How I Actually Think About Building, Leading, and Sustaining Organizations
By Laurie Ruettimann
I’ve spent more than 30 years working in and around organizations. I’ve been an employee, a leader, a founder, an advisor, a consultant, and an entrepreneur. I’ve worked inside systems that functioned well and systems that quietly broke people while insisting everything was “fine.”
This post isn’t about catchy business ideas. It’s about building, leading, and sustaining organizations in the real world, where tradeoffs exist, incentives matter, and adults make rational decisions under imperfect conditions.
If you want the companion piece that lays out my core leadership philosophy, you can read it here: My Leadership Philosophy After 30 Years of Work.
These are my business principles. They guide how I evaluate companies, advise leaders, price my work, and decide where I’m willing to spend my time.
Companies must be profitable to matter.
If an organization cannot generate more revenue than it spends, it can’t sustain its mission. This is true for venture-backed startups, public companies, and nonprofits alike. Impact requires durability. Durability requires profit or surplus. Without it, everything else is temporary.
The CEO is the Chief People Officer.
People strategy cannot be delegated away. CEOs who treat HR as the owner of “people issues” often use HR as both a shield and a scapegoat. HR supports operations and strategy, but the CEO owns compensation philosophy, cultural priorities, and accountability. A CEO who avoids that responsibility creates organizational confusion and long-term risk.
Risk-bearing deserves compensation, regardless of role.
Founders, early hires, later-stage executives, and frontline employees all take professional, reputational, and temporal risks when they join an organization. That risk is real, and compensation should reflect it. Titles don’t change the math.
Employees are the CEOs of their own lives.
Workers make rational decisions on behalf of themselves and their families. Expecting loyalty without adequate compensation ignores how risk actually works. People aren’t uncommitted because they are cynical. They are pragmatic and leave managers because they are responsible.
Performance management is obsolete. Performance intelligence is required.
Organizations don’t need more rituals, ratings, or performative feedback cycles. They need fair, transparent systems paired with usable data. Performance intelligence helps managers lead better and helps workers decide whether staying makes sense. Clarity reduces resentment on both sides.
AI isn’t the point. Outcomes are.
Market share, efficiency, quality, and competitive advantage are the goals. You’ve heard the thought leaders say that AI is a tool. They’re not wrong. They’re just insufferable. What’s the lesson? Leaders who confuse tools with strategy mistake activity for progress and adoption for impact. Technology should serve outcomes, not distract from them.
Organizations don’t exist in isolation.
Companies rely on public infrastructure, education systems, research institutions, and civic stability. Employees and citizens are stakeholders in that ecosystem, whether or not they hold equity. Ignoring this reality weakens trust and undermines the systems that make business possible in the first place.
Work is a covenant, not a vibe.
Employment is a mutual agreement with obligations on both sides. Leaders who treat work as a cultural performance miss the responsibility to be clear, fair, and consistent. Trust is built through follow-through, not slogans.
Companies and leaders should pay taxes like workers do.
Founders and executives are still employees. Preferential tax treatment distorts incentives and erodes confidence in the systems that support economic growth. If an organization benefits from public infrastructure, it has an obligation to help sustain it.
If you want one example of this argument from the political right, Mitt Romney made a version of the case here: The New York Times opinion piece.
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I don’t believe organizations fail because people lack passion or motivation. They fail because leaders avoid responsibility, their systems obscure reality, and incentives drift out of alignment. My work focuses on restoring clarity so people and organizations can make better decisions sooner.
So, that’s how I actually think about building, leading, and sustaining organizations. Here are a few good starting points if you want to learn more about what I think and how I feel about work, labor, and the economy:
I share this philosophy to be useful. It isn’t aspirational or meant to motivate you. I hope it sparks a real drive within you to define your business principles, too.