Workplace Multiplier by Tola Akinsulire

March 17, 2026

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The most expensive business decisions are the personal ones

Howdy ,

This weekend, two Nigerian startups, Mainstack & Selar, gave us a very public masterclass in what happens when the line between founder and company disappears.

Billboard wars at a competitor's event. A high-profile CMO hire. Then the Selar CEO releasing internal communications to prove the guy was fired before Mainstack ever recruited him.

Some of that needed to happen publicly.

But when your company is you, when its wins feel like your wins and its losses feel like your failures, someone recruiting your ex-staff doesn't feel like competition. It feels like an insult.

Here's the thing no one admits in the boardroom:

"It's nothing personal, it's just business" has been around since the 1920s. Mario Puzo gave us the version that stuck. But real ownership doesn't work that way. When you've invested five years building something, the line between you and the business doesn't just blur, it disappears.

That's not weakness. That's what genuine ownership looks like.

The danger isn't the investment. The danger is when that investment starts driving your public decisions.

I said this directly to a senior leader in a coaching conversation recently:

"Your work is not you. It is an extension of you."

The distinction sounds subtle. The cost of missing it isn't.

Because the day you can't separate the two is the day a competitor's recruitment announcement or billboard placement feels like a personal attack, and you respond like it is one.

Every senior leader needs what I call a Tom Hagen,  the Godfather's consigliere whose main job wasn't just strategy. It was perspective. Someone trusted enough to say: "It's not personal, Sonny. It's strictly business."

Not a yes-man. Not a cheerleader. Someone who keeps you anchored when your identity and your business start pulling each other into decisions neither can afford.

The most expensive business decisions I've seen, and made, weren't the strategic ones. They were the personal ones dressed up in strategic language.

Question for you: What's the most expensive business decision you've ever made because you took something personally?

Reply and tell me — I read every response.

Keep winning at work and in life,

Tola Akinsulire

Your Strategic Workplace Mentor