I Delivered 241% Growth and Got Fired: What Results Without Relationships Looks Like
Created on 2026-02-06 08:22
Published on 2026-02-07 09:00
The origin of everything I now teach about AI transformation
In my late twenties, I was promoted from Marketing Manager to General Manager at Blöndal (formerly Electrolux Direct) within 30 days of joining.
Thirty days.
I was young, energetic, with fresh new ideas. Somehow I managed to convince the senior leadership that I was the right person for the role.
Over the next twelve months, I delivered 241% sales growth. KPMG audited the numbers. The results were real, verified, and extraordinary by any measure.
Then I was fired.
My Chairman, Gunnar Broberg, looked at me across his desk and said words I have never forgotten:
“Indhran, you are brilliant. But you are not ready for management.”
He was right.
And it took me twenty years to fully understand why.
What 241% Growth Actually Looked Like
Let me tell you what those numbers looked like from the inside.
The sales team resigned. Not one or two people. The team.
The company was still bleeding money despite the top-line growth.
My relationships with peers were destroyed. Other department heads avoided me. Meetings I attended became tense and unproductive.
My numbers looked spectacular on paper. Everything around me was broken.
I had optimized for one thing: results. I moved fast. I hit targets. I impressed the spreadsheet. I treated the numbers as the only thing that mattered.
I also ignored the relationships. Dismissed the skeptics. Burned the bridges. Treated people as obstacles to efficiency rather than partners in building something sustainable.
I was brilliant at output. I was cancer in the hallway.
The Destroyer
That word, Destroyer. It was my childhood nickname.
I was the kid who dismantled everything. Radios, toys, anything with parts. I needed to see how things worked. I needed to take them apart.
It followed me into adulthood.
At Electrolux, I dismantled the old way of doing things. I moved fast and broke whatever was in my way. I saw resistance as something to overcome rather than understand. I saw people as variables in my efficiency equation.
Gunnar could have let me stay. The numbers justified it. Any board looking at 241% growth would have celebrated.
But he saw something I could not see: I was destroying the organization while appearing to save it.
The results were real. The damage was also real. And the damage would compound long after the results faded.
Results without relationships is destruction.
That sentence became the foundation of everything I now teach.
The Second Failure
You might think I learned my lesson at Electrolux.
I did not.
Years later, I became CMO of an enterprise AI platform based in Houston. I was working sixty-hour weeks. My calendar was packed. I was in every meeting. I looked busy. I felt busy.
Then my CEO said something in front of the entire executive team that stopped my career cold:
“Indhran is the laziest person I have ever met.”
Sixty-hour weeks. Constant meetings. Visible effort everywhere.
And he called me lazy.
He was right.
I was using busyness as camouflage.
Every time a technical discussion started, I deferred. “That is for the product team.” Every time AI architecture came up, I nodded along without understanding. “I trust the engineers.”
I had once confused NLP – neuro-linguistic programming, the communication technique – with NLP, natural language processing, the AI technology. And I never corrected the gap.
I was leading the marketing of an AI platform I did not understand. I was a spectator pretending to be a participant. I was present without being useful.
Different company. Different decade. Same pattern.
At Electrolux, I was brilliant at results and terrible at relationships.
At the enterprise AI company, I was brilliant at appearing busy and terrible at going deep.
Both failures came from the same place: I was optimizing for the visible while ignoring the invisible.
The Pattern
After my failures, I started seeing this pattern everywhere.
Not just in myself. In organizations.
Leaders who optimize for metrics while their culture rots. Executives who announce transformation while their people disengage. Companies that celebrate pilot launches while their human systems fail.
The visible work gets applause. The invisible work gets ignored.
And then organizations wonder why their initiatives fail.
MIT’s research confirmed this at scale. Their 2025 study of over 300 AI implementations found that 95% of organizations are getting zero return from their AI investments.
Zero.
Not low return. Zero.
The researchers expected to find technology failures. Bad models. Integration problems.
Instead, they found something else:
“This divide does not seem to be driven by model quality or regulation, but seems to be determined by approach.”
The 5% who succeed are not using better technology. They are using a different approach.
They focus on what I learned to call the Human Layer: leadership, culture, capability, process, data, and governance. The invisible foundation that determines whether results are sustainable or self-destructive.
The 95% who fail focus on the visible: technology, launches, announcements, metrics.
They optimize for the spreadsheet while ignoring the hallway.
What I Learned
It took me twenty years to transform that Electrolux failure into something useful.
Twenty years of watching organizations repeat my mistake at scale. Twenty years of seeing leaders optimize for results while destroying relationships. Twenty years of understanding that the invisible work is the only work that actually matters.
Here is what I learned:
Speed without foundation is just faster failure. I moved fast at Electrolux. I broke things. I got results. And I destroyed the organization’s ability to sustain those results. Speed is not a strategy. Speed applied to a weak foundation just accelerates the collapse.
Busyness is the enemy of depth. I was busy at Entomo. Packed calendar. Constant meetings. Zero understanding of what we actually sold. In the AI era, busyness is easy. AI can generate ten defensible answers before you finish your coffee. The value has shifted from creating to evaluating, from doing the work to judging whether the work is right.
The invisible work determines the visible outcomes. Relationships. Trust. Understanding. Capability. These do not show up on dashboards. They do not get celebrated in quarterly reviews. But they determine whether anything else works.
Results without relationships is destruction. This is the sentence I carry with me. Results matter. But results extracted at the cost of relationships are borrowed from the future. Eventually, the bill comes due.
Why This Matters for AI
Every week, I talk to executives who are about to repeat my Electrolux mistake with AI.
They are moving fast. They are launching pilots. They are announcing initiatives. They are generating impressive early metrics.
And they are ignoring the Human Layer.
Their leadership is not aligned. Half the executive team sees AI as threat, half sees it as opportunity, and nobody has resolved the tension.
Their data is siloed. Different departments hoard information. Sharing feels like giving away power.
Their people are afraid. The AI announcements sound like job replacement. Nobody has addressed the fear directly.
Their processes are broken. AI is being layered on top of dysfunction, which will only accelerate the dysfunction.
Their governance is nonexistent. Nobody knows who decides what. Nobody knows what is allowed.
They are optimizing for the visible – technology, launches, metrics – while the invisible foundation crumbles.
AI accelerates whatever is already there. That is the insight I did not have at Electrolux.
If your organization is strong, AI accelerates the strength.
If your organization is broken, AI accelerates the breaking.
I accelerated Electrolux’s breaking. I just did not know it at the time because the results looked so good.
The Framework That Emerged
From those failures – and from twenty-five years of consulting, executive roles, and business building across APAC, UK, US, and Australia – I developed what I now call the Human Layer framework.
It is not soft skills. It is not change management. It is a design philosophy.
The Human Layer is the deliberately designed system of human judgment, governance, and intervention points that makes AI safe to scale.
It includes six dimensions:
Leadership and Vision. Do leaders understand AI enough to lead, not just approve?
Data Readiness. Is data accessible, clean, and governed?
Skills and Capability. Can people judge AI outputs, not just use tools?
Process Maturity. Have workflows been redesigned for AI, or is AI layered on broken processes?
Governance and Ethics. Are there clear policies and accountability?
Culture and Change Capacity. Does culture support experimentation and psychological safety?
These are not afterthoughts. These are prerequisites.
The 5% who succeed with AI start here. The 95% who fail skip it.
Gunnar’s Gift
I did not appreciate Gunnar Broberg at the time.
Being fired after delivering 241% growth felt like injustice. I had the numbers. I had the proof. I had the external validation.
What I did not have was the wisdom to see what he saw.
He saw that my results were unsustainable. He saw that I was destroying the organization while appearing to save it. He saw that keeping me would cost more than losing me.
He gave me a gift I did not want and could not appreciate.
Twenty years later, I understand.
The question is not whether you can get results. The question is whether you can get results that last. Whether you can build something sustainable. Whether you can leave the organization stronger than you found it.
That requires the invisible work. The relationships. The trust. The foundation.
It requires the Human Layer.
The Question I Ask Now
When I work with organizations on AI readiness, I ask a question that most consultants never ask:
What will be left when the initiative is over?
Not the metrics. Not the announcements. Not the pilot results.
What will be left in the organization? Will it be stronger or weaker? Will relationships be built or burned? Will capability be developed or ignored? Will trust be earned or destroyed?
The 95% who fail never ask this question. They focus on the launch, the metrics, the visible success.
The 5% who succeed ask it constantly. They know that sustainable results require sustainable foundations.
Results without relationships is destruction.
I learned this by being the one who got eaten.
I learned this by being brilliant at output and cancer in the hallway.
I learned this by being fired after delivering numbers that most executives would celebrate.
Twenty years later, it is the foundation of everything I teach.
What failures taught you the most? What did you learn about the invisible work that determines visible outcomes?
If you want to assess where your organization stands on the Human Layer – the foundation that determines whether AI accelerates your strength or your dysfunction – comment “SCORECARD” and I will send you access to the AI Readiness assessment I built for mid-market APAC leaders.