'I left no door open ... I was done'.

• Author: O'Kelly, Eugene
• Position: CRISIS MANAGEMENT

I'D ALWAYS PREACHED commitment to goals: setting them, pursuing them, completing them. Now that we'd completed our fact-finding with doctors, I resolved to do three things:

1. leave my job;

2. choose a medical protocol that allowed me to ...

3. ... make the time remaining the best of my life, and as good as it could possibly be for those most affected by my situation.

While I made the decisions quickly, it was even more important that the decisions be utterly clear, to both me and others. I had to commit to them. I imagined that other people in my situation had often known the right course to take but were fearful of sticking with their plan. I don't mean to sound as if they were weak and I was strong; I just knew that it was in my best interest to continue to live by the rules I'd followed in my business life. There, clarity of mission, commitment, and execution had always been critical.

Immediately, my energy and focus changed from the priorities I had set for my firm to new priorities I would set for the months remaining to me. As head guy, I had focused on building and planning for the future. Now, I would have to learn the true value of the present.

On June 8, two weeks after I'd gone in for my first, still innocent-seeming medical test, I told my fellow partners at KPMG that I was stepping down as chairman and CEO. Because of my health situation, I was moving on to the next phase of my life. I said I would involve myself in the management transition, but then I would be gone.

I did not use the word temporary or hiatus. I left no door open. I was done. To say otherwise would have been unfair to the firm and the new chairman, as well as our employees; they deserved certainty of leadership. I hoped and expected that my successor would continue pursuing the initiatives I'd begun, which I felt were improving the organization. But direction and style, and the mandate itself, would be someone else's now, not mine.

Anyway, if I was really going to be honest about my situation, I had to acknowledge that any suggestion that I might return one day would be incredible self-delusion: I was already showing more symptoms.

Did the resignation hurt? Of course. Work defined me as much as anything. I'd been with the firm for 33 years. I'd never known another place. When I first started there, it was less than half its current size, and the sun had just set on the era when the partners were required to wear suits and fedoras when calling on clients. Now...