The Foundation
Where the Optimism Comes From
The optimism comes from Kansas—a farming family where quitting wasn't an option. That foundation left me with a core belief: any problem has a solution. I get energized by challenges and rarely accept constraints at face value.
"I've spent my career treating the word 'impossible' as an invitation."
But here's what I've had to learn: not everyone shares this trait. And it's not because they're pessimists—it's because years of bureaucracy, budget battles, and "that's not how we do things" have trained the enthusiasm out of them. They've stopped challenging constraints because challenging constraints stopped working.
When I run too far ahead with my natural optimism, I'm not leading—I'm dragging. People follow, but they don't believe. It looks like fantasy, not vision.
Strategic optimism bridges that gap. The optimism gives people permission to attempt what looks impossible. The strategy gives them confidence they're not chasing a mirage. The skill I'm still refining: knowing when to push teams to challenge the constraints they've accepted as permanent, and when to hold back so they can catch up and own the vision themselves.
The Evolution
What I Got Wrong
The Smartest Person in the Room
I spent years believing that being the smartest person in the room was how you earned the right to lead. I was wrong.
The shift from "prove you're smart" to "help others succeed" didn't happen overnight. It came from watching what actually worked—and being honest about what didn't.
When you protect budgets and hit your metrics, you're a good operator. When you understand what actually drives each person on your team and help them find meaning in what they do, you're a leader.
Core Principles
How I Lead
Mental Alignment at Scale
Empowered teams make good choices on their own—what to prioritize, what to push back on, when to escalate, when to let something go. The trick is achieving mental alignment at scale. How do you share ideas that connect deeply enough to guide decisions across dozens of people and hundreds of situations you'll never see?
Process won't get you there. Documentation won't either. You have to connect at an emotional level.
Antonio Damasio's somatic marker hypothesis explains why—humans make decisions through emotional signals first, then post-rationalize. Baba Shiv at Stanford puts it bluntly: only about 5-10% of our decisions are made rationally. The rest come from something deeper.
If you want to empower good choices, you have to reach that deeper level. A memorable axiom—philosophy compressed into words that stick—is how I get there. Something people hold onto when the noise gets overwhelming and the rational context fails them.
Know the Whole Person
I spend real time getting to know my employees as complete people. When I understand what actually motivates someone—what they're building, what pressures they're facing, what brings them energy—I can assign work that inspires rather than drains. It helps them find meaning in their work, and it helps me plan better and follow up appropriately.
Everyone has their own drivers. For me, when I worked in financial services, it wasn't about managing portfolios. It was about the people counting on those pension funds. Every decision affected real people's ability to live the life they'd worked decades to build. That's what kept me sharp. That's what made the late nights worth it.
Your team members have their own versions of this. Maybe it's flexibility to care for family. Maybe it's learning skills for their next role. Maybe it's stability while they build something on the side. When you know these things, you manage differently.
Management Is Emotional Labor
Here's what most leadership books won't tell you: this is exhausting.
Holding space for people's whole lives, making hard decisions that affect those lives, carrying their challenges alongside your own—it's draining. But that's the work. Not the tasks or the metrics. The emotional labor of seeing people completely and helping them become who they're trying to be.
I owe them that effort, especially when it's uncomfortable.
Accountability Over Blame
When something goes wrong, I am not interested in placing blame or negotiating who did what and when. I care about two things:
Who steps up to resolve the situation.
How we'll do better next time.
That's it. Everything else is noise.
Current Focus
The 2026 Philosophy
"We are going to achieve more by doing less."
Nine words that carry permission—permission to stop doing things that don't move the needle. They signal that I understand the struggle of being underwater. They affirm that impact matters more than activity.
The words are just the vehicle. The resonance is the point. When you connect at the level where decisions actually happen, you give your teams something no process document ever could— a feeling that guides choices long after the conversation ends.
The Distillation
What I've Learned
"You can't memo people into believing their work matters. You have to make them feel it."
Together, optimism and strategy are how teams achieve things they didn't think were possible.
The work is human. The labor is emotional. It's about helping people become who they're trying to be while accomplishing things that matter.
That's the actual job.