Jonathan N. Brooks is redefining leadership in logistics. His latest venture with Warehouse on Wheels is proving that scaling a business is not just about operational efficiency, but also about creating a culture where leadership is decentralized. From his experience during the Arthur Andersen collapse to leading multiple private equity exits, Brooks has seen the best and worst of business leadership. Those lessons inform how he runs Warehouse on Wheels today, a leading trailer rental and logistics solutions provider with a fleet of more than 37,000 trailers serving industries across North America. “Leadership doesn’t live in the C-suite,” says Brooks. “It lives in every trailer drop, every customer call, every frontline decision.”
Extreme Ownership as a Cultural Engine
For Brooks, scaling culture begins with what he calls an “extreme ownership mindset” (based upon the principles found in the book Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin). When employees feel true responsibility for outcomes — both good and bad — they are more invested in the company’s long-term success. Ownership is not delegation dressed up in new language; it is empowerment backed with accountability. “When people feel like it’s their business, they protect it, they improve it, and they grow it,” he says. The more employees feel trusted, the more confident they become in driving improvements on their own. In the context of Warehouse on Wheels, where decisions are time-sensitive, and waiting is not an option, this looks like “empowering employees to make the right call in real time,” without waiting for approval from the top.
Simplicity Creates Alignment
Culture cannot scale unless everyone understands the shared purpose. That purpose goes beyond a Communications team’s polished messaging document and must reflect the real, day-to-day mission employees can rally behind. The simplicity of the message creates a shared compass that scales across locations and teams. “If people don’t understand the why, they’ll never buy into the how,” he says. At Warehouse on Wheels, he distills the core message — providing reliable storage solutions with exceptional service at competitive value — into a single phrase: “Ritz-Carlton service at a Hampton Inn price.” The clarity of that message allows team members to act decisively without hesitation. Whether a new hire or a seasoned manager, everyone understands the balance between quality and value that defines the company’s promise. “That clarity frees up our team to act decisively and removes fear of making the wrong call because they know the direction and the value behind it,” Brooks says.
Coaching Instead of Controlling
Micromanagement is offensive to most employees, and a surefire way to sour culture. To prevent this, Brooks focuses on coaching and questioning. “Decentralized leadership is about creating leaders at every level, not by giving people more to do, but by giving them the confidence to do more on their own.” This coaching model ensures that employees are not just following instructions but are developing the judgment to make decisions independently. In Brooks’s eyes, the real measure of leadership success is when employees begin making decisions better than the ones he himself would have made. That, he says, is the moment culture has truly scaled.
Scaling Beyond Rules
The results at Warehouse on Wheels speak for themselves. From rapid trailer deployment to customer-first service, the company has grown by building a decentralized team of leaders who take ownership of their roles. “Culture doesn’t scale with more rules, it scales with more leaders,” he says. And those leaders emerge when they are empowered, given clarity of purpose, and coached toward growth.
To learn more about Jonathan N. Brooks and his approach to leadership, connect with him on LinkedIn.
