Have you ever worked for an organization and felt like something was off or dysfunctional? Or an organization that you knew for sure was toxic and dysfunctional? From my twenty-two years in the United States Army, three years as an imbedded contractor, and over eighteen years in manufacturing and from the things that I learned while working on my MBA at the Jack Welch Management School, I have worked the entire spectrum of organizations, from totally dysfunctional to fully functional, and distilled it down to five main categories so that once your recognize them, you can start to improve them or get out of that toxic environment and know what to look for the next time.
Born in Xenia, Ohio, in 1961, Leonard J. Marsden Jr. joined the army two weeks after turning seventeen in 1978. He started a family in 1980, navigated a military career, and helped raise a family of four children, with multiple assignments throughout the world. He turned eighteen in Korea and fifty in Afghanistan. He was kicked out of high school in the eleventh grade and now has an AA in liberal arts, a BS in accounting, and an MBA with a GPA of 3.97. He was part of a four-man team that set a world record in bench pressing back in 1987 and worked as a civilian in organizations, ranging from building liftgates and machines that drove out of the plant and cut down trees to making lip balms and moisturizers and finally bar grating.
