Start with Why

You can save the story, and skip to the end. If you are a leader, follower or just curious about leadership-skip to the end and read this book. 

Working with the co-CEO's at Binary Tree was quite an experience. In 2008 they had optimized a technology consulting company to operate virtually, the only office was staffed by one full time receptionist who also supported sales, marketing, HR and their executive needs from a small office in Newark, NJ. It was odd to begin working there, coming from the La Brea Tar Pit cubicle office environment popularized in the 1970's. The same visionless corporate dinosaurs now dragging perfectly productive remote workers back to an office. For no good reason at all. Other than some drone's decision that justifies rent, devalues peoples time through commuting (you should be paid for it), expense (you should be reimbursed for your mileage, parking and transportation costs), the high cost of food around the office and the abusive 24/7 connection now requiring folks to keep on top of notifications, texts and emails from home anyway. With a home workday, working 8-6 with no commute, and attending to emails and notifications inside those hours was a fair trade. As CFO I never had that luxury, but for the team it worked. 

One of the transcendent books they recommended was Start with Why by Simon Sinek. Start With Why Book | Simon Sinek - Simon Sinek

My role was to catalyze the company transformation from an IBM Domino consulting shop into a Microsoft Cloud Partner. A huge transformation, think going from Lotus Notes 5.0 (1999) to Office 365. We needed to serve a market rapidly transforming from IBM Lotus\Domino to Microsoft. The company pivoted from onsite IBM consultants to a mostly remote service model. More importantly, from consulting to SaaS. To succeed, we needed to clearly define and communicate the WHY to our team, it was a sea change for us to move from IBM to Microsoft. Sharing the why was how we all came to own this transformation. Binary Tree was a virtual company, so more open to change than most and already successfully managing multiple teams of technologists working from their homes in multiple states. And countries. I already knew how to work with offshore development teams from my 7-year stint as founding CFO at ExpertPlan. Our team in India, led by 2 key employees who moved back to their home towns there for personal reasons, was the best software development team I have ever worked with. And likely one of the best in the world, at that time. The best developers in the world work remotely, and have been doing that for over 20 years now. The hypocrisy of the Dinosaur companies requiring return to the office for USA workers while relying on remote offshore teams for development, testing and back office support is astounding. And if you look at their "Whys" we all know that we are smarter than they are! The emperor CEO making that call has no clothes. It would be funny, if it wasn't negatively impacting so many lives and shareholder fortunes. In 2026 my thesis is that every company operates better remotely. And Binary Tree operated more efficiently remotely than all of my previous employers did from their offices. Knowledge work from home was better than in an office, and still is. 

And if you are wondering, no I do not get paid for this in any way. I am not an Amazon referral partner. 

Why? Learn About The Optimism Company Mission and Values - Simon Sinek