Here's your deliverable. Now, please excuse our mental breakdown...

Ten years ago, while pregnant with my first, I was charged with the task of converting downloadable software to a web-based app. The client was really tough. Wasn't a subject matter expert, wasn't an end user, wasn't a technical expert, and wasn't really tech savvy, period. The most direction we got was "make it look like Turbo Tax". Um, okay....

The first iteration straight up failed. We had an "agile expert" Product Owner who just ghosted us in the middle of the project. I was the Business Analyst, which was the first ever tech role I'd held in my career. I'd never even heard of agile much less done anything in tech! But, since I'm a doer and a recovering people pleaser/perfectionist, I just buckled down and tried to help this non-agile "agile" team limp across the finish line, wearing product owner, scrum master, business analyst, end user, release manager, subject matter expert hats along the way.

We tried to save the project by working with a true agile team that had a deep bench of UI/UX experts. My supervisor told the client that we would use this new team to finish the project in approximately 3 months. What he and I both knew, though, was that the new team wouldn't recycle any of the work of the last team. It was a bunch of spaghetti back there. They were going to have to literally throw away what we had built and start over with 25% of the timeline that the old team had. And with 25% of the budget. Seriously.

My favorite part? My boss told the client we could get it done in 3 months with a quarter of the budget and handed it to me to "figure it out". Next thing I know, he bails and shows up on the other side of the table... as my new client. The same guy who sold a fantasy timeline and budget was now positioned to hold us accountable for the fallout.

I couldn't throw him under the bus by explaining what happened. Even though I wanted to bring transparency and honesty to the project once and for all. So I was left holding the bag with an impossible deadline, mere pennies to build it, unclear expectations and requirements, and a scorched heap of spaghetti code.

Terrified of the original client, who was a narcissist and a bully, my team and I pored ourselves into that project. We worked unpaid hours, nights and weekends, to get it done. The client even yelled at us multiple times, which kept us terrified for our jobs, so we continued to work at this unsustainable pace. 

We finally delivered it, and all of us rejoiced. We were finally done burning the midnight oil! Now we could go back to a more sustainable pace of work.

Right? Right?!?! WRONG.

All we showed to the client and to our organization was that we could work longer and harder, unpaid, unsupported, and unprotected while still making the organization money. And they applauded us for it. But those performance expectations never decreased and, ultimately, I certainly did not want to work for some jerk client who yelled at me and humiliated me. Other folks felt similarly and left for other projects or to start their own business or a new job. What our organization saw as a sustainable win, wasn't that at all.  It crushed our spirits. Made us feel less than human. Like small little ants to grind under our client's boots. 

We'd created value, but for who? And at what personal cost to us??

I know this isn't a unique story. Most organizations still define value in terms of revenue, velocity, or customer satisfaction. That’s it. If the client is happy and the money is flowing, they call it a win. But that definition is incomplete at best, and at worst, it’s damaging.

It tells you what was delivered, but says nothing about how it was created or what it cost to get there.

We see it all the time:

• Deliverables met on paper, but teams left burned out and barely hanging on.

• Projects shipped on time, but at the expense of trust, psychological safety, or ethical decision-making.

• Innovation initiatives launched with big press releases, then quietly abandoned because the culture couldn’t support real risk-taking.

That’s not value. That’s exploitation.

When we define value purely in output terms, we train our systems to overlook the very things that generate real, lasting impact: the people. The relationships. The health of the team. The sustainability of the pace. The integrity of the process.

We’ve got to stop treating people as the cost of doing business. They are the business. And if they’re depleted, disillusioned, or disengaged, that’s not success. That’s a ticking clock.

According to an SHRM article from just a year ago (April 2024), employees experiencing burnout are nearly THREE TIMES more likely to actively look for another job and significantly less likely to go above and beyond. And a recent survey from Grant Thornton (November 2024) found that OVER HALF OF EMPLOYEES reported experiencing burnout in the past year, with mental and emotional stress cited as the main causes.

It doesn’t end there. Burnout doesn’t just impact individuals—it drags down productivity, increases absenteeism, and erodes workplace culture. And companies with disengaged teams? They see customer retention rates drop by as much as 12% compared to those with engaged, supported employees.

On the flip side, when organizations prioritize employee performance and well-being, they’re 4.2X more likely to outperform their peers. That translates to real results: 30% higher revenue growth and lower attrition.

So no, this isn’t just a “soft” issue. It’s a strategic one. If we keep defining value as “whatever the client sees,” we’ll keep breaking the people doing the work.

I don't know about you, but that just feels like a really shitty way to treat our fellow humans.