THE WOLF

There are certain moments in every business when survival requires radical non-conformity. Where the status quo creates a crisis of such epic proportions that the only person who can rescue the situation is a complete, freak, outlier who in the normal course of business is often ostracized and isolated. 

Elon Musk was a freak who left ScotiaBank. Sarah Blakeley was a freak inside of Disney. Steve Jobs was the freak inside of Atari. 

These moments, when a cultural outlier realizes that their differences are a secret superpower form the origin story of many of the greatest entrepreneurs in history.  

We usually only learn who these Business Punks are once they leave huge companies to launch incredible startups. But, many of them live inside of huge companies operating as a sort of secret special forces. 

The greatest Business Punk I worked with was at PWC from 2015 - 2017.  I’ve code-named him The Wolf.  In the movie “Pulp Fiction,” The Wolf was an always-on-call fixer who “solved problems” for the criminal underworld – like cleaning up after a botched murder. The PWC equivalent of a botched murder is a $70 million Fortune 500 account who is weeks away from canceling their contract if the firm can’t graduate from PowerPoint to execution. 

The Wolf was a rotund, short man who wore outlandish 3-piece suits, with a silk kerchief tucked into the breast pocket of his waistcoat. He had an office at PWC’s midtown Manhattan HQ - but he never used it. Instead, he operated out of a rented loft-space studio in Chelsea. As far as I could tell, he only slept on flights. He spent 20 – 30 hours a week on flights.

He was one of the most powerful people at the firm because he solved urgent problems that could only be resolved by someone whose primary loyalty was to impact rather than self preservation. 

During my first meeting with him, he introduced me to a bald man who was a senior partner at the firm. We all shook hands. The partner was midway through his deck when The Wolf took a deep pull from his vape, exhaled through his nostrils, and started massaging his temple. The Wolf lifted his right hand motioning to the partner to stop talking. Then he spoke: “If you expect to unf***k this situation, you will need to stop doing fake work. And you will need to leave this with me. Can you agree to that?” 

During the subsequent week, the Wolf summoned his sleeper cell of misfits hidden inside a Chelsea loft-space to build and launch a working prototype for a massive Fortune 500 client who was going to cancel their engagement with PWC if the firm didn’t graduate from PowerPoint to working technology.

What I loved most about The Wolf was that he understood that successful enterprise innovation has little to do with technology or strategy -- many failing businesses have all the technology and strategic expertise that money can buy. He understood that in certain situations, radical, defiant non-conformity is the only way to get things done and move forward. 

Here are the most enduring lessons I learned from working with The Wolf:

First Principles First

A Punk is essential for a large business to navigate a crisis because as a company gets bigger it becomes harder to delete policies and people that no longer work. Technical and cultural debt becomes something much worse: rot. Companies lose the ability to delete requirements, question assumptions, and reduce cycle times. Executives place more value on protecting their fiefdom than creating value. Self preservation becomes more important than progress. But a Business Punk like The Wolf didn’t keep score like everyone else. His sense of self worth was entirely rooted in his ability to solve hard problems and build epic shit. He would rather lose his job for being irreverent, and insubordinate in order to build something important. As a result, he was uniquely capable of dismantling the political and cultural dysfunction that sustained mediocrity and rot. 

“I’m the only who loves you enough to tell you the truth”

The Wolf loved PWC more than anyone else. Everyone who knew what needed to change but didn’t have the courage to say it was selfish, in his view. He would remind people all the time that all the other innovators who knew what needed to change didn’t have the loyalty and love to stay and fix it. The purity of his intentions made his unorthodox methods worth enduring. People respected his fervor.

Be The Buffalo 

The Buffalo is unique among mammals in that it runs toward extreme storms while other mammals run away from them. The Wolf ran toward crises that terrified everyone else. He was willing to die trying while everyone else was dying to deflect responsibility. 

A Business Punk Is like Nuclear Power 

A Business Punk like the Wolf is a hard person to manage. Their superpowers can be dangerous and explosive if they are not channeled carefully. The Wolf could be incredibly kind and charismatic. But he also could be cruel, explosive, and impulsive. Because he did his best work in crisis situations he often created chaos that didn’t need to be there. I loved working with him because we shared a common Punk sensibility, and he trusted me to call him on his bullshit. But almost everyone else didn’t last very long. If a Business Punk doesn’t have a partner who can calm them down, say no, and translate their insanity into actionable deliverables, they quickly go from asset to liability.

It’s a mission not a marriage

It’s still a subject of debate whether the Wolf quit or got fired. But ultimately he left and it was ugly. In retrospect he should have never been an employee, he should have been an outside consultant. Certain consultants are hired to say and do the things that no one on the inside can. There is power in speaking truth to power. And the positioning of the person who speaks that truth is incredibly important. Because in certain situations, in certain crises, punk power is the only power that matters. 

One more thing… One of the greatest Business Punk brands of our time is BrewDog. And this coming Wednesday I’ll be speaking with the CEO who led their expansion into the US, Tanisha Robinson. We’ll be in Copenhagen, Denmark at Balderdash, on Wednesday 29 May from 6-8pm. There is only room for 30 people so RSVP here if you want to hang out with us.