kevdonahue.com

This is my rule of incompetent executives and it says that, on average, they leave after 17 months on the job.

The arc usually looks like this:

Herb is announced to great fanfare. He comes from a company that you assume knows much more about Doing Stuff Right than your ragtag band. Often Herb left several months earlier, but the email announcement fairly oozes, Herb was key to creating one of the Great Consumer Products of the Decade.

Month 1: Herb arrives. He’s circumspect. Or he glad-hands. He listens a bit, then mentions his time helming the GCPD, then announces he’s going to spend the next several months getting to know the players and the culture.

Month 4: Three months later, you haven’t seen or heard a word about Herb, but an email arrives announcing that he will be leading a big push to re-create a portion of your company.

Month 10: Six months later, you ask how the project is coming. Nobody you know knows anything about it. Herb hired some former associates, they’re playing it very close to the vest. Details are sketchy.

Month 12: Word is getting out that the project is moving very slowly. Herb can’t make a decision, your friends say. The project is over budget and behind schedule.

Month 13: Despite a herculean effort across the company, the project underwhelms at launch. Herb blames the marketing people. Why can’t they get their s— together?!?

Month 15: The promised relaunch, you guessed it, underwhelms.

Month 17: Herb sends an email on a Friday afternoon, around 4 pm. He misses his family, which never left the West Coast, and he’s joining them. The CEO sends a note soon after announcing that the project has been shuttered. Everyone has to trim 15% of their budget, the first of two such belt-tightenings in the next 6 months, to right the listing corporate ship.

Month 20: A colleague sends you a link to news that Herb has signed on with Big Player in the Industry. He’ll be a VP in said company’s new venture. The kids and wife will have a Merry Christmas after all. Your bonus didn’t survive the turmoil.

There is, sadly, a Rule of 17 (Years) for marriages, too. I know the itch supposedly hits (traditionally guys) in Year 7, but about a decade later, there’s a karmic about-face. In my experience, the kids hit high school, they require less minute-to-minute tending and mom, perhaps for the first time since their honeymoon and her work, school and family duties, stops and takes a full accounting of the Mister. And finds it—OK, him—lacking.

The portfolio is disappointing. Personal growth? He’s still wearing a Depeche Mode T-shirt he wore when they moved into their first home together. Growth of waist? Appreciable. While he hits his marks as far as transitting the children, and may actually be quite engaged with them, he’s not all that intimately involved in her interests and her needs.

Sadness turns to regret, then resentment. One night Dad thinks he’s going to watch American Ninja Warrior but is pre-empted by a Discussion of the State of Our Life Together. He is baffled by where all this came from. He awakes the next morning to find himself George Clooney in The Perfect Storm. The sea is roiling and angry. He has no answers. He barely gets the questions. Didn’t I provide? Wait, I was supposed to listen to all of that?? Sure, I looked, but I certainly never made even a half-serious attempt at anything. But, wait, did you? Are you? No, no, no. I know you haven’t, but why do you look so damn serious?!?

Nothing resolves, the boat flips. The first-born’s Move-In Day at college leads quickly to Move-Out Day at home. The daughter at home is torn. Was it me? Did I do something? Mom never seemed that unhappy? Dad’s lost—and surly.

This sounds sexist as I type it, and men mess up more than their fair share of marriages, but the Rule of 17 as it relates to marriage, in my experience, is initiated and motivated by a woman’s evaluation of her situation. Guys at Year 17 tend to be blissfully unaware. Fatally unaware, even. Is that good? Obviously, no. Is it natural? I don’t know. But I do sympathize with the guy who was sailing along, not a care in the world, when the storm of his inattention was brewing.

Stay safe out there, guys. And find some attention for your wives. They’re good people. They deserve it. And there are always consequences.