Two strong executives. One company growing weaker.

Two senior executives. Capable, experienced, with results to their names. Each knows their field, has built their team and is considered important to the business.

But there is a problem: they refuse to work together.

The conversations have taken place. The advice has been repeated. The CEO has heard both sides, explained, and tried to bring them together. Every meeting ends with assurances. Day-to-day reality stays the same.

Until the rivalry spreads to their teams.

Information arrives late. Emails acquire more copied recipients and less substance. Meetings become arenas for defending responsibilities. People who could work together start watching who they speak to, what they share and how their manager might interpret a simple exchange.

The company keeps working. But part of its work is now devoted to managing itself.

What would you do in this situation?

My position is clear: once responsibilities have been clarified, organizational ambiguities have been corrected and a genuine opportunity to change has been given, a persistent refusal to cooperate by both executives should lead to both being removed from the company.

I consider this the soundest management decision. Because keeping them means the entire organization will continue paying for behavior they choose to maintain.

To understand why, however, we need to reconsider the word “strong.”

An executive may be exceptional in sales, production, finance or marketing. Taking on managerial responsibility, however, broadens the scope of their evaluation. They are now also judged on their ability to connect their work with the work of others.

If their department meets its targets by passing delays, miscommunication and costs on to other departments, we need to examine how much of that success remains when we look at the whole business.

Sales promising what production cannot deliver. Production rejecting every commercial need to protect its schedule. Finance evaluating savings without examining what happens to the customer experience.

Local performance can coexist with overall dysfunction.

Cooperation is part of a senior executive’s performance. It is included in the responsibility for which they were hired and are paid.

Of course, an organization needs people who disagree, challenge and defend difficult positions. The requirement to cooperate must not become a pretext for imposing silence.

An executive may be right to resist an unrealistic promise, a problematic practice or a decision that puts the company at risk. Tension alone does not prove that both sides bear equal responsibility.

That is why the CEO needs specific incidents. Who withheld necessary information? Who bypassed an agreed process? Who undermined a decision? Who asked their team not to communicate with the other? Who tried to solve the problem, and how?

The statement “they are both at fault” needs evidence. Otherwise, taking an equally distant position may protect the person causing the greatest harm.

The CEO also needs to examine their own contribution.

Have they assigned overlapping responsibilities? Are they rewarding incompatible targets? Do they agree privately with each executive, leaving both believing they have the CEO’s support? Have they allowed access to their office to replace every shared rule for making decisions?

An organizational contradiction can sustain a personal conflict. Removing people without correcting that contradiction leaves the same problem waiting for their successors.

Once these issues are clear, management must define the framework: who decides what, which information must be shared, how disagreements are resolved and which shared outcome commits both executives.

Personal affection is not required. Professional behavior is.

No one needs to automatically give up their position. But they do need to discuss matters using evidence, follow the agreed way of resolving disagreements and take their share of responsibility once a decision is made.

At this point, general advice such as “work it out” has exhausted its usefulness.

If clear accountability has not already been established, there needs to be a specific, documented requirement for change, with observable behaviors, a short time frame and a clear consequence.

The company must be able to establish whether information-sharing has improved, whether joint decisions have been followed and whether the conflict has stopped spreading to the teams.

If this framework has already been set and is systematically violated, another “last chance” teaches that consequences can be negotiated indefinitely.

Then a decision is needed.

If one executive genuinely cooperates and the other continues to undermine, the decision concerns the one who persists.

If both persist in refusing to cooperate, the right decision is to remove both.

Keeping one because they bring in more revenue, have been with the company longer or are harder to replace leaves the underlying problem intact: an executive continues to believe they can choose which obligations of their role they will fulfill.

There is a second consequence. The person who stays may interpret the other’s departure as vindication of their tactics. They may conclude that intransigence pays, as long as they outlast the person opposite them.

Management thus risks ending this particular dispute while preserving the mechanism that will create the next one.

Nor is creating two isolated spheres of influence a substantive solution when the company’s operation requires their cooperation. It simply turns personal rivalry into an organizational chart.

The strongest objection usually sounds something like this: “We cannot afford to lose them.”

But it is worth setting out the cost of keeping them, too.

How many decisions are delayed? How many hours does the CEO spend refereeing? How much work is done again? Which customers are affected? Which good people have stopped making suggestions because they know every initiative will become entangled in the same dispute?

The cost of replacement is visible and concentrated. The cost of tolerance spreads throughout the company. This difference can lead management to regard as cheaper a situation that weakens the business every day.

In the logic of the Momentum Equation —Momentum = (Useful Energy − Friction) × Alignment— two powerful executives can add considerable energy while simultaneously generating friction and dismantling alignment. Their individual intensity does not guarantee collective progress.

Of course, removing two senior executives requires a plan: knowledge transfer, continuity in critical relationships, coverage of responsibilities and protection of operations.

Dependence on particular people is a reason for serious preparation. It must not become a permanent exemption from the company’s requirements.

And the decision about the executives is only part of the work.

The teams need direct communication again, shared priorities and the assurance that working with another department will not be interpreted as personal disloyalty. They need clear information about how things will work from now on, without public humiliation and without triumphalism from either side.

Because as long as management tolerates this situation, the rest of the company receives a message: the rules apply only until someone is considered important enough to bypass them.

That message must change through action.

The CEO must protect the business’s ability to function as a whole. Even when that means losing people they value, trust or find difficult to replace.

A leader’s value includes what others can achieve alongside them.

And when two executives persist in using their strength in a way that weakens the entire company, removing both is the responsibility that remains for management.

If you have experienced something similar —as a CEO, entrepreneur, executive or member of a team caught in the middle— I would like to hear your experience. Email me at theodore@georgedakis.com: what was tried, what decision was made and what changed afterwards.