Arizona is led by a VP of Network and Contracting who seemed completely disconnected from what it actually takes to build successful departments. Every decision bottlenecked at the top, progress stalled, and problems lingered until they became the norm. Yet somehow the answer was never better leadership—it was always another initiative, another slogan, another “Mission Simplify.”
Mission Simplify wasn’t a solution. It felt like an admission that the executives couldn’t solve the problems they were paid to solve, so the burden was pushed onto the very employees who had been carrying the organization all along. Workers were expected to innovate, fix broken processes, absorb impossible workloads, and still somehow drag leadership across the finish line.
That’s the real tragedy: executives collecting major salaries while frontline employees did the heavy lifting. Then, when the consequences arrived, the people who built the company were the ones shown the door.
Leadership isn’t measured by titles or résumés. It’s measured by results. And when departments crumble under poor direction, accountability shouldn’t stop at the people doing the work.
There’s a certain poetic justice in discovering that a title alone doesn’t create value. Eventually every leader has to face the same reality as everyone else: your paycheck should reflect the impact you make, not the position you hold.