— About The Author
Derek Wilder
Builder · CPA · PhD · Business Owner · Author of The Butterfly in the Boardroom
For more than thirty years, Derek Wilder has worked where strategy meets reality: inside a growing business shaped by people, projects, markets, relationships and decisions that rarely unfold in a straight line.
Fishers, Indiana
— Where The Perspective Comes From
A Business Career Built in the Real World
Derek is a co-founder of Hallmark Homes, Inc., a homebuilding company based in Indiana. He is also a CPA and holds a PhD — a combination that gave him the tools to measure a business carefully, and the experience to discover where measurement stops being prediction.
Over three decades of growth, he watched small decisions produce consequences far beyond their apparent size. One hire could reshape a team. One unclear promise could alter a client relationship. One policy could become a cultural rule no leadership presentation had intended. At the same time, major initiatives sometimes produced remarkably little movement.
The spreadsheets mattered. They simply could not explain everything.
- Co-founder, Hallmark Homes, Inc. – one of Indiana’s top 15 fastest growing companies (Indianapolis Business Journal 2026)
- Certified Public Accountant
- PhD
- More than 30 years of business-building experience
- Author, The Butterfly in the Boardroom
- Based in Fishers, Indiana
— Leadership Reviews
What Leaders Are Saying
“Derek ran a homebuilder for 30 years and took it through two housing crashes, so he writes about leadership like someone who had to make payroll.”
William J. Maggio
Leading in the Age of Algorithms
“Derek is one of those people who makes you think a little harder about how you lead. His writing comes from actually running a company, getting things wrong, learning, adjusting, and doing the work for decades.”
Tanu Tiwari
Invisible Lessons
“Derek brings decades of leadership experience, but what I appreciate most is his curiosity about how decisions, culture and systems actually play out once real people get involved. His writing is practical, grounded and built from experience.”
David Kraase
The Context Engine
— The Question Behind The Work
Why do capable people, good plans and careful analysis still produce unexpected outcomes?
For years, Derek understood the pattern intuitively. Business felt less like a machine and more like weather: structured, interconnected and highly sensitive. Chaos theory finally gave him language for what he had experienced.
Sensitive Dependence
Small moments — a hire, a promise, a policy — can cascade into outcomes far beyond their apparent size.
Nonlinear Growth
Companies accelerate, stall and jump curves — growth that rarely moves in a straight, predictable line.
Fractals
The same patterns of real culture repeat at every level of the organization, from the field to the boardroom.
Strange Attractors
Companies keep returning to familiar patterns even after leadership announces change.
— The Purpose
Why He Wrote The Butterfly in the Boardroom
The book is Derek's attempt to turn those ideas into practical tools for leaders. It is the book he wishes he had when he was walking job sites at dawn, sitting in bank meetings at noon, and trying to reconcile a clean forecast with the more complicated way a company actually grows.
His goal: not to make business owners comfortable with chaos — but to help them become better navigators inside it.
— Book Reviews
What Readers Are Saying
“Wilder lays out a clear plan for creating an organizational culture of trust and transparency that builds teams and morale. I shared this book with our executives and found new energy and intentionality in moving forward.”
Lisa Pay
Amazon review · Kindle
“Wilder’s understanding of chaos theory and how to lean into it is most refreshing and transformational… Wish I had this resource earlier in my career.”
Joey M.
Amazon review · Kindle
“Whether you have been in business for 10, 20, or 30 years, or are just starting out, this book will help you re-align your thoughts and procedures for success.”
Kim K
Amazon review · Paperback, Verified Purchase
— A Working Philosophy
What Derek Wilder Believes About Leadership: Eight Working Principles
- 01
Businesses are complex systems, not machines with perfectly controllable outputs.
- 02
The first conditions of a relationship, team or project deserve unusual attention.
- 03
Confusion is often data, not proof of incompetence.
- 04
Culture is created by repeated rules, not aspirational language alone.
- 05
A good plan must be able to change without being treated as a failure.
- 06
Leaders should scale risk to what the organization can afford to lose while it learns.
- 07
Resilient organizations replace heroic rescue with systems that can notice and respond.
- 08
The edge of chaos is not an emergency destination. It is where living businesses already operate.
— Beyond The Book
From Ideas to Practice
Today, Derek's work extends beyond the book through seminars, workshops, consulting and educational programs. He works with owners and leadership teams who want a more honest way to discuss uncertainty, culture, growth and organizational risk.
The aim is always practical: help leaders see the system more clearly, change the rules that matter, and build a company capable of learning without breaking itself.
Advisory
Consulting
Diagnose the patterns shaping your organization.
Teams
Seminars & Workshops
Bring the framework to your leadership team.
Learning
Education & Courses
Structured programs for leaders.
Free
Apps
Practical tools like Coach Me and the Risk Analyzer.
— Continue From Here
Connect With Derek's Work
Derek Wilder — CPA, PhD. Author & Business Advisor, Fishers, Indiana.