The outrage machine spun up instantly when news broke that an Indonesian finance minister supposedly received his pink slip over a phone call right in the middle of a formal meeting. Pundits wailed about protocol, decorum, and institutional respect. They painted a picture of a humiliating public execution, a sign of governance gone rogue, and proof of administrative dysfunction.
They are dead wrong.
What the chattering class calls a breakdown in professional etiquette is actually the ultimate display of operational efficiency. When a leadership team needs to pivot, waiting for a polite two-week notice period or a staged exit interview is luxury theater that modern economies cannot afford. Corporate and state machinery moves too fast for bruised egos and bureaucratic mourning rituals.
Let us dismantle the lazy consensus. For decades, institutional design has prioritized the comfort of the executive over the agility of the organization. We built a corporate religion around graceful departures, long goodbyes, and soft landings. This creates a dangerous moral hazard. It tells leaders that their tenure belongs to them, rather than the mission.
I have watched organizations bleed millions of dollars while boards tiptoed around underperforming executives, terrified of hurting feelings or triggering a PR cycle. They coddle leaders who lost the plot months prior. The Indonesian incident strips away the polite fiction. When a minister or a CEO stops delivering, the contract is broken. The method of delivery matters infinitely less than the speed of course correction.
Bureaucrats love process because process protects them from accountability. They want structured transitions, committee reviews, and whispered warnings over coffee. But real power does not operate on a committee schedule. Markets crash, crises erupt, and policy bottlenecks strangle growth in real time. If a leader is steering the vehicle into a concrete wall, you do not wait until the next scheduled pit stop to grab the steering wheel. You wrench it away immediately, regardless of who is watching.
Consider how high-stakes environments actually function. In emergency rooms, military command centers, and high-frequency trading floors, feedback is instantaneous and brutal. There are no gentle tap-on-the-shoulder conversations when milliseconds count. State finance is no different. When fiscal strategy hits a wall, hesitation costs billions in capital flight and currency depreciation. Decisiveness looks ugly from the outside precisely because it is untainted by PR management.
Now, let us address the counter-argument that sudden dismissals destroy morale. This assumes that working-level employees are fragile infants who lose sleep over executive turnover. They do not. In fact, most teams feel an immediate rush of relief when a stagnant leader is finally excised. The dead weight lifts. The unspoken friction disappears. What demoralizes an organization is not a sudden firing, but watching incompetent leadership linger month after month while everyone pretends the emperor has clothes.
Transparency and predictability are virtues in routine operations, but they are liabilities in crisis management. If an incoming administration needs to signal a radical departure from failed fiscal policies, a quiet, behind-closed-doors resignation letter signals compromise and business as usual. A mid-meeting termination signals that the old era is dead right now. It is a shock to the system, and systems often need a violent jolt to reset.
Critics will point to international optics and investor confidence. They argue that abrupt changes spook foreign markets. That is a mid-century mindset. Modern investors care about execution speed and policy stability, not whether a politician got their feelings hurt in a conference room. Markets reward certainty of direction, and nothing provides certainty faster than a clear, unambiguous removal of an obstacle.
The real scandal is not that a minister was fired on a phone call. The real scandal is that we have normalized a corporate and political culture where leaders can fail upwards for years, insulated by notice periods, severance packages, and ritualized politeness.
Stop mourning the death of boardroom manners. Start demanding results. If leadership is failing, the phone should ring right now.
