Hi Reader! Daria’s here.

Last week, I was recording a new episode of Built by People Leaders with Elena Krutova — and about 15 minutes in, she said something that made me stop and ask her to repeat it.

She was talking about the hardest kind of leadership work. And it’s not scaling a team. Not building something from scratch. It’s the other kind of work: walking into an organization that’s struggling, where the processes exist but aren’t working, where people are in place, but their motivation is suffering, where something is quietly wrong, and everyone can feel it but nobody has named it yet.

“My role,” she said, “is to be a surgeon. Cutting what’s unnecessary. Bringing what is necessary. Sharp, crisp, no blah blah blah.”

I’ve been thinking about that ever since.

Because most of us were taught that good leadership looks like support. Presence. Patience. And those things are real — they matter enormously. But somewhere along the way, caring about people got tangled up with avoiding hard decisions. And that confusion is costing teams more than we admit.

Here’s what I’ve seen happen. A process stops delivering results, but dismantling it feels disruptive, so it stays. A role drifts from its original purpose, but the conversation feels too uncomfortable, so it continues. A habit at the leadership level stops serving the team, but changing it would mean acknowledging it was wrong — so it persists.

And the organization doesn’t collapse. It just quietly gets sicker.

In a previous newsletter, I wrote about our instinct to default to addition when something feels off — another tool, another initiative, another layer. Research from Nature confirms it: across more than 1,500 participants, people consistently overlooked subtractive solutions even when they were the better option. We’re wired to add. Subtraction requires intention.

The surgeon operates differently. They don’t add to avoid discomfort. They remove what doesn’t serve the whole — precisely, deliberately, and without making it about themselves.

As Elena put it: “Look at the surgeon. They are not cruel. They are not focusing on themselves. They are focusing on doing their job right.”

And when the work is done well — when health returns to the team, to the culture, to the people — she describes it simply as the best pleasure of the work.

That’s the reframe I want to offer you today.

If you’re sitting with a decision you’ve been postponing — a restructure, a role change, a process that’s clearly past its expiry date — the surgeon mindset gives you a way through it. Not easier, but clearer.

Diagnose before you decide. What’s actually not working, and why? Resist the pull to act before you understand. A surgeon doesn’t cut before they know what they’re looking at.

Decide with the long term in mind. Short-term discomfort is real. But avoidance compounds. As I said to Elena during our conversation, if you don’t fix what’s broken, even when it’s painful, the damage only grows. Healthier organizations come from harder choices made earlier.

Communicate with precision. Sharp, crisp. People don’t need softening so much as they need honesty delivered with care. Context matters. Spin doesn’t help.

Stabilize after the cut. The surgeon doesn’t leave the table and disappear. You close the wound. You create a recovery path. You stay present while the team finds its footing again.

The leaders I respect most aren’t the ones who never made anyone uncomfortable. They’re the ones who made the right call — and stayed human while doing it.

​Today’s episode with Elena is out now on Built by People Leaders. If this idea resonated, I think you’ll want to hear the full conversation. She goes deep on transformation, on what it actually takes to restore health to a struggling organization, and on why precision and empathy aren’t opposites.

Go give it a listen.

See you next week.

Daria

P.S. If you know an HR or L&D leader who'd make a great guest on the Built by People show, forward them this email — I'd love to feature their story.

Check out more of our work at...

​ Linkedin ​Connect ​ →​

​ Youtube ​Subscribe ​→​

​ My book ​Read ​→​