The first two weeks after an executive exit

Do the administrative work while you still can

• Get your contacts out of systems you are about to lose access to, within whatever your agreement permits.
• Confirm the leaving terms in writing — dates, payments, what you may say, what happens to equity.
• Save the evidence of your own work: numbers you delivered, decisions you made, things you can reference later without access to company systems.
• Set up a personal address and move anything that matters to it.

Agree the story before anybody asks

Within days you will be asked what happened, dozens of times, by people who will repeat your answer. Decide now what the true, short, unembarrassed version is — one or two sentences, no blame, no detail that invites a follow-up you do not want. The version you improvise at the fourth coffee is the one that spreads.

You are not managing perception. You are choosing, once, which true sentence you are going to repeat two hundred times.

Tell people in the right order

What not to do yet

Do not start applying. Two weeks after an exit you do not yet know what you want, and applications made in that state are the ones you regret being shortlisted for. Do not take the first conversation that offers relief. And do not make the decision about money in the first fortnight if you can possibly avoid it.

The honest limit

Some exits are financially urgent and none of the above changes that. If the clock is real, compress it — but do the story and the contacts, because they cost an afternoon and everything after depends on them.