The Problem
The CEO’s World Before We Stepped In
A CEO running a global brand received a call on his mobile. It was a direct line, a personal number that shouldn’t have been publicly available but was.
The caller had a grievance against the company. And he wasn’t going away.
External problem: This person managed to talk his way into a video call with members of the C-Suite. That legitimised him in his own mind — elevated his importance. He started making demands. Then threats. Multiple board members were now being targeted.
Internal problem: The CEO and his directors were frightened. Not just about physical safety — though that was part of it — but about the reputational damage this person could inflict and the psychological toll it was taking. Every day, this dispute was at the forefront of my mind. They couldn’t focus on running the company.
Philosophical problem: They’d tried everything. Attempted to resolve the grievance, reason with him, and alleviate his concerns. Nothing worked. In fact, engagement made things worse.
Now, this dispute had become the organisation’s most critical priority—not growth, not strategy, just managing one fixated individual who wouldn’t stop.
That’s not how it should be.
Why Their Attempts Had Failed
Here’s what had gone wrong: By engaging directly with this person — including that video call with the C-Suite — they’d inadvertently given him what he wanted: legitimacy, status, and a direct line to senior leadership.
In his mind, he now had power. And every attempt to reason with him reinforced that.
Most organisations make this mistake. They treat fixated individuals like rational actors having a reasonable dispute. But fixation doesn’t work like that. Engagement without understanding the psychology behind it escalates the situation rather than defusing it.
The board was terrified. The threats were escalating. And nobody knew how to make it stop.
That’s when they contacted us.
The Solution
What We Did
We started with a complete digital investigation into this person. We needed to know who he actually was, whether he was broadcasting his grievance online, and — critically — whether there was any evidence of weapons, violent ideation, or what we call proximal indicators: signs of leakage or identification that suggest someone’s moving from thought to action.
Then, we brought in our forensic psychologist to create a full fixated threat profile. We needed to understand his personality traits and behavioural patterns, and whether the risk was escalating or controllable.
From that psychological profile, we built an engagement and communication strategy. This wasn’t generic advice but explicitly tailored to his personality type. It told the client exactly how to respond, what language to use, and crucially, what not to do that would escalate things further.
We then conducted a digital vulnerability assessment on the key company directors he was targeting. What personal information was publicly available? What could he exploit? Where were the gaps in their privacy and security?
Based on the threat level we’d identified, we provided short-term security at the homes of two directors. At the same time, they addressed the vulnerabilities we’d found.
Finally, we represented the client in engaging with the police. We shared our findings, prepared detailed evidential statements from the directors, ensured they identified the offences committed, documented the psychological impact, and pushed for action.
What Would’ve Happened Without Proper Intervention
If the board had continued trying to reason with this person on their own, here’s what would’ve happened:
The threats would’ve continued, probably escalated. The directors would’ve kept living in fear — checking over their shoulders, worrying about their families, and unable to focus on their work.
The person’s fixation would have intensified because every engagement gave him more of what he wanted: attention, legitimacy, and power.
Eventually, something would’ve broken. Either he would’ve acted on the threats, or the psychological damage to the directors would’ve become unsustainable.
And the company’s most critical priority would’ve remained managing one fixated individual instead of running the business.
That’s the cost of mismanaging fixated threats.
The Outcome
The threats stopped, the vulnerabilities we’d identified were fixed, the directors’ home security improved, and most importantly, they could sleep again.
The Crown Prosecution Service successfully prosecuted the person of concern, and the board was able to return to running their company instead of living in fear.
But here’s what made the real difference: they understood what they were dealing with. The engagement strategy we built meant they stopped accidentally escalating the situation, and the psychological profiling meant they knew how to respond and when not to respond.
That’s what proper threat assessment delivers: you don’t just react to behaviour. You understand what’s driving it, manage it intelligently, and restore everyone’s peace of mind.
The CEO’s mobile number got sorted too. Sometimes the most dangerous vulnerability is just being too accessible.