ABOUT ME
HI! THANKS FOR STOPPING BY...
Did you ever have big dreams of being a business leader in America only to realize that the reality of those dreams in many of today's models of business comes with soul-crushing compromises? As a naive member of the Future Business Leaders of America in high school, I dreamt about becoming a business executive. I dedicated more than 25 years of my life into something I believed was noble, and honorable... until I realized it wasn't.
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WHO I WAS
Let me get real with you. I am a white male in my early 40’s, who has greatly benefited over the past 20 years from the current structure and norms of the business world. I’ve succeeded at the expense of several talented and dynamic women and people who haven’t looked like me. I have been the one chosen for promotions, I have been the one given the power by other powerful males largely following their direction and their motivations for achieving profit-driven goals. And I’ve been wildly successful following this traditional profit-driven playbook, often using the excusing mantra, “it’s just business”.
MOMENTS THAT CHANGED ME
As an industry insider who’s wrestled with the anguish that the system has caused, I became brutally honest with myself about the failures and the pain I've created. In 2021, I fired one of the most kind hearted, ambitious, and high performing managers I had ever known, two days after his wife had their first child. A spreadsheet error an analyst made 6 months earlier meant that we would miss our profit target for the year. The Board of Directors issued a directive to fire 7 people to remedy this mistake. We had already done three prior layoffs to hit their targets and nothing but strong employees were left. As Managing Director, I angrily complied, and chose 7 of my best performers. I cried as I spoke to Steve -- the only employee termination that has ever brought me to tears -- in my 22-year career. In 2023, Steve, 37, committed suicide. Following his termination from my firm, Steve went on to two management roles with two different companies, but was laid off from both.
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WHY I TEACH WHAT I DO
Today, “good business” means forcing good people to do bad things, often to other good people, in the name of profit, and it's wreaking havoc on American workers’ mental health. This pain can largely be attributed to the expanded use of Theory X management, a 150-year old management philosophy which stresses that workers cannot be trusted; they are inherently lazy and thus need heavy-handed oversight to become productive. This is not the world that I want my daughters and younger generations to inherit.
But, to change the game, you have to understand the rules. I want you to be better prepared so that you can better influence work culture, and prevent toxic work culture and environments.