Longevity Is a Fiduciary Obligation

At 51, I manage my health the way I manage any critical operating asset: regular audits, clear metrics, corrective action when the data requires it. This is not exceptional discipline. It is minimum governance for anyone accountable for long-term performance.

The body responds to the same logic as any well-run organization: consistent inputs, honest data, and the willingness to act on what it shows.

Over the last two years, I have set and achieved measurable goals for my health. More than 40 kilograms reduced in the last two years, strong cardiovascular and organ function, and low inflammatory burden. For over a decade, I’ve initiated quarterly blood panels as well as a comprehensive annual health review. One optimization target remains; a corrective protocol is underway, and a 90-day retest is scheduled.

Alcohol and smoking are eliminated. Not reduced. Eliminated. No timeline was required.

This is not a personal narrative. It is a professional position. And it begins with a question boards, sovereign investors, and senior leadership teams rarely ask directly but cannot afford to ignore:

What is the physical condition of the person at the top of the organization?

The Audit That Nobody Runs

Every serious institution runs financial audits that take a hard look at balance sheets and liabilities. Capital exposure is stress-tested. Boards scrutinize debt covenants, concentration risk, and counterparty exposure with precision and regularity.

Yet those same boards rarely apply equivalent scrutiny to the physiological condition of the individual on whom the enterprise depends. This is a governance gap that carries with it a potential catastrophe to an organization.

An unfit CEO is an undisclosed liability. Not a personal matter or a private concern. While this liability does not appear on the balance sheet or management accounts, the potential cost is undeniable.

The market prices operational risk, but the price of executive denial is equally impactful.

The Normalization of Decline

We have constructed a language that protects executive deterioration. We call it stress or intensity. We call it the cost of leadership.

Visible physical decline in senior executives is often excused as commitment rather than unmanaged risk. Fragility has been normalized and rebranded as seriousness.

That framing is wrong - and expensive.

Most executive failure is not sudden collapse, but slow degradation: unmeasured, unchallenged, and frequently unnoticed until it becomes irreversible. Decision quality contracts before the decision-maker recognizes it. Cognitive endurance shortens before it is reported. Pattern recognition under pressure erodes incrementally while the organization continues to assume capacity remains intact.

Succession planning addresses the acute event, but it should take into account the prolonged erosion of a leader who remains in post while operating materially below the capacity the role demands.

Chronic, unmanaged deterioration does not trigger a governance review. It reduces the quality of decisions made in the interim. Quietly. Continuously. At institutional cost.

The Board's Responsibility

Privacy is a legitimate need, but it is not a shield against fiduciary responsibility.

In practice, it has become exactly that.

The convention that executive health is purely private has insulated a material governance risk from scrutiny. We do not extend similar discretion to balance sheet integrity. We require transparency on conditions that materially affect performance, except when the condition in question is the physical state of the person making the decisions.

That exception is not principled. It is convenient.

Boards are not being asked to demand medical records. They are being asked to apply analytical seriousness to key person risk. When strategic, relational, and executional weight concentrates in one individual, that individual's durability is not personal. It is institutional.

It should be treated accordingly.

The Infrastructure Argument

Leadership capacity is frequently described as “mission-critical” in investment memoranda, risk frameworks, and capital allocation discussions when leadership strength supports valuation. The same logic must apply in reverse.

If leadership capacity is mission-critical, then maintenance of that capacity is institutional infrastructure. It is owed to shareholders, employees, counterparties, and sovereign stakeholders who have committed capital and long-term exposure on the assumption that leadership remains effective.

Executive health is, therefore, an infrastructure question.

Physiological audits generate information, which then enable intervention. This data-based intervention is governance. In contrast, intervention forced by crisis is remediation. The difference in cost is material.

The discipline required is not a one-time fix, but consistent, boring discipline. It requires scheduled reviews, honest metrics, and corrective action without delay. These decisions must be made and held.

Analytical rigor of leadership’s physical condition is not about vanity - it’s the minimum standard the role has always required. Longevity is not ambition, it is a leader’s obligation.

Organizations, investors, and counterparties are entitled to know that the individual directing capital and strategy governs themselves with the same seriousness they claim to bring to everything else.

Longevity is owed. Before the crisis. Not after it.