Executive Diagnostic

"I've pulled this off every quarter before this one. I'll pull it off again. I always find a way." There's a voice in the back of my head I've been ignoring for two years now, asking what happens the quarter I don't. I ignore it and walk in.

Whatever I'm actually feeling right now does not matter. I will perform calm for the next 90 minutes. I will process whatever this actually is later. I am very good at this.

They don't understand the business well enough to know how close we are. As long as I walk in steady and confident, they will not see it. I have done this before.

Honestly, I have been in crisis mode for so long that this barely registers. I will say what I always say. Survive the next 90 days. Figure the rest out later.

"This company works because he wills it into existence every quarter. He is the product, the culture, the safety net, and the pressure valve. If he ever went completely dark for two weeks, we would find out very quickly what this place is actually built on."

"He is brilliant and he does not let anyone else grow. Every hard decision routes to him. We are all capable of more than we are allowed to do here."

"He is exhausted. He has been exhausted for three years. He hides it better than anyone I have ever met."

"I am not sure what he actually wants from this company anymore. I am not sure he knows either."

"I am afraid you are going to have a heart attack and leave behind a company that cannot run without you and a family that never really had you either."

"You have been almost through the hard part for five years. I stopped believing that. I think you did too."

"You are the most capable person I have ever known. And I watch you use that capability to avoid the one thing that would actually fix this: letting someone else hold some of the weight."

"The company has always come first. I made my peace with that a long time ago. I just wonder if you have."

"My health finally gives out. I'm staring at a hospital ceiling, and my phone is still buzzing on the nightstand with someone who needs me to just handle this one last thing. I worked my body into the ground because I never learned how to exist without carrying the weight of all of it."

"I am completely hollow. A walking ghost. I don't care about the work. I don't care about much of anything. I just quietly surrendered to the grind and I'm running down the clock until I retire or something worse happens first."

"I'm sitting in a very quiet house because they finally left. My spouse tapped out. My kids stopped asking me to show up years ago. I sacrificed every real relationship on the altar of one more quarter, one more close, one more thing I had to personally hold together."

"I'm alone and bitter and I have been right about everything. I called every problem before it happened, and it cost me every relationship I had personally and professionally. I am the smartest, angriest, loneliest person I know."