Collateral Talent #2: When Leadership Fails Twice

Collateral Talent #2: When Leadership Fails Twice

By Gene Fliman, Practice Director at MCLI Technologies

When large transformations fail, they rarely collapse all at once. Instead, they tend to fail twice. The first failure comes when leadership allows dysfunction to fester unchecked. The second — and more damaging — happens when those same leaders turn on the very people who tried to fix the problems.

That second failure is what creates collateral talent. These are the high performers brought in precisely to handle the hard problems. Instead of being supported, they are recast as “difficult,” “not aligned,” or “too disruptive.” The system preserves itself by sacrificing its best players to protect its weakest.

The First Failure: Leadership Rot

The first failure shows up when leaders defend the story rather than the truth. Weekly status decks highlight progress while dependent programs complain that resources aren’t being released. Sprint demos showcase the happy path while real feedback is quietly swept aside. Hypercare gets downplayed because the number of P1s and P2s would dominate the narrative. Steering committees reshuffle chairs faster than they sign decisions, while “green” dashboards hide the fact that milestones are already slipping.

These aren’t technical failures — they’re political ones. And they weaken programs long before a single line of code goes live.

The Second Failure: Targeting the Fixers

The second failure happens when someone calls the bluff. The program manager who insists on re-baselining, the architect who surfaces hidden dependencies, the delivery lead who refuses to cut corners on security or compliance — instead of being backed, they’re targeted. Their insistence on truth is reframed as disruption. Their refusal to play along is branded “not a fit.”

Recent events on Wall Street illustrate how common this reflex is. In 2025, reports surfaced that Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon had pushed out or marginalized long-time executives, including Jim Esposito and Ed Emerson, after clashes over strategy and authority. Publicly, the narrative was about “alignment” — but internally, those who challenged leadership’s direction were shown the door. This is the same second failure in action: the fixer or challenger becomes the liability, while the rot goes unaddressed.

History gives us even clearer examples. Daniel Scotto, a respected analyst, was reportedly fired after downgrading Enron’s bonds before its collapse. He wasn’t wrong — he was early, and he refused to follow the story everyone else wanted to believe. At JPMorgan, Ina Drew, the CIO during the London Whale scandal, was tied to risk mismanagement and forced out, while others who had raised concerns internally were sidelined. In every case, leadership failure compounded: first by letting dysfunction grow, and second by punishing the people who could have course-corrected.

The Cost of Failing Twice

When leadership fails twice, the damage compounds. Teams disengage when they see truth-tellers punished. Stakeholders lose confidence not only in the program, but in the leaders claiming to run it. Stars exit quietly, long before HR surveys or exit interviews capture the story. Costs balloon as projects slip further, while executives cling to unchanged forecasts until reality becomes unavoidable. By the time the board finally sees the full picture, the house is already burning.

How MCLI Breaks the Cycle

We specialize in breaking this pattern. We enter where the rot is showing and do what internal politics cannot. We identify the fractures between projection and reality. We staff around or through compromised leadership without escalation. We protect collateral talent long enough for them to deliver the value they were hired to create. And we rebuild delivery governance on metrics, not narratives.

The result: failing programs stabilize, leaders regain credibility, and organizations stop burning their best people to cover their weakest spots.

If your best people are quietly leaving, or your stars are suddenly being labeled difficult — call us before the house burns down.

References

1. Gandel, S. & Morse, D. Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon yelled at partners who left, crushed dissent. New York Post, May 27, 2025. Link

2. PMO365. The High Failure Rate of Traditional PMOs. 2025. Link

3. Bruce Rogers, Why 84% of Companies Fail at Digital Transforamtion, Forbes. Link

4. Digitisation World. Transformation Spending in 2023 to Reach $2.3 Trillion Link