Thomas D. Zweifel on the Death of a Top Manager
Martin Senn was our neighbor in a suburb of Zurich; he lived with his family a few meters from my house (Zurich Insurance was a client, and he was invited to an event where I was moderating, but declined graciously shortly before), so his suicide at the end of May is doubly affecting. The former Zurich CEO and top manager reportedly shot himself in Klosters, at his family's holiday home. He was 59 years old. Even sadder and more alarming: Martin Senn is already the third Swiss top manager in three years to have taken his own life. He follows in the footsteps of former Zurich CFO Pierre Wauthier, who committed suicide in 2013 and in his suicide note accused the then chairman of the company, Joe Ackermann, of fostering an unbearably stress-filled work environment and personally putting him under "undue pressure." Ackermann subsequently resigned, but denied all accusations and rejected any responsibility for Wauthier's death. An internal investigation supervised by the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority later found that the Zurich top management was not at fault; however, Wauthier's widow criticized this finding at the beginning of 2014 at the annual Zurich General Meeting. Fabienne Wauthier harshly criticized the company's executives, including Martin Senn: The company had unlawfully tried to evade responsibility for her husband's death: "The way you handled Pierre's suicide is a clear sign that rejecting responsibility remains part of Zurich's corporate culture." At the same general meeting, Martin Senn said: "The grief and shock we experienced at the suicide of our colleague Pierre Wauthier was enormous." And now, three months after Mario Greco, former CEO of Generali and also a former Zurich manager, replaced Senn as Zurich CEO, the same tragic end has befallen him; once again, we experience grief and shock. Then there was Carsten Schloter, the jovial and charismatic CEO of Swisscom, with 20,000 employees the largest telecom company in Switzerland, who cut off all communication in the summer of 2013. His voicemail box filled with concerned inquiries from his family, but he left all calls unanswered. Eventually, his mother left an unusual message: "If you don't answer, we'll be at your door on Saturday!" Schloter immediately called back and told his mother in a light tone that she didn't need to come, everything was fine. Yes, there was something bothering him, but he didn't want to say what it was. He only indicated that it had nothing to do with his work. A few days later, Carsten Schloter was found dead by his cleaning lady. Hanged. Finally, if we go back another decade, few Swiss can ever forget the murder and suicide at the Zurich Cantonal Bank (ZKB, one of the largest Swiss banks). Banker Helmut B. went into his office at Zurich's Tessinerplatz one morning and shot two colleagues at close range with his army pistol (a third colleague was lucky to arrive late at the office). Then he shot himself. Why these suicides, committed by executives who seemed to have everything: wealth, power, prominence, and the comfort of living in Switzerland, the country with perhaps the highest quality of life—and according to the 2015 World Happiness Index, the happiest country in the world? Why? We will never know for sure. But one thing seems clear: None of these managers communicated the enormous, possibly superhuman pressure they were under. They were all at their breaking point. And no one was there for them. After the murder-suicide in 2004, the then top manager of ZKB, Hans Vögeli, was asked in a radio interview whether there was a culture of fear at the bank. His response set the reporter straight: Those who performed well at ZKB had nothing to fear in terms of dismissal. That's the point exactly. The reverse of the statement is: Those who do not always perform well do have something to fear. This is management through fear, as I expressed in a previous interview. And from my own work with CEOs and executives, I know that few, if any, have people around them whom they trust enough to reveal what is really going on inside them—whether out of fear of being considered crazy ("What has he smoked now?" "Has she not taken her medication?") or of being seen as stupid, incompetent, or otherwise unfit for leadership. And many CEOs fear that everything they say could be used against them in the political and Darwinian environment of a large corporation. Yet without real communication, challenges in work and life often seem insurmountable. Some can even be a matter of life or death. When I wrote Communicate or Die, I had no idea that the book title would become so terribly true and hit so close to home. Did these men die unnecessarily, or is there a silver lining on the horizon? Perhaps despite everything, the latter: Open, honest, and effective communication has the power to overcome any problem. It can prevent lawsuits, divorces, or failed mergers, even war. And it can save lives. As Jack Welch liked to put it: communicate, communicate, communicate.
