A leader's obsession with hitting targets cost him his second-in-command 16 years ago. When she resigned, saying she felt like a statistic, he dismissed her with "It's the numbers that pay the bills." His wife's call made him realize chasing metrics alone was destroying his team.
This was my turning point about 16 years ago. I'm a metrics nut. Like, I measured everything in our businesses to the, to the point of we hit the numbers that I set out, but I sucked every bit of joy out of it because it was all about the numbers. And 15 years into owning some of the first businesses that I owned, I had an individual that had worked with me for, I don't know, 8 or 9 years. And she finally came in one day on a Friday afternoon. She says, "Look, I can't do this anymore. I feel just like a number." So I looked at her, it was plain as day, and I said, "Well, it's the numbers that pay the bills." That was my comment back to her. What do you think she did? She say— took her keys, set them on the desk, and she said, "Goodbye." Goodbye. She walked out the door. Now this was somebody that was my number 2 in command. If my number 2 in command felt like all I was doing was driving her, which is what I was doing, how do you think the rest of the team felt? Even worse. And I sat there. And I continued to sit there. And about 7:30, my wife was finally calling me going, "What? Where are you?" because I finally realized at that particular point the damage we cause when all we do is drive.
