We Stopped Counting People
How to survive a leader who hits the numbers but breaks what matters
TL;DR:
Every company has a “golden wrecking ball” leader who hits the numbers and quietly destroys trust. I’ve worked with them, and worse, I’ve helped them shine by softening risks and dressing up damage. Leaving isn’t always an option. So the real work is this: decide what you will no longer do to make harmful decisions look acceptable, tell the truth upward in plain language, and stand beside the people who take the greatest risk by speaking up. Years from now, you’ll be remembered more for that than for any quarter you “saved.”
Mistakes that look like wins
We were on the thirty-second floor in a glass conference room that made everything outside look small and everything on the screens look important. Far below, the river moved slowly and somehow still looked angry. In the back, we had burnt coffee and unnecessary pastries to signal care.
The regional CEO sat at the head of the table. Managers were pushed toward the door – close enough to be useful, far enough to be replaced.
At 9:07, Kevin walked in without a laptop. His slides were already glowing in the company’s favorite shade of blue. He picked up the clicker like he’d been born holding it.
“This is where we started the quarter,” he said.
The first slide was a familiar mess: red cells, missed targets, margins sliding the wrong way. The executives frowned with rehearsed concern.
“And this is where we are now.”
Click.
The red vanished. Costs down. Headcount down. Revenue finally pointing up. The CEO leaned back. The CFO underlined a figure – his private version of applause.
“This is why we put you in this role,” the CEO said.
I felt that knot in my chest that appears when the official story and the unofficial one drift too far apart. On the slides, the quarter was a clean win. On the ground, three senior people had resigned in six weeks. A major client had renewed but insisted on “enhanced transparency,” which meant they didn’t trust us. The weekly team meetings had turned into careful theater.
None of that appeared on the wall. A man who had never written a line of code or taken a support call was being praised for “fixing” a technology business. We weren’t confused. We had just silently agreed not to count the actual cost.
Wrecking Ball
Kevin isn’t a one-off. Every large company eventually produces a version of him.
The titles change – Turnaround Lead, Optimization Head, Re-engineering, Transformation – but the physics stays the same. When a business misses its numbers, pressure builds at the top. Pressure needs a hero. Someone like Kevin arrives or is thrust onto center stage with a mandate broad enough to justify almost anything.
Under their tenure, people who leave are “not the right fit.” Cultural damage is “the pain of change.” Short-term numbers improve; long-term trust erodes. The wrecking ball moves on.
I have watched this in Chicago, Dubai, and New Delhi. If you listen only to the financial ledgers – revenue, cost, headcount – the system looks rational.
If you listen in hallways and on late-night calls, you hear the other ledger: how safe people feel telling the truth, and how deeply they trust that they are more than numbers on a deck.
We almost never bring that second ledger into the room. That silence is where these wrecking balls thrive.
People Pay
In one region, there was a manager I’ll call Maya. Her team members told their friends, “You’d actually like working for her.”
When Kevin arrived, Maya did the responsible thing. She sat him down and walked through reality. She explained how earlier cuts had landed and which deadlines were dangerously thin. She wasn’t dramatic; she was specific, with client and program data to back it up. He listened, nodded, and thanked her for her “candor.”
In the next talent discussion, he described her as “solid, but cautious” and suggested shifting her responsibilities “so we can move faster.” Her calendar changed before her title did. Strategy meetings disappeared. Decisions she used to shape arrived as instructions. The message was clear: thank you for your honesty; please stay out of the way.
Six months later, she resigned. The farewell note called her departure “regrettable.” Somewhere else, a slide called leadership turnover “within acceptable bounds.”
When a leader like Kevin arrives, employees learn that early warnings are dangerous. On a dashboard, it still looks like “engaged.” In real life, it feels like everyone holding their breath.
Accomplices
For years, I told myself I wasn’t one of these wrecking balls. I looked after the people in my care. That was true. It was also true that my job included “making the tough decisions” and “landing the message,” which often meant making hard things sound smoother than they were and dressing up the fallout.
The moment that broke my self-assured image was a risk escalation.
A frontline manager wrote a clear warning: “We keep cutting staff, and quality is falling below what our biggest client will tolerate. The impact may not hit this quarter, but it will – and it will hurt.”
Kevin read the note in a prep session and frowned. “If we lead with this, it will derail the meeting. Tone it down. Put it at the back.”
I adjusted the language. I moved it to the appendix. In the main meeting, it became a single soft sentence, half-read as everyone relaxed into the improved numbers. Months later, when the client escalated, someone pulled the note out and said, “We should have paid more attention to this.” No one retraced the path from “clear warning” to “background noise.”
I didn’t volunteer that I was an accomplice in moving it there.
That was the day I stopped telling myself I was separate from the problem. I hadn’t swung the hammer, but I had helped clear the space.
Working With Them
The cleanest advice is to leave. Sometimes that’s the only sane move. But leaving isn’t always simple or right. Mortgages, tuition, visas, personal brands, careers – these aren’t abstractions. Many good people stay in systems that unsettle them because the alternative isn’t ready yet.
So, how do you work alongside a wrecking ball without becoming one?
First, I had to decide what I would no longer do. I stopped turning real risks into “watch items.” When a senior sponsor suggested blaming a junior manager for a delay – because he was leaving anyway – I said, “That’s not accurate. We’re not putting this on him.” The room didn’t thank me, but I walked out with less weight on my shoulders.
Second, I redefined “protection.” I had spent years as a human shock absorber, swallowing frustration to keep my team calm. Eventually, I saw that my capacity to absorb unreasonable pressure only made it easier for the system to pretend the pressure was normal. Real protection meant telling the truth upward in language that couldn’t be misunderstood, even if it made me less popular.
It also meant standing visibly beside the people who took risks by speaking up, so their concerns couldn’t be dismissed as one person’s “attitude.” It wasn’t dramatic. But it made it harder to erase them from the story.
None of this turned me into a hero. It just kept me from becoming a slightly more polite wrecking ball.
Reflect
Under pressure, organizations will almost always choose clean numbers over messy truths. We cannot rewrite that equation on our own. The part we control is who we become in the face of that behavior.
Do we quietly reinforce the story, or do we become the person who insists on mentioning what is real, in a way that raises decision quality and protects the people who can’t protect themselves?
Years from now, when someone tells a colleague what it was like to work with you, what will they remember: the quarters you “saved,” or the way it felt to tell you the truth when those quarters were ugly?
This is a story constructed from my real-life experiences – although the names and situations are synthetic. I do not offer a one-size-fits-all solution. What I want to share with this story is how we can be better leaders and contribute to a culture and system that understands decision quality and treats people decisions with the respect and care they deserve.
Because without that foundation and trust, no leader can deliver great customer-centric results.
No regret.
Enjoy your loved ones and the rest of your Sunday!
And thank you for spending some of it with me.
Warm regards,
Adi
Wow, truly outstanding writing and insight. Especially now, I'm seeing integrity going out of style (and am guilty of slipping too). But this was a great reminder.
One of my mentors said "don't just do the right things, but do things right".
very well written! in terms of writing a story, I think this is the best one yet. phrases I particularly enjoyed:
- Managers were pushed toward the door – close enough to be useful, far enough to be replaced.
- None of this turned me into a hero. It just kept me from becoming a slightly more polite wrecking ball.