Ignoring the Personal Stress of a Key Executive Could Cost You Millions

This paper explores the full financial impact on the performance of the business when these issues are not addressed.

You can either ignore the elephant and tolerate the situation, hoping it goes away. Or you can take action: replace the person or clear the problem at its source, without negative consequences to the company or the person.

Resolving personal issues quickly will be the highest return on investment you can ever make. The earlier the intervention the less costly.

There are lots of ways for senior executives to stumble, and when they do, the shock waves can rock the enterprise. At the most senior level, each executive’s performance is magnified; one dysfunctional individual can stop the entire executive team in its tracks and wreak havoc throughout the organization. Consequently, decisions about replacing executive team members are highly leveraged, with far- reaching consequences often involving thousands of people and literally billions of dollars. [i]

How Pervasive Is The Issue of Personal Stress?

I asked 25 trusted business sources whether this statistic jibed with their own experience. 1

1 In preparing this Insight Report, I wanted to view the topic from various perspectives other than just my own. In that pursuit, I interviewed CEOs, CFOs, Presidents, VPs (Sales,
Operations, HR), an Executive Recruiter, a Family Business Advisor, Executive Consultants/ Coaches/Mentors of small, medium and international consulting firms and a Colonel in the US Air Force who at one time was VP of a Fortune 100 firm. I spoke with several people who have been through mergers, progressed through the ranks or been hired through search firms. And people who at one time worked in a Fortune 100/Fortune 500 company and are now running their own small enterprises. They represent various industries including banking, hospitality, entertainment, telecommunications, a major insurance carrier, and manufacturing firms (including automotive and medical devices).
Geographically, they spanned the east and west coasts of Canada and the United States, Europe, and Asia.
I acknowledge their contribution to this paper.