Understanding Senior Leadership And Companies: “Corpus” vs. “Externalities”

This seems semantic, but it’s important.

I won’t go hard on defining an “externality” in the nerdy economic way for you, because most people who might read this have encountered the term somewhere along the way. It’s an unintended consequence of a product action, generally; it can be positive or negative, i.e. “walking to work reduces congestion” and “flying private increases pollution.” Those are simple examples and the world around these terms gets complicated and fraught, but I’ll keep it simple for you right now.

One thing that is missing from most “future of work” discussions is a focus on the psychology and behavior of those who tend to end up running companies. This is a typically male, white class — it was of a certain age, and usually still is, although “the tech bro uprising” changed the demographics a tiny bit. If you’ve ever been in a high-level corporate meeting, you know that people are obsessed with:

• Profit/loss
• Revenue
• Growth
• Compliance
• “What the other big players are doing”

In some ways, it’s actually quite boring to be in those meetings. I’ve been there a few times. Not many, but a few. It’s…