The Harder They Fall

Think you’re safe in that corner office? Executives are being ejected from corporate headquarters more frequently than ever. And it takes more than a hefty severance to bounce back from being fired

Dec 1, 2008  

by Anthony A. Davis

Nor are CEOs too sharp if they don’t, as Mackay puts it, “dig their well before they’re thirsty.” He suggests that even within days of their appointment, CEOs contact major executive recruiting firms. Mind you, that’s something that should be done with discretion, he adds – otherwise your board and investors may question your current commitment to shareholder interests. “That’s not chicanery,” says Mackay. That’s being a realist. “Once you are a CEO, you should know that the probability you are going to be replaced or fired is pretty damn high. You’re not going to be there for 25 or 30 years collecting a gold watch. Those days are all over with.”

Josh, however, questions Mackay’s approach. “You should have no other thoughts in your head but your company,” he insists, considering the advice to immediately contact the placement agency a recipe for failure. “If you’re thinking about making yourself a landing pad, then you have your eye off the ball.”

Despite departing from his company virtually empty-handed and remaining entangled in the associated legal wrangling to this day, Josh got his life and career back on track. In part, he believes he succeeded because he managed to keep his dismissal in perspective. His firing, Josh reminded himself, was not a matter of life and death. He exercised regularly and established new daily routines immediately after getting that pink slip, knowing it would be easy to lapse into depression and just stay in bed. “I put one foot in front of the other,” he says, “getting up in the morning, doing household stuff, doing the basics of living – keeping things going and keeping things sane. It sounds stupid, but it worked.”

Soon after leaving the energy company, he turned to the friends and business acquaintances he knew before he founded the company that ejected him, and found they still had faith in his integrity. “It was critical to have that,” he says of that small, supportive network. “You can’t be an island, right?”
Luck also played a part, he concedes. One of those friends introduced him to a businessman looking for Josh’s technical skills. Within 18 months of partnering in a company with this new colleague, that company was sold, netting Josh $2 million. He also currently does overseas consulting work and is developing other businesses. Still, he continues to see himself as trying to escape the long shadow of his firing – something he doubts he ever can. As a result, success hasn’t made him any less wary about a future life as a CEO.

These days, Josh maintains a healthy skepticism about those with whom he goes into business, right down to the secretary, given that the last one, he says, was in collusion with some board members to interpret meetings with a certain bias. But he would save most of his scrutiny for the makeup and ethics of a prospective board. “I didn’t realize that people were saying one thing and doing another,” Josh says of the past. Had he done the research, he says, he would have discovered a couple of board members known for their tendency to put the interests of themselves and their own companies first. In the future, he’d spend the time to get to know each member personally, talking to them outside the boardroom, to make sure they’re not the types to dump stock and undermine a company and its shareholders when the going gets tough.

As things stand, the unfortunate reality is that as a CEO, Josh feels you have no choice but to “cover your ass with respect to collective decision-making,” or risk having the boot put to it. As a final word of advice to anyone ready to mount a comeback, he offers this: “Make sure the board is putting their money where their mouth is, and if something untoward happens… that they’ll stick with you.”

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