Press and media
Press
Peter Allen Mann is CEO of the U.S. manufacturer Oransi and the author of The Perception Revolution and The Projection Fallacy (Fast Company Press). His work names one chain: the people who design organizations build systems for minds like their own, the cost shows up in who leaves, and writing the rules down is the fix.
Media requestspeter@peterallenmann.com
I answer within one business day.
Speaking and eventsTalks, formats and booking
Or email speaking@shieldperception.com
Story angles
Each one works on its own, as an interview, a feature or a contributed piece.
Give candidates the interview questions in advance
Surprise questions mostly test how fast someone thinks on their feet, which few jobs require. Sharing the questions ahead tells you more about how a person will actually do the work, and it changes who gets hired.
Best for: business and HR press, hiring and recruiting outlets, careers coverage.
Every workplace is built on the Projection Fallacy
Leaders build systems that work for minds like their own without realizing it. Five systems decide who stays: hiring, meetings, priorities, reviews and promotion. Making each one explicit is the fix that keeps working after the person who championed it moves on.
Best for: business and ideas coverage, leadership podcasts, book coverage.
Senior employees are retiring, and new hires leave before they learn what the veterans knew
It looks like two problems. It’s one. The unwritten rules sit in the middle of it, and the companies that write them down keep both the knowledge and the new people.
Best for: manufacturing and trade press, healthcare and utilities, workforce coverage.
The labels that cost companies their best people
“Difficult.” “Quiet.” “Not leadership material.” Some of the time the label is accurate. Often it describes a person reacting to a system that was never explained to them, and the company loses someone who was right early.
Best for: management and workplace coverage, HR outlets, neurodiversity at work.
A CEO who couldn’t read unwritten rules, so he wrote them down
Peter spent 37 years in leadership, from a Navy warship to two companies he founded, with retention near 95%. He was diagnosed autistic at 55 and finally understood why his methods worked. He has also been the employee who went quiet and left.
Best for: profiles and features, long-form podcasts, founder and veteran audiences.
Questions to ask
A starting list. Peter is glad to go wherever the conversation leads.
- What is the Projection Fallacy, and where did you first see it in yourself?
- Why should companies give candidates the interview questions in advance?
- Which employees leave first, and why does leadership usually miss it?
- What are the five systems that decide who stays?
- How do you tell someone who is difficult from someone who was right first?
- Your autism diagnosis came at 55. What did it change about how you saw your own leadership?
- You’ve been the employee who went quiet and left, and the CEO who didn’t see it. What does each side miss?
- What should a manager change this week, with no budget and no permission?
Bios
Use whichever length fits. Each can be edited for space.
Peter Allen Mann is CEO of the U.S. manufacturer Oransi and the author of The Perception Revolution and The Projection Fallacy (Fast Company Press). A former Navy officer and Fortune 100 director, he writes about why organizations lose the people who see problems first.
Peter Allen Mann is CEO of the U.S. manufacturer Oransi and the author of The Perception Revolution and The Projection Fallacy (Fast Company Press). He has spent 37 years in leadership positions across the Navy, two Fortune 100 companies and two companies he founded. Trained in statistics and industrial engineering, he measures which people leave, what a company stops hearing before they go, and which systems cause both. Diagnosed autistic at 55, he has been on both sides: the employee who went quiet and left, and the CEO who didn’t see it.
Peter Allen Mann is CEO of the U.S. manufacturer Oransi and the author of two Fast Company Press books: The Perception Revolution, and The Projection Fallacy, out in April 2027.
A former Navy Surface Warfare Officer and Gulf War veteran, he went on to serve as a director at Dell and Tech Data, and founded two companies, each of which reached the top 1% of its category by revenue. Across 37 years in leadership, retention on his teams stayed near 95%. He couldn’t read the unwritten rules most workplaces run on, so he wrote them down, and it worked better for almost everyone. He was diagnosed autistic at 55.
Trained in statistics and industrial engineering, Peter works with leadership teams to measure differential turnover and signal loss, change the systems behind them and measure again. He chairs the AHAM Air Cleaners Council, is a guest lecturer at the University of Rochester’s Simon Business School, and has been featured in Chief Executive, IndustryWeek, Inc., Bloomberg Businessweek and CNN Business.
Coverage
- Chief Executive: “An Autism Diagnosis at 55 Reframed This CEO’s Entire Life”, a book excerpt from The Perception Revolution, and a 2025 profile on rebuilding U.S. manufacturing
- IndustryWeek: “Driving Innovation Through Autism Awareness in Recruiting” (2023)
- Inc.: on building a U.S. manufacturer for an export market
- Bloomberg Businessweek: founder profile
- CNN Business: on U.S.-made products for the China market
- How I Built This: American Express segment
- Podcasts: 30+ interviews, including Let Go & Lead with Maril MacDonald, InclusionScore with James Felton Keith, Mental Health at Work, Neurodiverging, The Manufacturer’s Network, 20 Minute Leaders and Authority Magazine
Downloads
Click an image to open the full-size file, then save it.
Fast facts
Name
Peter Allen Mann
Role
CEO, Oransi (U.S. manufacturer)
Books
The Perception Revolution (Fast Company Press). The Projection Fallacy (Fast Company Press, April 2027).
Background
Navy Surface Warfare Officer and Gulf War veteran. Director at Dell and Tech Data. Founder of two companies.
Education
BA in statistics. MA in industrial engineering.
Known for
The Projection Fallacy, the five explicit systems and differential turnover
Key terms in Peter's work
Definitions as they appear in his books and work. Please use these when quoting a term.
The Projection Fallacy
The unconscious assumption that other people experience the world the way you do, and that the systems designed for your experience will therefore work for everyone. The Projection Fallacy (2027)
The Five Explicit Systems
Hiring, meetings, priorities, reviews and promotion: the five systems that follow an employee from getting in to moving up, and decide who stays. A system is explicit when someone new can use it without asking. The model
Differential turnover
An established HR term for groups of employees leaving at different rates. Peter applies it to cognitive profile and prices the gap: more often than not, the people leaving fastest are the ones who fit the existing template least. The Projection Fallacy
Signal loss
Accurate concerns from the people closest to the work that never reach a decision. It usually shows up before the people who raised them leave. The Signal Loss Check
The navigation tax
The cognitive and emotional energy people spend working inside systems built for someone else: decoding unwritten rules, code-switching and translating their perspective. It comes out of the same mental capacity the work itself needs. The Projection Fallacy. Related to research on masking, code-switching and the minority tax.
The 25 Percent Optimization Problem
Most organizations are designed for roughly 25 percent of the cognitive spectrum: extroverted, high-openness, verbally dominant and neurotypical. Everyone else works in systems built for someone else’s brain, and the organization loses their contributions every day, including from the people who stay. The Projection Fallacy
The 25/25 Problem
Roughly a quarter of employees are highly perceptive, and up to a quarter of leaders operate from control and extraction rather than collaboration. Because those leaders tend to target the perceptive employees, the two collide in every organization, and the people who spot problems first are the ones who leave. The Perception Revolution (2026)
SHIELD
See, Honor, Invest, Execute, Lead, Design: Peter’s framework for keeping and drawing on highly perceptive and neurodivergent talent, built from his own leadership across the Navy, Fortune 100 companies and two companies he founded. The Perception Revolution
See also speaking, what the Projection Fallacy is and the five explicit systems.