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A company does not decide to depend on one person. The founder keeps the accounts they won, the exceptions go to whoever was there when the rule was written, and the license sits in the name of whoever applied. What makes it a decision is that the loss has a price in dollars and months, and so does holding a plan against it, and the two have never been written on the same page. A board asked whether the company could survive without the person answers with a tribute. This pack turns it into a subtraction and a division. What rests on the person, times the share that would leave, at what it earns, over the years it stays lost, plus the months the seat runs empty and an outside replacement, is what the loss costs. The same lines at the plan's share and months are what it costs with the plan in place, and the difference is what the plan buys. Divide what holding the plan costs a year by that figure and you have the break-even chance: how likely the loss has to be, in any one year, before holding the plan is cheaper than carrying the risk. One distinction runs through every file: the seat is the cheap half of the loss and every plan covers it; the relationships are the expensive half, and only a successor who already holds them in the open keeps the revenue. It stops on two halts: no one has added up what rests on the person, and no one has read the plan with the people named in it.
What is the Key Person Strategy Pack
The Key Person Strategy Pack is a complete decision-support kit for one question: when a person the company depends on is gone, what does the loss cost and what does the plan buy? It is built around one organizing claim: a plan fills the seat cheaply, and the relationships are the half of the loss that costs money to cover and the half most plans never touch. Sixteen files carry it: the foundations, a concept deck, a scored decision wizard, a key-person model blank and worked, the moves at each position, nine sourced losses, a fit worksheet, a roadmap template, a practitioner manual, a field checklist, and an orientation page.
The test that runs through every file
A plan fills the seat cheaply, and the relationships are the half of the loss that costs money to cover and the half most plans never touch. It is the argument in the deck, it becomes the wizard’s axes, it drives the model’s inputs, and it reappears as lines on the checklist. That is what makes 16 files a product rather than 16 documents.
The model resolves to one number you can negotiate with: The break-even chance — how likely the loss has to be before holding the plan is cheaper. It ships blank and worked, and every input is a named cell rather than a figure buried inside a formula, so the number arrives with its assumptions attached rather than on its own authority.
Why key person risk is never priced until the person is gone
Not because anyone is hiding it. Because it takes two figures that live in different places and one that lives nowhere. What rests on the person is in the account ledger and the signature register, and no one has added it up because adding it up while the person is in the room reads as disloyalty. So the room says everything, and the ledger, when finally asked, usually says a third.
What the plan does on the first day is in an envelope, and in most companies the name inside it has not been told, holds none of the relationships, and may have retired since the envelope was sealed. So the board compares a feeling about the loss to a name it believes is a plan, and defers the expense.
This pack turns that into arithmetic. What rests on the person, times the share that would leave, at what it earns, over the years it stays lost, plus the empty seat, plus an outside replacement, is what the loss costs. The same lines at the plan's share and months are what it costs with the plan. The difference is what the plan buys, and one division turns it into the break-even chance: how likely the loss has to be, in any one year, before holding the plan is cheaper than carrying the risk.
What is in the Key Person Strategy Pack
- Foundations. The framework: why depending on a person becomes a decision, the arithmetic, the six shapes of plan, the four positions, and the halts.
- Concept deck. Twenty-two slides for a board or a nominations committee, with nine sourced losses and what each does not establish.
- Decision wizard. Eight scored questions returning the band, the weakest answer, and either of the two halt conditions.
- Key-person model. Eleven candidate chances across the columns, what the loss costs against what the plan buys, and the break-even chance that decides it.
- Strategies and tactics. The moves at each of the four positions, what to do when the model halts, and four ways to make the next loss cheaper to carry.
- Case studies. Nine sourced losses — seven seats filled within five days, one answer reversed, one seat dissolved, and one company with no plan on ownership.
- Fit worksheet. The single page of record: who the company depends on, what rests on them, what would leave, what the plan does on the first day, and what holding it costs.
- Roadmap template. Five phases with gates and owners, the assumptions register, a reporting change and a periodic review line.
- Practitioner manual. Listing who the company depends on, adding up what rests on them, reading and pricing the plan, the board paper, six failure modes.
- Field checklist. The one-pager that survives outside the binder.
- About the package. What each file does and the order in which to run them.
Who the Key Person Strategy Pack is for
A chairman holding a name in an envelope who has never opened it with the person named; a chief financial officer being asked what the company would lose and having no ledger to answer from; a founder who has built something that depends on them and would rather it did not; a board member who has heard the phrase irreplaceable and wants a number; a private equity operating partner underwriting a business whose largest accounts are one person's; a family company deciding what happens to ownership rather than only to management; and the adviser who would otherwise start from a blank page. It is worth buying when a real dependence is in front of you. It is not worth buying to read.
An honest note on fit
This is a kit for running a decision, not a research report and not a forecast. Worked examples use an explicitly fictional company with numbers tuned to teach rather than to flatter. In the worked case $210m of a $640m revenue line rests on a 63-year-old founder, 45 percent of it would leave within a year with no plan, and the loss comes to $65.6m against $52m of operating profit. That is the fact the board had been avoiding. It is not the decision: a successor seasoned in the open would cut the loss to $24.1m, holding that plan costs $1.6m a year, and it pays for itself at a 3.9 percent annual chance of loss against the board's own figure of 10. The envelope the board actually held covered $8.25m of the $41.5m difference.
Case evidence is drawn from company announcements, regulatory filings, published tax rules, and contemporaneous reporting with per-claim citations; the framework content is the larger share, and each page marks which is which. Four limits are stated on the page rather than worked around. The model does not forecast the chance of the loss; that figure is the board's own judgment, and the Model tab sweeps it precisely because no one will say it out loud. It weighs the loss by its chance, which is how an insurer prices it and not how a board lives through it, so where the loss would breach a covenant or lapse a license the chance is beside the point. It treats the named successor as staying. And it prices one loss, where McDonald's had two in seven months.
Questions about the Key Person Strategy Pack
- What numbers does the model produce?
- Two headlines and ten supporting rows. What the loss would cost with no plan, and the break-even chance — how likely the loss has to be, in any one year, before holding the plan is cheaper than carrying the risk. Around them: what rests on the person against revenue, the revenue that would leave, what it was earning over the years it stays lost, the empty seat, what the loss costs with the plan, what the plan buys and how much of that is the revenue kept, whether the plan pays at the board's own figure, and the loss in years of profit with and without the plan. The Model tab sweeps the chance from never to three in ten, and one row turns from No to Yes at the point where the plan starts to pay.
- Everyone says our founder is irreplaceable. Is that the finding?
- Almost never, and that is the point of the pack. In the worked case the room said the founder was the company; the ledger said a third of revenue rested on him, and the loss came to $65.6m, or 1.26 years of profit. Serious and survivable. The surprise ran the other way: the envelope the board had relied on bought the seat and none of the revenue, and the plan that keeps the revenue paid for itself at a 3.9 percent annual chance against the board's own 10.
- We have a name in an envelope. Does that count as a plan?
- It fills the seat once the board has met, and only if the name has been told. It keeps none of the revenue, because a name holds no relationships, and it may name someone who has since retired: Micron's named successor had announced his retirement days before the crash. The wizard's second halt is whether the plan has been read with the people named in it.
- Does this cover incapacity as well as death?
- Yes. Two of the nine cases are incapacity: JPMorgan Chase, where two co-presidents ran the bank through the chief executive's emergency heart surgery while he kept his title, and Ferrari, which named a chairman and proposed a chief executive in the meeting that learned Marchionne could not return. The model treats the loss the same way; the plan has to run beside the person rather than instead of them.
- Are the case studies real companies?
- Yes. Nine sourced losses: McDonald's, Coca-Cola, Micron, Total, JPMorgan Chase, Ferrari, Texas Roadhouse, Apple and Jony Ive, and Subway. Each is dated, read through what was in place and what the plan bought, and each states what its evidence does not establish. Coca-Cola and Apple hold the other ends: a plan that worked as designed and a loss that still came, and a dependence everyone would have named that was dissolved rather than refilled. The worked model, wizard, and worksheet use an explicitly fictional company, labeled as such on every file.
- Is this a subscription?
- No. One payment, one download, sixteen files, yours to keep and to use inside your organization under the license included in the pack.
- What is the Key Person Strategy Pack?
- The Key Person Strategy Pack is a decision-support kit for one question: When a person the company depends on is gone, what does the loss cost and what does the plan buy? It contains 16 files — foundations, concept deck, decision wizard, key-person model, strategies and tactics, case studies, fit worksheet, roadmap template, practitioner manual, field checklist, about the package — built around a single organizing test: a plan fills the seat cheaply, and the relationships are the half of the loss that costs money to cover and the half most plans never touch. It is what a leadership team uses to run the decision and leave a record of what they assumed, rather than a report about the topic.
- Who is the Key Person Strategy Pack for?
- Anyone who has to make this call and answer for it: an operator or owner facing the decision, the executive team running it, the board or investor testing the reasoning, or an adviser who would otherwise build the framework from a blank page. It is worth buying when a real decision is in front of you. It is not worth buying to read.
- What is in the Key Person Strategy Pack?
- 16 files in Word, PDF, PowerPoint and Excel: Foundations (Word + PDF) — The framework: why depending on a person becomes a decision, the arithmetic, the six shapes of plan, the four positions, and the halts. Concept deck (PowerPoint + PDF) — Twenty-two slides for a board or a nominations committee, with nine sourced losses and what each does not establish. Decision wizard (Excel) — Eight scored questions returning the band, the weakest answer, and either of the two halt conditions. Key-person model (Excel, blank and worked) — Eleven candidate chances across the columns, what the loss costs against what the plan buys, and the break-even chance that decides it. Strategies and tactics (Word) — The moves at each of the four positions, what to do when the model halts, and four ways to make the next loss cheaper to carry. Case studies (Word) — Nine sourced losses — seven seats filled within five days, one answer reversed, one seat dissolved, and one company with no plan on ownership. Fit worksheet (Word, blank and worked) — The single page of record: who the company depends on, what rests on them, what would leave, what the plan does on the first day, and what holding it costs. Roadmap template (Word) — Five phases with gates and owners, the assumptions register, a reporting change and a periodic review line. Practitioner manual (Word + PDF) — Listing who the company depends on, adding up what rests on them, reading and pricing the plan, the board paper, six failure modes. Field checklist (PDF) — The one-pager that survives outside the binder. About the package (PDF) — What each file does and the order in which to run them.
- How is the Key Person Strategy Pack delivered?
- As a single download of all 16 files, immediately after payment, with the same link sent by email. It can be downloaded 3 times and the link is valid for 30 days. There is nothing to install and no account to keep.