Boardrooms are starting to have a problem. A festering one. We’re still stuck with too many CEOs leading with fists instead of foresight.
These are the tyrants brought in from God knows where, barking orders at a generation they neither understand nor respect. They didn’t rise through the ranks. They helicoptered in, and now they’re leaving behind a trail of broken teams, sky high turnover, and offices buzzing with resentment instead of energy.
These guys, and yes, they’re usually men, came up in a world where bullying was a leadership style and empathy was weakness. They slap on a fake grin for the investor calls but rule the workplace like a Mad Men-era war room. To them, a “challenging work environment” means yelling at interns and mocking fresh grads for daring to have ideas. You know the type. Always reminding the room how things were done “back in my day,” as if the present isn’t already slipping through their fingers.
Corporate dinosaurs and the mess they leave behind
They didn’t start as analysts grinding 70-hour weeks. They didn’t spend their twenties eating microwave dinners in the office kitchen or hustling just to get a seat at the meeting. They didn’t bleed company colours. They were air-dropped from a competitor, or sometimes a different industry altogether, with a golden handshake and zero loyalty. And they rarely stay. Eighteen months, maybe three years. Just long enough to shake the tree, cut some corners, and make the numbers look sexy for the next quarterly report. Then they’re off to the next gig, leaving behind scorched earth and demoralised teams.
Meanwhile, the real lifeblood of the company, the people who built the firm up, are checking LinkedIn on their lunch breaks. Because how long can you endure the soul-drain of working under someone who sees you as inhuman and disposable? The modern workforce isn’t lazy, entitled, or allergic to hard work. They just don’t want to be screamed at by someone who doesn’t know their name or even knows what they do at the company.
There’s value in the long game. In knowing every creaky floorboard of the company because you’ve walked it. The best leaders I’ve seen, whether it be in golf clubs, in local football clubs, in war zones, in boardrooms, are the ones who started low and climbed high. They’ve started doing the boring mundane tasks and carried the load. They lead with humility, not hubris. When they talk about culture, it’s not some HR buzzword, it’s something they lived, shaped, and protected. I see a part of me in them, and that is motivating, enduring but also inspiring that I too can climb the ranks and see that hard work truly does lead to high rewards.
We need more of those people. CEOs who earned their stripes, who know what it’s like to be ignored in meetings, to make coffee runs, to solve problems without a playbook. Leaders who didn’t just inherit a title, they earned it through blood, sweat, and late nights.
Until then, we’ll keep haemorrhaging talent, killing morale, and wondering why nobody wants to stay. It’s not rocket science. It’s leadership. And too many of the ones in charge don’t have a clue how to do it.
