Why Employees Are Always A Bad Idea

Renowned busi­ness thought leader Chuck Blake­man approached me ear­li­er in 2013 to design a book cov­er for his upcom­ing book enti­tled “Why Employ­ees Are Always A Bad Idea”. It’s about how the busi­ness world has left the Indus­tri­al Age and entered what Chuck terms the “Par­tic­i­pa­tion Age” – where busi­ness­es will have to adapt to a new cli­mate in order to sur­vive and thrive. I’ve always admired Chuck’s “tell it like it is” demeanor, and have been so lucky to get to work with him.

For the book cov­er, Chuck and I dis­cussed the book’s con­tents at length before div­ing in. Chuck had pre­vi­ous­ly select­ed the base image of the punch-clock. Fer­mentable Sug­ar LLC added a sub­stan­tial amount of wear-and-tear to the clock, giv­ing the appear­ance of a punch clock that was dis­card­ed just after 5pm on the last day a busi­ness ever used it and was lost to time. Even­tu­al­ly, rust over­came the paint and the glass cracked.