CASE STUDY 07
The Employee Who Said "You Can't Afford to Fire Me"
His CTO held the company hostage — or thought he did. One coaching session changed the CEO's question from 'How do I manage this?' to 'What happens if I don't?'
The Situation
Three months earlier, the CEO had launched a major strategic initiative. His executive team had been fully aligned — or so he'd believed. But recently, his Chief Technology Officer had begun undermining the project. Quietly at first, then openly.
The CEO had addressed it directly. He'd told the CTO that the new initiative had to take priority over his existing projects. The CTO had declined. When the CEO made clear that continued resistance would cost him his job, the CTO's response was unambiguous: "You can't afford to fire me. This company would die without me."
Now the CEO was sitting across from his coach. "How do I deal with this?" he asked.
“You can't afford to fire me.
This company would die without me.”
The Coaching Intervention
The coach had been close to this company long enough to know the initiative in question. He began with the question that mattered most: "Can the project succeed if it stays at the CTO's lower priority?"
"No."
"Have the COO and CFO weighed in?"
"Yes. They've both talked to him. He won't budge."
"What do they recommend?"
"They're scared to lose him. But they also know that everyone in the company is watching this. They're waiting to see what I do."
The coach shifted the frame. The CEO was treating this as a personnel management problem. The coach reframed it as a contingency planning problem: "If you were going to fire him tomorrow, what would the plan need to look like? Who builds it, and how quickly could it be ready?"
That question changed everything. The remainder of the coaching session became a contingency planning exercise. The CEO brought in his COO and CFO. That evening, key members of the IT staff joined the conversation. An experienced external IT services firm was engaged as a backstop. By the time the session ended, there was a real plan — not perfect, but executable.
The following morning, the CTO was terminated.
The Outcome
The next sixty days were hard. The IT team was anxious, stretched, and uncertain. But something unexpected happened: freed from a manager who had — it became clear in retrospect — been actively limiting their involvement and development, the team rose. Projects moved. People stepped into roles they'd never been trusted with before.
Within a year, a new CTO had emerged organically from that same team.
The strategic initiative the original CTO had been blocking? It moved forward.
The PACER Principle
The PACER Action Model's Act stage is where deliberation gives way to decision. For owner-operators, few decisions are harder than removing a key person — especially one who has made themselves appear indispensable. The CTO's threat was designed to exploit exactly that fear.
What the coach helped the CEO see was that the Evaluate question wasn't "Can I survive losing him?" It was "Can I survive not acting?" The strategic initiative was at stake. Team credibility was at stake. Every person in the company was watching to see whether the CEO would enforce the standards he'd set.
The Act stage also required preparation — which is why the contingency planning session was not a detour but the core of the intervention. Decisive action without preparation is recklessness. Decisive action with a plan is leadership.