Quiet quitting 2.0: Forget Gen Z, it’s CEOs who are checking out
Gen Z has long been berated for disengaging, but it’s higher up the ladder where the real damage is done. Welcome to quiet quitting 2.0: when the C-suite checks out but stays in
The business press has spent two years obsessing over “quiet quitting” among junior and mid-level employees. The bigger, more expensive problem is happening at the other end of the org chart. Boards and investors now face a growing wave of senior leaders who have mentally exited but remain physically present, often collecting seven-figure packages while the business drifts.
US data is flashing red. C-suite turnover hit its highest rate in five years in 2024, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas. Korn Ferry reports that average CEO tenure has dropped to 6.7 years from 8.4 a decade ago. PwC’s CEO Success Study found forced CEO exits due to “ethical lapses” have more than doubled in the past decade, but the bigger trend is quiet, voluntary disengagement before those departures. Some leaders are sitting out their final quarters or years, avoiding difficult decisions, delaying investment and prioritising optics over outcomes.
Europe shows similar warning lights. Heidrick & Struggles reported that one in four CEO transitions in EMEA during 2024 were unplanned, many tied to “fit and alignment” rather than performance. Russell Reynolds found that CEO turnover in Japan and South Korea has accelerated to levels not seen in two decades, driven by pressure to digitalise and the strain of navigating geopolitical shocks. The global, mainly stale, pale, male picture suggests quiet quitting at the top is less a cultural fad and more a structural risk.
The macroeconomic backdrop makes this more likely. Leadership fatigue is running high after three years of pandemic response, inflation shocks, supply chain volatility and now AI disruption. Spencer Stuart says 58 per cent of UK FTSE 100 CEOs are in their first three years in role, a period when burnout or misalignment is most likely. Some appointees never fully engage, arriving into a board culture with which they do not fit and defaulting to risk-averse maintenance mode.
A disengaged executive can stall transformation more profoundly than an incompetent one, they avoid confrontation, sign off on incremental projects and present inertia as “stability”. The result is often a slow bleed of market share, top talent and innovation capacity. In industries under AI and regulatory pressure, that delay is dangerous.
The signs your CEO has checked out
Warning signs are subtle but measurable: strategy documents recycling old language rather than framing new objectives. A lack of genuine debate in board meetings. Spikes in external advisory spend to cover decisions that should be made internally. Declining visibility of the executive in industry forums. A culture that avoids dissent. These signals rarely appear in earnings reports but have material effects on long-term value.
Boards are often complicit, tolerating coasting if the quarterly numbers look respectable. In some cases, a checked-out CEO is even perceived as a safe pair of hands until the next crisis hits and leadership muscle memory is absent. Investors, too, sometimes prefer the illusion of calm to the turbulence of true transformation, even if the result is slow erosion.
The secondary costs are significant. Disengaged leaders deter ambitious mid-level talent, who see the ceiling above them and decide to leave. Innovation pipelines dry up as strategic risk appetite vanishes. M&A becomes more about optics than synergy. Investor confidence slips when guidance feels like a script rather than an analysis. In aggregate, this is a value trap hiding in plain sight.
The contrarian view is not to slash executive pay but to sharpen incentives. Variable, long-term compensation tied directly to innovation, transformation and cultural health is more effective than narrow EPS targets. If climate, AI or geopolitical disruption are reshaping the business, then leaders should be personally accountable for delivering measurable progress inside those contexts. Boards must start structuring contracts around adaptability and foresight, not just financial performance.
Engagement has to be treated with the same rigour as financial discipline. Leadership audits, 360-degree reviews and shorter feedback loops create accountability and clarity. Succession planning needs to be ongoing rather than reactive. Visibility outside the boardroom matters, too. Executives who spend their time only inside HQ are sending a clear signal that connection and curiosity have been deprioritised. Boards should demand outward-facing activity that demonstrates thought leadership and industry presence.
One overlooked tactic is to measure executive contribution to culture, not just strategy. Recent Gallup research on engagement shows a clear link between leadership visibility and employee motivation. A CEO who fails to communicate with teams or avoids hard conversations about the future leaves an organisation rudderless. Embedding employee feedback into executive appraisals is not radical; it is overdue. The data says round 1:5 workers are actively disengaged in their company. Can you identify which? Is there a higher percentage in senior management?
Boards should also take note of how AI is reshaping leadership expectations. OpenAI’s GPT-5, DeepSeek’s R2 reasoning model and even Musk’s weird Grok 4 are all due to reshape the competitive environment in the coming year. These tools will alter decision cycles, compress planning horizons and expose indecision more quickly than ever. Leaders who are coasting will not keep pace, and their companies will pay the price in lost ground and missed opportunities.
Disruption is an invitation. Companies that treat leadership engagement as a strategic asset rather than a given will gain advantage. Engagement is not about constant visibility or charisma; it is about showing up with clarity, urgency and adaptability when the environment demands it, or even better, regardless. The next twelve months will test whether boards are willing to hold leaders to that standard.
Practical steps exist
Businesses can conduct structured scenario workshops where executives must address disruptive futures head-on, revealing both strategic agility and blind spots. Companies can benchmark executive communication internally and externally, measuring how often and how effectively leaders explain strategy in plain language. These can require board-level accountability for succession and development plans, not just financial reporting. None of these actions guarantee engagement, but they make drift much harder to disguise.
Executives who quietly disengage are the silent killers of corporate resilience. Unlike junior turnover, the cost is not replacement but opportunity. Market shifts will not wait for a coasting C-suite to wake up. Boards that act now can demand sharper focus, better alignment and genuine leadership. Boards that delay may find their biggest risk was not the competition or the market, but their own leaders choosing to stay in post without really showing up.
Paul Armstrong is founder of TBD Group and author of Disruptive Technologies