Big Bang
Laying groundwork for more human ways of working.
This August I turn sixty.
It’s an age when a lot of people start to slow down. They aim for leisure, comfort and settle in to well-worn patterns of living.
I get the impulse, but this past year has cracked me open — and grief and loss have given way to clarity and resolve. I’ve decided not to pull back. In fact, the opposite.
Humans tend to get more risk-averse as we age, I think, because we get complacent or believe we have more to lose. And we’ve seen too much. We know how hard it is to succeed and how common it is to fail.
So we keep our heads down at work and take up golf, painting or bread baking in our spare time. And I want to be clear, I see nothing wrong with this choice. But I want to go another way.
Age brings perspective, knowledge, know-how, and experience. Which means sixty can be the perfect age to try something ambitious and innovative — if, that is, we can overcome inertia.
The hard lessons of these past couple years have propelled me out of comfortable patterns and into motion. I feel the clock ticking more viscerally than ever before.
Three Hard Lessons
In spring of last year, Morgan Spurlock died. He was 53. He was also the biological father of my son Laken, and we had co-parented for close to 15 years. Our relationship wasn’t always easy, but it was real.
Morgan was intense, generous, and deeply creative. His career was big — until it wasn’t. He never quite found his footing again after it all fell apart. And then came cancer. One diagnosis became two became three. Treatments were tried. But within a year, he was gone.
I still remember how he felt in my arms the last time I hugged him. A once powerful and vital presence, reduced to a wisp I was afraid I might break.
A few months later, just after Christmas, my dear friend Kevin Kanarek took his own life.
Almost 20 years ago, when I left a high-control group — a cult — I was depressed and near suicidal. Kevin gave me a place to land and much-needed company. He may have saved my life.
He was subtle, brilliant, and kind. But after turning sixty, he looked at where he was and couldn’t see a place for himself in the future. We talked often, and I felt him slip deeper into a hole of regret. Those of us who loved Kevin could still see so many possibilities for him — and with him. But he couldn’t. And then he was gone.
And then this May, I sat in a Brooklyn courtroom as my former cult leader — someone who once felt like a leader to me — was tried and convicted of conspiracy to commit forced labor. The group’s head of sales, who once felt like a sister, stood beside her. Both are now in federal custody.
For five weeks, I sat on the prosecution side of the courtroom gallery. I relived my own trauma, and heard the stories of suffering from other victims. Some I knew well and many I didn’t.
And across the aisle, on the defense side, I saw people I used to know and love, who had never left. Still loyal, trapped, and under the spell of charismatic influence and isolated certainty. They’ve given years, in some cases decades, that they’ll never get back.
Wasted Potential
Wasted potential has always bothered me.
People who never get access to what they need. Organizations that sap creativity and energy. A carceral system that warehouses humans instead of investing in them.
It all feels like part of the same pattern: systems that should serve us — and don’t. And how we are so often let down by leaders and institutions.
So I’ve decided to step forward — carefully, intentionally and publicly — to try and do my part to reduce waste.
Declaration
I’ve sometimes hesitated to declare big ambitions — fear of sounding pretentious or failing in public are the most likely culprits. But intention matters and declaring it makes it more real. So I’m writing this piece as a kind of marker and point of origin.
I want to spend the rest of the time I’ve got helping to build organizations that work for people — not the other way around.
I want to spend my potential creating opportunities for others to spend theirs.
Three Pillars
This is a simple idea, but it’s hard-won. I’ve spent time inside cults, corporations, and everything in between. I’ve lived through coercion, collapse, creativity, and care. And I’ve built a modestly good career helping organizations become more functional.
Now I want more. I want to distill what I’ve learned into something clear, useful, and creative. Something that lasts.
I’m organizing this work around three core areas:
1. Ethical Influence
How do we lead without coercion? What does ethical leadership actually look like in a world obsessed with dominance and control?
2. Effective Systems
What makes an organization not just efficient or well-intentioned, but high-performing and continuously improving? How do we create operations that are humane, resilient, and that actually deliver?
3. Navigating Complexity
There is no steady state anymore. Complexity isn’t a blip or a bug — it’s the terrain. How do we build, operate and lead within it?
The Work
Each of these areas will soon have:
A foundational essay
A visual primer
A series of short videos
I’m also building tools and offering services. On the tool front, AI shows real promise in helping operators lead well, build better systems and manage complexity. I have two tools in development:
RippleIQ is working its way towards alpha. It helps leaders make sense of complexity — offering insight that helps clarify your path through tough, tangled problems.
Gut Check is in the design stage and will help people identify, and deal with, coercive and manipulative interpersonal dynamics.
My work as a Fractional COO funds and informs the rest — and it’s where I’m most useful right now. If you’re leading something and want more clarity, I’d love to talk.
The Studio
Beyond content, tools, and services, my true ambition is to build a company. A small studio. A shared practice. A body of work.
One that embodies ethical influence, effective systems, and a deep engagement with complexity. An organization that’s deliberate, generous, structurally sound — and built to last. I’m currently working on materials that describe the vision, constraints and ambitions of this studio. Stay tuned.
I don’t need to be remembered, so few of us are. But I do want the impact of my life to ripple into the future in non-linear ways that contribute to a more equitable and sustainable future.
“Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.” —George Bernard Shaw
So this is my Big Bang; an intentional setting of initial conditions from which the rest will flow.
If you’re building something aligned, or want to help shape what this studio becomes, message me. I’m especially looking for early users, collaborators, thoughtful advisors and financial backers.
I think I’m up to the task. And I know I can’t do it alone. Let’s build something that works — together.
—Bob
