Real Business Beginnings 06: Pushing the Boulder

Before Forums at Work existed, Ahad was already living inside the kinds of situations most leaders try to avoid. He was stepping into companies mid-crisis, mid-transition, mid-burnout. Three roles. Three cities. Three apartments. One backpack. Something in that life kept repeating.

The Interview

Karissa | NMBS: When you stepped into these companies as an interim CEO, what were you actually responsible for?

Ahad: I am always brought in during some sort of crisis or change. Sometimes that meant restructuring leadership. Sometimes it meant stopping financial bleeding. Sometimes it meant repairing trust that had broken down between owners and teams. My job was to help the organization function again — not just operationally, but relationally. And the most deep-rooted way to do that is to change the culture.

Karissa | NMBS: What did you notice as you moved between such different companies and industries?

Ahad: What struck me was how similar the underlying issues were. The surface looked different — manufacturing, food service, distribution — but underneath, it was almost always the same thing. People were disconnected. Communication was strained. Leaders were carrying everything themselves. Teams didn't feel psychological safety to talk openly. And when those things shifted, everything else started to move.

Karissa | NMBS: Was there a moment when that became especially clear to you?

Ahad: I remember leading a manufacturing facility in South Carolina to become profitable again after 4 straight years of losses. I realized I didn't really care about industrial water filters. When leading a french restaurant chain, I didn't really care about croissants. That's when I realized I don't actually care about the products as much as I did the people. Later, at my family's restaurant business, our head baker pulled me aside and said, "What we're doing here has changed my life. It's changed how I show up as a husband and a father." That stayed with me.

Karissa | NMBS: What actually pushed you from reflection into building something new?

Ahad: I went on a silent meditation retreat during a particularly hard period. During that time, a very clear idea formed: meaningful culture change happens when people are exposed to thoughtful ideas, come together in honest conversation, and take small, consistent actions, collectively. I started by running it myself. Facilitating. Listening. Learning what worked and what didn't. There was no platform at first. Just people, conversation, and iteration.

Karissa | NMBS: How did you hold doubt while building this?

Ahad: Doubt was constant. Do people want this? Will they pay for it? Is this valuable beyond me? I've come to determine there's a weird bipolar-ness of "I'm a genius" and "this is pointless." They're both right. If you stick to it, it will ultimately reveal itself as the solution. If you stop before that point, you'll never know.

Karissa | NMBS: You've used a boulder analogy to describe this phase.

Ahad: It feels like pushing a massive boulder uphill. At first, nothing seems to move. You're exerting a huge amount of effort and seeing almost no progress. That's where a lot of people stop. But if you keep pushing, patiently, thoughtfully, there's a moment where the boulder starts to move. Eventually you get to the top of the hill and there's a tipping point where the boulder starts rolling down. It has its own growing momentum and now your job is to steer it.

Today, people engage with this work across more than 50 countries, industries, and cultures. The principles translate because the human needs are the same. This isn't a story about products. It's a story about staying with the work. About patience. About people. About trust built slowly, deliberately, over time.