Inc., a publicly traded AI and cloud platform company that helps broad- band service providers transform their operations and deliver man- aged services. Calix reported record quarterly sales of $293 million for Q2 2026, marking a 21% growth year- over-year. This brings the company’s trailing 12 months (TTM) sales to $1.1 billion.


HUMBLE


BEGINNING There is a moment in Michael Weening’s career that tells you almost everything you need to know about him. When Weening was a young Canon salesperson pursuing a $250,000 deal with Transamerica for copiers and fax machines, it was an enormous opportunity for his territory. The sale had dragged on for 14 months. Demo equipment had already been installed and it was the last day of the quarter. Weening stood at the CFO’s office hoping to close the sale that the CFO had promised to sign. But his son had a baseball game,


and the CFO was headed for the elevator with Weening close behind. Nine floors down, he kept selling. The CFO walked toward his car. Weening followed. Finally, Weening stood in front of the car door. The CFO laughed at the young rep’s persistence. Then he called upstairs and authorized his assistant to sign. Deal closed. Weening drove home to his wife in an old Volkswagen Fox, screaming with exhilaration. His com- mission was roughly $25,000 – serious money for two young people just starting their lives together. Nearly three decades later, as he told me the story, I watched his face change. For a few minutes the 25-year-old salesman was back. That matters. Because – beneath the strat- egy, titles, technology, and corporate language – Michael Weening is still powered by the same internal engine. He calls himself ”the grinder.” And today, that grinder runs Calix


ROUTE TO THE TOP Weening’s path to the CEO chair was anything but conventional. He spent years carrying a quota be- fore moving into management. He worked at Microsoft, Bell Canada, Salesforce, and ultimately Calix. Along the way, he deliberately ac- cumulated experiences that sales executives often avoid: operations, customer success, marketing, inter- national management, strategy, and P&L responsibility. But rather than collecting titles, he was collecting capabilities. At Bell, where he was given tremendous au- tonomy to turn around a struggling business, he discovered something important about himself: “I really like the idea of running a business,” he said.


That insight became a career com- pass. When he went to Salesforce, he deliberately sought operating experience and international ex- posure. When he later joined Calix in 2016, he found something he’d been missing inside giant corpora- tions: room to build. Billionaire Calix founder, Carl Russo, a legend in his own right, noticed the contradiction. Despite having spent his career inside huge enterprises, Weening possessed the instincts of an entrepreneur. So Russo gave him space – and respon- sibility. And by 2021, Russo said Weening had been “instrumental” in Calix’s transformation into a plat- form company. When Weening be- came CEO in 2022, Russo was even more explicit: “Michael has the right vision and leadership for Calix.” The succession was less a changing of


the guard than the evolution of a partnership. Today, Calix describes itself as an AI platform company serving more than 1,200 service-provider customers. The company says it has invested more than $2 billion over 15 years building its platform. More interesting, however, is the psychol- ogy behind this transformation.


SUBLIMATING THE


WILL TO WIN Freud had a useful concept called “sublimation.” Human beings possess powerful competitive, aggressive, and instinctual energies. Civilization works, Freud argued, partly because pro- ductive people redirect those drives into socially valuable achievements: business, art, invention, leadership. If Freud were sitting across from Weening, he might observe a highly effective person who has transformed competitive and aggressive energy into socially valued achievement and leadership. That competitive drive has not disappeared. Far from it. Listen to


VIDEO: KEYS TO SUCCESS


SELLING POWER SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2026 | 17 © 2026 SELLING POWER


PHOTOS / MIKE KIRSCHBAUM


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