About Optim Business
Optim Business is an executive publication that examines how organizations actually work - not how management consultants say they should work.
We cover hiring, retention, compensation, leadership, organizational design, and the economic frameworks that drive business decisions. Our approach: evidence over anecdote, analysis over conventional wisdom, and insider perspective over theoretical advice.
Why This Exists
Most business publications fall into two categories:
Academic journals that are rigorous but impractical, written by researchers who've never run a P&L or built a team under budget constraints.
Trade magazines that are accessible but shallow, recycling the same tired advice about "culture" and "engagement" without examining the underlying economics.
OptimBusiness exists in the space between: analytical enough to be useful, practical enough to implement, and honest enough to call out conventional wisdom when it's wrong.
We're not here to tell you that "people are your most valuable asset." You already know that. We're here to examine why your best people quit six months after a promotion, what salary benchmarking data misses about actual market rates, and why your hiring process filters out the candidates you need most.
Our Perspective
This publication comes from twenty years of working inside organizational decision-making across accounting, finance, HR, operations, supply chain, marketing, and sales functions. Not as a consultant parachuting in with frameworks, but embedded in the actual operations - watching how companies allocate resources, structure teams, make leadership decisions, and respond to competitive pressure.
That vantage point reveals patterns that aren't visible from theory or case studies:
How budget cycles actually drive promotion and compensation decisions (not "performance")
What executive teams prioritize when resources get tight (stated values vs. revealed preferences)
Why organizational design changes fail or succeed based on incentive structures
How information flows through hierarchies and where it breaks down
What drives voluntary turnover that never shows up in exit interviews
How leadership decisions cascade into culture and operational outcomes
The advantage of observing hundreds of companies making talent and organizational decisions is pattern recognition. You see the same mistakes repeated across industries. You see which interventions actually work versus which sound good in strategy decks. You see the gap between what executives say matters and what their resource allocation decisions reveal.
That gap, between stated strategy and actual behavior, is where the most useful analysis lives.
What We Cover
Hiring & Talent Acquisition Not resume tips or interview questions. The economics of hiring decisions, information asymmetry in candidate assessment, why most companies optimize for speed over quality, and what that actually costs.
Retention & Turnover Why the half-life of salary increases is 90 days, what drives voluntary attrition that exit interviews miss, and the real cost of employee turnover (hint: it's not 50% of salary).
Compensation Strategy Salary benchmarking mistakes, the game theory of offer negotiations, why your retention bonuses don't work, and what third-party compensation data gets wrong about actual market rates.
Leadership & Management Office politics as game theory, the promotion cycle and budget timing, how individual incentives create perverse group dynamics, and why your high performers undermine each other.
Organizational Design Information flow in hierarchies, the economics of remote work, team structure decisions and their cascading effects, and what makes functional vs. cross-functional teams actually work.
Culture & Operations Not the platitudes about "core values." The economic incentives that shape behavior, how measurement systems drive unintended consequences, and why culture initiatives fail when they conflict with compensation structures.
Business Strategy Through an Operational Lens Industry rotation patterns, how labor market dynamics affect strategic planning, the timing of organizational investments, and reading economic indicators for talent decisions.
Our Editorial Approach
Evidence-based analysis. We cite studies, reference data, and acknowledge when conventional wisdom might actually be right. But we're equally willing to challenge consensus when the evidence suggests otherwise.
Economic frameworks. Game theory, signaling theory, information asymmetry, incentive structures - these aren't academic exercises. They're useful tools for understanding why organizations behave the way they do.
Contrarian when warranted. If everyone is saying the same thing about hybrid work or employee engagement, we're probably examining the opposite side. Not to be provocative, but because groupthink in business advice is common and often wrong.
Insider perspective. Theory is useful, but pattern recognition from direct observation is better. We write about what we've actually seen work and fail across hundreds of organizational decisions.
No motivational fluff. You don't need another article about "authentic leadership" or "building trust." You need frameworks for making better decisions about structure, talent, and strategy.
Who This is For
Chief Financial Officers managing headcount budgets and evaluating workforce investments.
Chief Operating Officers building teams, designing organizational structures, and optimizing operational efficiency.
Chief People Officers making strategic talent decisions beyond HR administration.
VPs of Operations scaling teams while maintaining quality and efficiency.
Finance Directors evaluating the economics of hiring, retention, and compensation decisions.
HR Business Partners who are tired of generic advice and want strategic frameworks.
Founders and executives building organizations and making structural decisions.
If you make decisions about people, teams, structure, or organizational strategy (and you value analysis over platitudes) this publication is for you.