A cure for toxic action
By Eric Markowitz | Published: 2025-10-30 13:00:00 | Source: Business – Big Think
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A weekly collection of thought-provoking articles on technology, innovation and long-term investing from Eric Markowitz of Nightview Capital.
I’m going to make a quick deviation from the norm Night crawler This week’s recap is to talk about something that’s been on my mind lately.
Everywhere I turn—podcasts, research calls, dinner conversations—people are talking about “toxic workplaces.” The phrase has become ubiquitous. Almost inevitable.
So I did what most researchers do when they’re curious (or procrastinating): I Googled it.
This led me to a chart showing the term’s meteoric rise starting in early 2010. The curve shoots upward like a fever.
This is the chart:
How Google Books Ngram Viewer displays the phrase “toxic workplace”
Now, a few warnings before I move away.
Google’s Ngram Viewer is not a perfect mirror of reality. It measures the frequency of words in books, not the lived experience of people hunched under fluorescent lights in glass conference rooms.
However, it does track, at least anecdotally, what I have seen across nearly two decades of reporting and conversations. The phrase “toxic workplace” barely existed before 2010. Today, it’s everywhere — startups and conglomerates, tech companies and law firms, boardrooms and Slack channels alike.
Ironically, I think this is partial progress. We finally have a name for what previous generations suffered silently: the burnout, manipulation, and psychological games disguised as “high performance.” The phrase itself captures an entire ecosystem of dysfunction – from gas bosses to ambitious colleagues fiercely defending their little fiefdoms.
But the real story, I think, is what this exponential curve says we -And what does he do with the way we work?
Over the weekend, at a neighborhood gathering, I met a retired surgeon. He told me that after he built up his medical practice, he eventually quit. Not because he stopped loving medicine, but because the new leadership started every meeting the same way: “Your numbers look good.” Not “your patients are healthy.”
A simple change in language – perhaps – but for him, it was everything.
I think we all have our versions of that story. A project that has lost its soul. The team that burned. A company that has grown so fast that it can’t remember why it existed in the first place. We talk about innovation as if it were mechanical – more processes, more outputs – but perhaps we have flipped the paradigm. It’s not that great work creates great culture. It’s that great culture that makes great work possible.
In my opinion, trust and belonging are the true engines of creativity. But somewhere in the late twentieth century, work became the primary stage of meaning. What do you do? It became the central question of identity. Religion diminished. Communities relaxed. Corporations stepped in to fill the void with big promises: purpose, belonging, and mission. The company says: We are a family — right before 800 people were laid off on a Zoom call.
The crisis, then, is not just about bad managers. It’s deeper. It’s about our very definition of progress. It will not be solved by “resilience training” or any other mindfulness application. The solution must be structural. It starts with reimagining the company not as an extraction machine, but as a garden. The longer-lived organizations I studied don’t just improve efficiency; They invest in trust. A healthy workplace doesn’t require everyone to be cheerful. It requires honesty.
A business owner in France, whose family business dates back to the 18th century, once told me: “It’s the culture. It’s the whole culture.” That line has stayed with me. Because most toxic workplaces stem from an inverted belief: that people exist to grow the company, not the company exists to grow people.
When i A post shared before Recently about spending time with Henokins – An association of family-owned businesses over 200 years old – Claudio Stefani, 17th generation leader of Giusti Balsamic Vinegar, left a lovely comment: “Love the people you work with – you are at their service, not the other way around.”
That’s it, really. The future of business is not about extracting more from people, it is about investing more in them. The companies that survive the longest will be the ones that allow humans to do what they do best: grow, adapt, and create.
In other words, it is a return to humanity.
Some other links I enjoyed:
Highlight – via Ian Cassel
Main quote: “When you start to have some success, you realize that there are two types of people in this world: people who desperately want you to know that they are doing well, and people who desperately do not want you to know that they are doing well. The older you get, the more respect you have for the latter. The same goes for your investment portfolio. Most problems happen because you cannot keep your mouth shut when you are doing well. The market hates arrogance, so it puts a target on your back to teach you a lesson.”
How Your Cognitive Biases Lead to Terrible Investing Behavior – via Barry Ritholtz
Main quote: “You might think investing is about markets and strategy, but Barry Rethotz argues that it’s actually about biology. Our brains evolved to detect risk, not to manage portfolios, and the instincts that once kept us alive now push us toward panic and greed. The same wires that told our ancestors to run from predators now tell modern investors to sell at the bottom.”
Subscribe to the Nightcrawler newsletter
A weekly collection of thought-provoking articles on technology, innovation and long-term investing from Eric Markowitz of Nightview Capital.
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