To help find the answer, the company had an outside consultant come in to administer a 360-degree review. Candid, anonymized interviews with the dozen or so people who worked most closely with Gebbia delivered some painful results. People saw him as an optimistic, upbeat leader, but he had a reputation as a perfectionist, and people were afraid to be candid with him when projects weren’t working out. “That was a big one,” he says. Anytime anyone gave him bad news,
