL WITHIN THE SIGNAL
This is an MOS failure.
A management operating system settles in advance who can commit the company to what, and when a second person has to approve. Automattic’s did not stop a pay agreement on the first day of an appointment made by a contested vote.
The terms were specific.
Cause is narrowly defined.
Firing either man for cause takes written notice within 60 days, a 30-day cure period and a board majority. Davies’s agreement says losing the interim role is not good reason to resign while he stays CFO.
TechCrunch reads that as drafted with his exact circumstances in mind. That is a lot of detail for a document signed inside a 33-hour window.
Worth checking where your own team sits on that same gap before assuming it's someone else's problem.
Score your gap →
BEHAVIOR UNDER PRESSURE
TechCrunch lays out two readings, and the board has not picked one.
In the first, directors worried about WP Engine’s July accusation that Mullenweg destroyed evidence, which he denies, acted to show a court they took it seriously, then protected the executives who would carry the risk if the move failed.
In the second, the board opened a window of control for a reason it has not disclosed.
Both readings produce the same behavior on the record.
The vote moved on 50 minutes’ notice, by Mullenweg’s account, with counsel time refused. No public account shows a deadline that required that speed. Speed stood in for judgment.
Then the people holding the new authority used the window on their own paper.
SYSTEM DRIVER - MOS
The system did what it was built to do.
It produced an interim officer with full signing power and no second key.
One fix interrupts that.
Adopt a written schedule of interim authority before any vote to appoint one.
It bars every acting or interim officer from signing any executive's pay or exit terms until a permanent decision is made. The schedule fits on one page.
It would have cost Automattic nothing to write in advance.
LEADER DRIVER - INTERNAL OPERATING SYSTEM (IOS) - REGULATE
The read suggests the signing was self-protection under threat.
Someone handed a company by a vote its founder opposed has reason to think the vote might not hold. That kind of pressure tends to pull attention toward personal exposure.
TechCrunch’s first reading of events has the executive’s building protection against exactly that outcome. Only Davies and Missan know what they intended.
The override they needed is a personal rule set before any appointment: I sign nothing that benefits me or the person signing beside me until someone with no stake has read it. Nothing in the reporting says either man had one.
IF YOU DO ONE THING TODAY
Open your delegation of authority and find what an acting or interim executive may sign.
If the document is silent on interim authority, that silence is your finding.
Write one line: no acting officer signs any executive's pay or exit terms. Send it to your general counsel and board chair before 5 p.m. and ask for adoption at the next meeting.
FINAL SIGNAL
Authority without written limits gets spent by the first person who holds the pen.
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Find out where your gap is before it costs you. Score your own gap here, takes about three minutes.
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SOURCES
TechCrunch, "Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence" (Sept. 9, 2026).
TechCrunch, "Sources say Automattic's board is out after failed attempt to oust CEO Matt Mullenweg" (Sept. 14, 2026).
TechCrunch, "Automattic's interim CEO and legal chief signed reciprocal severance deals during Mullenweg's brief ouster" (Sept. 16, 2026).
Louis D. Brandeis, "What Publicity Can Do," Harper's Weekly (Dec. 20, 1913).