The Fall Guy Fallacy: Why Leadership Stories Ignore Humanness

Welcome back, Humanness Heroes. I want to talk about something that triggered a thought-provoking response from me, one of the many days of doom-scrolling on my phone. The internet is telling a very clean story about Starbucks. A consultant CEO failed, a proven operator arrived, and confidence returned. Case closed. It is a compelling narrative; it is also an incomplete one.

At the center of this story sits a dangerous assumption, that one human can steer a complex organization alone, and that performance can be neatly traced back to a single resumé. Humanness asks us to pause here because leadership does not operate in isolation, and outcomes are rarely as simple as we want them to be.

Markets, boards, and observers alike crave clarity during uncertainty. And when complexity feels destabilizing, simplified stories become emotionally regulating. They help us feel oriented again, even if they do not reflect the full truth.

This is where the shorthand around Laxman Narasimhan does real damage, and where social media plays an outsized role.

Across online commentary, particularly on platforms like LinkedIn, X, Instagram and TikTok, his leadership tenure is often reduced to the phrase “a McKinsey consultant running Starbucks.” That framing does not originate from investigative reporting or formal analysis. It emerges from social discourse, where complexity is compressed into identity labels that travel faster than context.

In reality, Narasimhan’s background includes decades in large, consumer-facing organizations, including senior operating roles at PepsiCo and a prior tenure as CEO at Reckitt, experience well documented in mainstream business reporting (Reuters, 1; Financial Times, 2). The consultant label persists not because it is complete, but because it is legible and emotionally satisfying in moments of perceived failure.

Humanness asks us to notice this pattern, how quickly social narratives override documented experience, and how readily we mistake repetition for truth.

Leadership does not start at zero

First, one thing we often forget is that no CEO walks into a blank slate. Leadership results are lagging, contextual, and inherited, reflecting years of prior decisions, cultural debt, market dynamics, labour realities, investor pressure, and strategic bets already in motion long before a leadership transition occurs.

At General Electric, the public reckoning focused on the leaders presiding over the collapse. Yet investigative reporting and post-mortems made clear that GE’s unravelling was decades in the making, driven by financial engineering, incentive misalignment, and governance blind spots that long predated the CEOs who ultimately absorbed the blame (Financial Times, 3; McLean, 4; Reuters, 5).

Similarly, at Boeing, leadership changes were framed as decisive accountability following the 737 MAX crisis. But congressional investigations and independent analyses repeatedly showed that the failures were systemic, embedded across culture, incentives, and regulatory relationships over many years (House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, 6; Gelles et al., 7; Kwak & Kim, 8; Reuters, 9; Serwer, 10).

Leadership attribution is often flawed, not because accountability is wrong, but because it is simplified.

Laxman Narasimhan did not lead in a vacuum. He stepped into a business navigating inflationary pressure, labour unrest, activist investors, brand fatigue, and shifting consumer behaviour. Yet when confidence eroded, complexity became inconvenient. Markets do not reward nuance; they reward decisiveness, and decisiveness often requires a visible transfer of blame. Someone must carry the fault so the system can signal control.

When confidence needs a symbol

So, a change was made. A symbol was introduced. When Brian Niccol was announced (Reuters, 11), valuation surged. That immediate response did not confirm operational recovery; it confirmed narrative stabilization. The outgoing leader became the fall guy, tagged with failure, sometimes manufactured, so belief could be restored and uncertainty contained.

This is where humanness begins to surface, in the pause we are rarely encouraged to take.

The question we avoid asking ourselves

In a world of social media where stories like this are often oversimplified for a quick 3-5 second hook leading to post “virality,” have we ever stopped to ask ourselves, “What story am I choosing to believe here?” “Is it actually true, or is it the version that helps me feel steadier in the face of uncertainty?” Those two interpretations lead to very different conclusions and very different behaviours.

The false divide we keep reinforcing

There is a quieter but consequential move happening in how this story is being told, the reinforcement of a false divide between “consultants” and “operators,” as though these are opposing identities rather than overlapping ones. This is precisely the move that allowed Laxman Narasimhan to be reduced from a complex operating leader into a single, convenient label.

Phrases like “fancy PowerPoint decks” are not casual jokes. They are rhetorical shortcuts that strip a person of perceived competence by reframing judgment, synthesis, and communication as aesthetics rather than labour. What gets lost is that clear thinking, disciplined articulation, and coherent narrative are not ornamental; they are operational work. Research on execution consistently shows that strategy fails as often from poor communication as from poor design (Sull & Spinosa, 12).

This is where the argument against the individual quietly collapses. Credible consultancy is rarely built apart from execution; it is most often forged through it. Many of the people we later label as advisors began as operators who lived inside complex systems, managed trade-offs, and bore consequences, and only then developed the ability to abstract those experiences into frameworks others could use (Khurana, 13). The deck is not the work; it is the translation layer between complexity and coordinated action.

This pattern is visible across leadership history: Indra Nooyi’s early career included time at Boston Consulting Group following operating and strategy roles, and her later tenure as CEO of PepsiCo demonstrated how strategic framing, disciplined communication, and execution reinforce one another rather than compete (Nooyi, 14). Her effectiveness was not despite advisory experience, but informed by it.

Alan Mulally’s turnaround of Ford Motor Company is often framed as an operational feat alone. Yet detailed case analysis shows that the recovery hinged on shared metrics, transparent communication forums, and a common operating language across leadership. Mulally not only changed how Ford operated; he changed how it spoke to itself, and execution followed (Harvard Business School, 15).

Even Satya Nadella, frequently held up as a pure operator, began Microsoft’s transformation by reshaping culture and language before financial results followed. The reframing of identity and learning preceded measurable operating gains, underscoring that execution lagged narrative change, not the other way around (Ibarra & Rattan, 16).

These examples matter because they expose how shallow the consultant-versus-operator argument really is.

Operating without thoughtful framing breeds confusion and advising without operational grounding drifts into theory. They were never meant to compete; they were meant to reinforce one another.

Humanness shows up when we notice how quickly we reach for identity labels to explain discomfort, and how easily we confuse simplified stories with sound judgment.

Where humanness actually lives

Humanness does not live in defending individuals or excusing outcomes; it lives in our willingness to resist intellectual shortcuts when complexity makes us uncomfortable. We persist in telling clean stories because certainty feels stabilizing, but organizational breakdowns are rarely the result of a single human failure. They are more often the accumulation of structural, cultural, and incentive-based conditions that unfold over time, even when accountability is publicly assigned to one person (House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, 6; Kwak & Kim, 8).

Humanness asks something harder of us: it asks us to sit with the tension between accountability and oversimplification, to recognize when a leadership change is a meaningful signal but not a complete explanation. When we strip a leader of competence through caricature, we are not practicing rigour; we are practicing convenience. Humanness lives in the pause before we accept the story we are handed, in the question we ask before repeating it, and in the restraint to say, this is more complex than I am being invited to believe.

Humanness Heroes, here is the invitation: Before you accept the conclusion being handed to you, pause and ask yourself, what story am I choosing to believe, and what need in me does it serve?

Notice where complexity is being compressed into comfort. Where a human is being reduced to a symbol so uncertainty feels easier to manage. And lastly, where you might be tempted to repeat a narrative because it stabilizes you, not because it is complete.

If this reflection stirred something, sit with it. Share it if it feels right. Or simply carry the question into the next leadership story you encounter.

This is how humanness stays alive in the hustle, not through certainty, but through discernment.

References

1. Reuters. (2023, March 20). Starbucks CEO Narasimhan steps into top job amid slowing demand. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/starbucks-ceo-narasimhan-steps-into-top-job-amid-slowing-demand-2023-03-20/

2. Financial Times. (2024, August 13). Starbucks ousts chief executive Laxman Narasimhan after sales slide. https://www.ft.com/content/4f9dd365-e20f-4c42-b443-48058990a006

3. Financial Times. (2018, October 30). The fall of General Electric. https://www.ft.com/content/3a7a2c7a-db44-11e8-9f04-38d397e6661c

4. McLean, B. (2018, June 1). How General Electric lost its way. Vanity Fair. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/06/how-general-electric-lost-its-way

5. Reuters. (2018, October 30). GE slashes dividend, takes $23 billion charge tied to insurance unit. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-general-electric-results-idUSKCN1N40N7

6. House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. (2020). Final committee report: The design, development & certification of the Boeing 737 MAX. U.S. House of Representatives. https://transportation.house.gov/committee-activity/boeing-737-max-investigation

7. Gelles, D., Kitroeff, N., & Nicas, J. (2019, April 20). Boeing was “betting the company” on the 737 Max. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/20/business/boeing-737-max-crashes.html

8. Kwak, J., & Kim, Y. (2020). What went wrong at Boeing. MIT Sloan Management Review. https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/what-went-wrong-at-boeing/

9. Reuters. (2019, October 29). Boeing CEO Muilenburg ousted after 737 MAX crisis. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-boeing-ceo-idUSKBN1Y41B7

10. Serwer, A. (2019, March 18). How Boeing lost its way. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/03/how-boeing-lost-its-way/585903/

11. Reuters. (2024, August 14). Starbucks names Chipotle’s Brian Niccol as CEO in bid to revive growth. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/starbucks-names-chipotles-brian-niccol-ceo-2024-08-14/

12. Sull, D. N., & Spinosa, C. (2007). Promise-based management: The essence of execution. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2007/04/promise-based-management

13. Khurana, R. (2010). From higher aims to hired hands: The social transformation of American business schools. Princeton University Press.

14. Nooyi, I. (2021). My life in full: Work, family, and our future. Portfolio.

15. Harvard Business School. (2009). Ford Motor Company: The turnaround under Alan Mulally (Case No. 9-410-067). Harvard Business School Publishing.

16. Ibarra, H., & Rattan, A. (2018). Leadership and the art of growing up. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2018/01/leadership-and-the-art-of-growing-up