I think you're looking at this the wrong way. First, this is a guide written by a senior executive about how to handle firing someone. Executives get fired all

I think you're looking at this the wrong way. First, this is a guide written by a senior executive about how to handle firing someone. Executives get fired all the time -- the bar for executives is very high, and not every executive is the right fit for every company. You also don't have time to train up an executive on how to do their job; a VP of product needs to come in knowing how to manage product teams. And sometimes it just doesn't work out. From the perspective of the author (who is Silicon Valley royalty and has been a CEO or board member of several large companies for the last 30 years), there is no manager conference or HR process that will make an underperforming executive better. So it's better to be adult about the situation, figure out transition plans, and let the person (and the company) get on with things with a minimum of drama. If your CEO has lost faith in you for whatever reason, you're essentially done as an executive at that company anyway. We've all seen the underperforming VP who sticks around a little too long: their organization becomes demoralized because people can sense when things aren't going well. It's better for the entire company to be definitive about executive hires and fires.