A work in progress
An update about me - from me
9 months ago amid the uproar and vociferous conversation about my habits as a leader and in many ways about the habits of a lot of leaders, I sent out this message to talk about my plans.
In the immediacy of that plan was that I would step away from people operations and the longer term plan was the introspective work that I would need to do in order to be a better leader and honestly just a decent human being. Things happened so quickly that we had to try to figure out what stepping away meant, especially because I was very operational. There were a lot of disagreements about how to move forward and a lot of very reasonable people stepped in to help the company navigate the process. Institutions lent us their HR specialists and investigative teams, finance specialists etc. Investors got involved, lawyers, advisors, it was a group effort. Turns out simple things are not always so straightforward. I will spare you the details and the play by play. I returned to Bento in a full time capacity as CEO towards the end of Q3 and I am still learning on the job. I wish there was a blueprint for this. But I really love this job and the problem Bento is solving. We have big plans for 2023 — We will launch V3 in January — Think next gen payroll or payroll and HRM 2.0 it will be rad!
Around July I got a new tattoo that reads “work in progress…” on my arm. I have a lot of tattoos and that one is easily my favorite. I am not ashamed of the fact that I am imperfect but resolved and committed to doing the work to become better. I am also okay with the fact that I will never quite get “there” — no I don’t mean this in a cop out type of way. Not in the excuse my bad behaviors kind of way — but in the way that I hope implies a very human reality we all face — that we will all never quite get there. But that we have to do the work — invert the mirror, allow love to help, wisdom and every other available tool and get really serious about it. Even though we know we will never get there — especially maybe because of this reality. But we find solace that between here and there — there is “better” and we will continue to work towards it.
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I am still a workaholic. Still very moody, I don’t curse as much as I used to but still do and I use the word “bacon” a lot. An inside joke between my therapist and I — who challenged me to find a word to use to remember when that fire is about to burn out of control and I am about to become annoyed. I naturally chose bacon. No I will never get a bacon tattoo — tempted though. I love bacon.
Still a fighter, still impatient with half baked efforts and still okay with making the hard decisions. We have fired people and have hired more people. We will never get tired to working with passionate, vision and mission driven people who believe in the art of building, the power of ideas and the free enterprise. My great hope is that the team and people looking in from the outside can say that we do it in a more orderly and decent way. That we — That “I” do not make people feel less than. I will not be shocked if we are still failing at this — I do hope we are better than we were and are getting better — truth takes time to reveal itself.
This has been a consequential year packed with lessons that will take a lifetime to unpack in a lifetime that still challenges me to learn more. In the lessons we find chapters of love, pain, logic and mysticism etc. I am rambling so let me stop here but say I have reached out to some of the people named in the article — and made amends.
I will still share that Tai Solarin essay on New Years — only now with a lot more wisdom in the words of the great man — that while we still pray that the road to be rough one — in the words of another great man — we have to balance it with care.
I wish you all a very happy new year. To the Bento team — lets kick some ass!
Sorry — I did say I still curse
ebun
