In The Mud
how many executives have stood on the floor where their product is made? if your system wounds others and your suit stays clean, you’re not building. you’re extracting.
Leadership isn’t sitting in a glass office pointing at a slide deck.
Real leadership means showing up — in the field, in chaos, in the factory, on Zoom at 7 a.m. and 11 p.m. Especially when it’s gritty, uncertain, unglamorous.
It’s easy to give orders from afar. It’s different entirely to stand where they stand, to feel how hard it is to build something that matters.
We glorify “design thinking.” Sticky notes, brainstorming rooms, well-lit workshops. But real design thinking? It’s entering the very system you claim to design. If it doesn’t touch you — you never centered people at all.
How many executives at H&M have ever stood in the hot, chaotic factories where their clothes are stitched — felt the heat, heard the machines, watched the hands whose labor creates the profit?
How many at Apple have visited the assembly-line floors where devices are built — seen the repetitive strain, the conditions, how human lives fit into quarterly margins?
How many at Google have ever met the real kid whose mental health their algorithm trapped in endless content loops — the human being behind the data?
Because we don’t just build products. We build systems — systems that carry consequences. But we measure success by dashboards, KPIs, margins — rarely by real harm, fatigue, exploitation, or human cost.
That’s not leadership. That’s administrative power without responsibility.
Real leadership means contact with reality. It means witnessing consequences. It means being accountable not just for profits — but for human lives.
And the research backs this up: leaders who practice what scholars call authentic leadership — transparency, vulnerability, self-awareness — see higher employee trust, work engagement, and job satisfaction. That trust translates into loyalty: organizations with authentic leaders have lower turnover and higher retention. During crises, authentic leadership boosts resilience — employees’ capacity to withstand stress, adapt, and keep going.
If you lead — lead. Don’t hide behind power, perks, glass walls. Walk into the mud. Meet the people. See what your designs, your decisions, your profits cost.
Because if your system wounds others but your suit — your comfort — remains untouched, you’re not building. You’re still extracting.