Peter Mann
I ran the organizations before I measured them
Thirty-seven years in leadership, counting the Navy. The thing I kept noticing across all of it is that the people who saw the problem first were usually the people who left first.
That observation is now two books, an IRB-approved research collaboration, and two instruments you can run this week on data you already hold.
Retention across the companies I ran sat near ninety-five percent. That is the number that eventually sent me looking for what produced it, and everything on this site came out of the answer.
The record
What I ran
The part that matters least is the part that sounds most impressive.
That matters less than it sounds until you know what I did not have. No raises, no equity, no title bumps, no counteroffers, no retention bonuses. The Navy set all of it and I had no say in any of it.
So the only variable I controlled was what it felt like to work there. The most junior sailor got the same respect as the Captain, and I was consistent about that in the places where consistency was inconvenient. Two divisions, one ship. I am not going to tell you it generalizes.
Director roles at Dell and Tech Data
Where I learned how much of what a large organization knows never reaches the person who could act on it, and how little of that is anybody's fault.
Two companies, both into the top one percent
Both reached the top one percent of revenue in their category. One I exited.
Founder and CEO of Oransi
A U.S. air-purification and motor-technology manufacturer. Still running a payroll, which is most of why any of this is written the way it is.
The method
Why everything here is written down
The design principle behind every instrument on this site started as a workaround.
I trained in statistics and industrial engineering, and I have spent my life studying why people do what they do. The training tells me how to measure a system. The lifelong study tells me what it does to the people inside it.
I built explicit systems by accident, because I could not read the implicit ones. The meeting where the real decision happened before the meeting. The promotion criteria nobody had written but everybody was being measured against. The objection that was obvious to the room and invisible to me.
So I wrote things down. Criteria published before anyone was evaluated against them. Agendas circulated far enough ahead that someone could prepare a considered objection. Decisions recorded with the reasoning and the objections attached.
I was diagnosed autistic at fifty-five, which explained the workaround and did not change the finding. The explicit version worked better for almost everyone, and it worked best for the people whose judgment was most worth having and who were quietest about having it. That is the argument of both books.
Published
The books
Fast Company Press · out now
The Perception Revolution
Your read of another person operates like a measurement, and almost no organization ever checks its accuracy. The cost of being wrong lands hardest on the people you can least afford to lose.
April 2027
The Projection Fallacy
For the people who design the systems. Why hiring, meetings, reviews and promotion get built for one kind of mind, why good intentions don't fix it, and how to build systems that produce fair outcomes without anyone having to believe in them.
In progress
The research
Not published yet, and deliberately not used to sell anything on this site.
I am a co-author on research into neurodivergent employees' workplace communication, with collaborators at the University of Rochester's Simon Business School and Bowling Green State University. It includes an IRB-approved focus-group study of how employees make sense of leadership communication, and a paper accepted for presentation at HICSS in January 2027.
It is not a validation study for anything on this site, and it was not designed as one. No figure from it appears anywhere here, and none will until it has been presented and my co-authors have signed off.
I mention it because it is the standard I hold the rest of this work to, rather than as evidence for any claim I am making to you. Where the research contradicts something I have published, the research wins and I will say so here.
Appointments and press
Elsewhere
- Member of a National Science Foundation steering committee.
- Chair, AHAM Air Cleaners Council.
- Featured in an American Express segment on the How I Built This podcast.
- Speaks to executive teams, boards and conferences on retention, judgment and how organizations lose the people whose read on the business was most accurate. Speaking topics and booking.
Two ways to start
Price your own gap, or read what a quarter looks like
The calculator runs on six inputs already in your HRIS and returns a number you can take to your CFO. Nothing is saved and nothing is sent. The engagement measures both numbers across your layers, then measures again: what changes at ninety days, and who leaves at six and twelve months. The second reading is the only part that tells you whether anything moved.
Both instruments on this site are free and self-administered. Neither asks for an email before it gives you the answer.