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The Day I Became the Boss I Swore I'd Never Be

And what a man named Don Karns taught me about the difference between leading and bossing

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I still remember the morning it happened. I showed up to work at UPS and everything looked the same — the package cars, the routes, the faces I'd worked alongside for years. But something fundamental had shifted overnight. My browns were traded in for a white shirt and a dark tie. I was the boss now...

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I've spent a lifetime trying to become a better leader — and a better teacher and coach. What I've learned is that you teach best what you most need to learn. I needed to learn a helluva lot.​

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Whether you are a newly promoted manager, an experienced leader questioning your own leadership, or a seasoned executive dealing with complex and major changes, I hope you find wandering in my orchard might lead you to find some useful ways to grow your leadership skills. 

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THE ROOTS

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My work has been tested in some of the most demanding organizational environments in the country. Herman Miller, where leadership wasn't just talked about but lived. Ford, Chrysler, and GM, where the pressure to perform was constant and the stakes were real. UPS, where Don Karns first handed me a standard worth keeping. LCC, where I learned that mission-driven organizations have their own particular courage. And the Tom Peters Company, where the bar for what counts as "work worth paying for" was set higher than anywhere else I've ever been.

These are the roots. Forty years of being in rooms where it mattered.

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THE CONSTELLATION

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No one develops alone. I didn't. The thinking behind The Wisdom Orchard was shaped by a constellation of people whose work changed how I see leadership — and how I try to practice it.

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Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner — whose Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership gave me the most useful framework I've ever put in a room full of leaders.

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Tom Peters — who taught me that excellence isn't a standard you meet. It's a standard you keep chasing.

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Max DePree — who showed me, through Herman Miller, that a company could be built on genuine human dignity and still outperform its competitors.

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W. Edwards Deming — whose systems thinking taught me to look at organizations the way a farmer looks at soil — what conditions are you creating, and what will grow there?

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Peter Block — who helped me understand that real community is built on accountability, not compliance.

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Chip Bell — whose work on mentoring and service reminded me that the best leaders are always, at their core, teachers.

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These aren't just names on a shelf. They're voices I still hear when I'm in the room with a leader who's struggling to find their way.

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