https://www.punksandpinstripes.com/insights/the-wolf?
THE WOLF
May 23
Written By Gregory Larkin
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.
Gregory Larkin
