Meet Carbon: The Cat Behind the “Don’t Be Like Carbon” LinkedIn Series

Carbon is my cat. She naps through deadlines, delegates without accountability, and has promoted herself to Senior Director of the Couch without a single performance review.

She is also the most effective leadership teacher I have ever worked with.

For nearly a year, I have been publishing a recurring LinkedIn series called “Don’t Be Like Carbon.” Short, deadpan posts using her behavior as a mirror for the leadership habits most of us recognize but rarely admit to. The format is simple: Carbon does something that would get a manager fired. I point out what she should have done instead. Then I point readers to my book, Take the Wheel.

What I did not expect was how much the series would resonate. The posts are small: three sentences and a punchline, but they consistently drive more engagement than content that takes ten times longer to write. Turns out people see a lot of their former bosses in a cat who stares down conflict for 45 minutes and walks away considering it resolved.

How it started

I wrote the first Carbon post on a whim. I was working on content to support the launch of Take the Wheel: How to Influence Anyone and Be the Leader People Want to Follow, and I wanted something that did not feel like a book ad. Carbon was doing what Carbon does, she was sitting on my keyboard, supervising without contributing, and the connection was obvious.

The format clicked immediately. Short. Dry. Specific enough to be funny, relatable enough to land. I committed to two posts a week and built out a monthly content calendar around it.

Nearly a year later, the series has covered performance reviews, delegation, conflict resolution, strategic planning, budget advocacy, succession planning, and crisis management, all through the lens of a cat who has never once questioned her own judgment.

Why it works

Leadership content has a credibility problem. Most of it is either too polished to be believable or too vague to be useful. Carbon solves that by making the bad behavior visible without making it personal. Nobody feels called out by a cat. But everyone recognizes the cat.

The “Don’t Be Like Carbon” format works because it does three things at once: it gets a laugh, it names a real leadership failure, and it points toward a better way. That is exactly what Take the Wheel is built around: practical, direct leadership guidance for people who are done with theory and want something they can actually use.

The archive

The book behind the series

Take the Wheel is a leadership guide for people who want to lead without waiting for permission. It covers influence, accountability, feedback, delegation, and how to build a team that does not fall apart when you step away, everything Carbon refuses to do.

It is available on Amazon in paperback, hardcover, and Kindle, and on Audible as an audiobook.

→ Get Take the Wheel on Amazon