Fish Food for Thought

Using the story of 'Green Boots' — a body on Mount Everest that became a navigational landmark — as a central metaphor, this piece explores how business leaders can avoid becoming cautionary tales. It examines three high-profile corporate failures: WeWork's governance-free hypergrowth, Theranos' fraudulent healthcare technology, and FTX's collapse due to absent internal controls. Three warning signs are identified: summit fever (prioritizing goals over conditions), oxygen deprivation (decision-making under extreme stress), and solo climbing (silencing dissent and isolating from feedback). The piece contrasts these with Microsoft's successful pivot under Satya Nadella and advocates for blameless postmortems, pre-mortems, and celebrating intelligent failures as tools for sustainable leadership.