by It started with a whisper—an internal email that somehow leaked. A president director of a well-known company had just tendered his resignation. But this wasn’t your usual “pursuing other opportunities” or “spending more time with family” narrative. No, this one came with a shockwave. He admitted to manipulating KPI data, consistently presenting targets as achieved when in reality, many weren’t. Why? Because, in his own words, the leadership above him “never accepted red KPIs.” That’s right—those numbers that signal we’re off track, struggling, or facing real problems weren’t just frowned upon. They were intolerable. And so, the choice he felt forced to make was clear: fabricate success or get blamed for failure without support.
Let that sink in for a moment.
This wasn’t just a moral failure. It was a system failure. And it’s not as rare as we’d like to think.
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Table of Contents
The Obsession with Green
We live in a world where performance dashboards dominate decision-making. Those sleek reports with their colorful indicators—green for success, red for trouble—have become corporate lifelines. And yet, somewhere along the way, we forgot what those colors were supposed to mean. Green became synonymous with competence. Red? With shame, with failure, with personal judgment. No wonder leaders, managers, and frontline staff alike go to great lengths to stay in the green—even if it means massaging the numbers or quietly redefining the targets after the fact.
But KPIs, by design, are not supposed to be judgment tools. They’re not trophies. They’re not gold stars for grown-ups. They’re feedback. Signals. Early warnings. They tell us where we’re thriving and where we’re at risk. A red KPI is not an enemy—it’s an ally that’s waving its arms in the air saying, “Something’s off. Pay attention.” But when the organizational culture treats red as unacceptable, what we’re really saying is: “Don’t tell me the truth if it’s not good news.”
That kind of mindset doesn’t lead to performance. It leads to pretense.
The Emotional Tax of Pretending Everything’s Fine
Imagine waking up every day knowing that the numbers don’t match reality. That your team is struggling, your operations are under pressure, your targets are slipping—but you’re still expected to smile and submit another glowing report. Imagine having no safe space to say, “We missed this one,” or “We’re falling behind and need help.” Over time, this pressure creates more than dishonesty. It creates despair.
The president who resigned? He wasn’t some villain. He was a professional under immense pressure, cornered by a system that punished transparency. He had been blamed repeatedly for “not trying hard enough” when he reported setbacks. Support wasn’t offered. Solutions weren’t discussed. Only blame. And so, he did what he thought was the only way to survive—he lied. Until he couldn’t anymore.
It’s easy to condemn him. It’s harder—but far more useful—to look at what kind of environment makes a lie feel like the safest option.
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Why KPI Red Isn’t the Enemy
Here’s a truth many executives are afraid to admit: problems will happen. Markets shift. Suppliers fail. Demand forecasts miss. Machines break down. People make mistakes. No matter how hard we plan or how brilliant our strategy, surprises will always be part of the business landscape.
KPI red is simply the visible surface of that reality. It says, “We’re off track.” But it also says, “We now have the information to do something about it.” It’s a flag, not a failure. And in high-performance cultures, red is not the moment where heads roll—it’s the moment where minds come together.
Imagine a culture where someone can raise a red flag and be met not with suspicion or blame, but with curiosity. “What’s going on? What’s the root cause? What can we learn? How can we help?” That kind of response turns KPIs into living tools for improvement, not artifacts of fear. But that kind of culture has to be designed deliberately—and it starts from the top.
The Real Job of Leaders
If you’re a senior executive reading this, ask yourself a hard question: When was the last time someone brought you a red KPI without flinching? If it’s been a while, that’s a red flag in itself. Because the goal isn’t to have no problems. The goal is to know when we have problems—and fix them fast. If people are hiding those problems to protect their image, it means we’re operating blind.
Leadership is not about creating a perfect-looking report deck. It’s about creating psychological safety—the kind of environment where honesty is rewarded, not punished. Where a team member can say, “We missed the delivery target by 15%” and hear, “Thanks for telling us. Let’s dig into why.”
If the president in our story had heard that—even once—he might still be in his seat. Instead, he walked away carrying the weight of years of faking success, of being made to feel that anything less than perfect was a personal failure.
But it’s not just about him. This could be about any of us.
We All Shape the Culture
Culture is not what we write in our company values. It’s what we tolerate. It’s how we react when someone shows weakness. It’s how we handle failure—not in theory, but in the messy, unpredictable reality of day-to-day operations.
Do we roll our eyes when someone flags a risk? Do we punish bad news? Do we praise only the people who “always hit target” without asking how? These little things add up. They form the emotional atmosphere of our workplaces. And over time, they determine whether truth thrives—or goes underground.
Truth doesn’t die in a single moment. It suffocates slowly, one ignored risk at a time, one punished red KPI at a time, one faked achievement at a time. Until eventually, someone breaks. Sometimes that person is a frontline worker. Sometimes it’s the president.
Rebuilding Trust with the Numbers
So how do we fix it?
First, we have to rehabilitate the red KPI. Reframe it. Normalize it. That starts with leaders going first—showing vulnerability by sharing when their own targets were missed, and what they learned from it. Publicly acknowledging that no plan is perfect and that every business function has moments of struggle.
Next, we need to shift from judgment to curiosity. When someone reports a miss, resist the instinct to ask, “What went wrong?” and instead ask, “What can we understand from this?” Blame closes the door. Curiosity opens it.
Then, we have to separate performance issues from personal identity. A missed KPI doesn’t mean you’re bad at your job. It means something in the system didn’t go as expected. Maybe the plan was too optimistic. Maybe the environment changed. Maybe there was a human error. These things are not shameful—they’re normal.
And finally, we must remember that the ultimate goal of KPIs is not to look good. It’s to get better.
A Wake-Up Call, Not Just a Scandal
The resignation of that president shouldn’t just be a scandal we talk about in whispers. It should be a wake-up call. Because the real story isn’t about one man falsifying data. It’s about a whole system that trained him to believe that honesty was the greater risk.
If this is happening at the top, you can be sure it’s happening throughout the organization. Quietly. Desperately. People changing numbers, hiding delays, making excuses—not because they’re bad people, but because they don’t feel safe to do otherwise.
You can build the most sophisticated reporting system in the world, but if the people feeding it feel unsafe, the data will lie to you. And your decisions, no matter how data-driven, will be based on fiction.
It’s time we faced that head-on.
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What Happens When We Normalize Red
There are companies out there that have embraced this mindset. Where red KPIs trigger collaboration instead of criticism. Where teams rally together to understand the “why” and support each other through the fix. Where leaders model transparency and celebrate honesty as much as success.
In those environments, something powerful happens. People stop hiding. They start solving. They bring problems forward early, not late. They share lessons across teams. They innovate. And yes—over time—they perform better.
Not because they never miss.
But because when they do, they learn faster.
The Human Cost of Silence
Behind every falsified report is a human being. Someone who once wanted to do the right thing. Someone who probably believed in the mission. But who, at some point, felt that survival required silence or deceit.
That’s the cost we rarely talk about. Not just the financial risk or the reputational damage. But the human erosion. The emotional burden of carrying a lie. The slow disconnection from purpose. The loss of integrity—not as an event, but as a gradual wearing down of the soul.
We can’t keep building systems that reward that.
We don’t just need more accurate dashboards.
We need more humane workplaces.
What If We Got This Right?
Picture this: a team walks into a monthly review with two red KPIs on the screen. The room doesn’t tense up. No one holds their breath. Instead, someone says, “This is what’s going on. Here’s what we’ve learned so far. We need input on these two areas.” The discussion is focused, supportive, and action-oriented. The meeting ends with clarity, ownership, and trust.
That’s not utopia. That’s what happens when we treat KPIs as what they’re meant to be—tools for alignment and improvement, not judgment and fear.
It starts with us.
One meeting at a time.
One reaction at a time.
One red KPI at a time.
Are you ready to make red safe again?
I hope you find it helpful!
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