“I feel like a caged animal.”
Those words that stopped me cold during what should have been a celebration call. Sally Martinez—CEO, visionary, the tech-entrepreneur everyone in our network had been watching—had just uttered the last thing I expected to hear.
Three weeks prior, I’d watched her ring the bell at the local business journal’s “Deal of the Year” ceremony. The merger was supposed to be her crowning achievement. She’d done it. The 20-year-old company that was born in her garage, nearly went out of business several times was finally getting the resources, distribution, and scale she’d dreamed of.
“This transformational partnership will deliver enhanced service offerings, expanded geographical footprint, increased profitability, and unprecedented operating leverage for our stakeholders.” Perfect corporate speak. Sally had practiced those words until they rolled off her tongue like a seasoned investment banker.
But success, as I’ve learned over the years, has a way of revealing truths that due diligence reports can’t capture.
In less than two weeks post-closing, Sally’s morning routine flipped drastically. The same woman who used to bound into her office at 6:30 AM—eager to check in with her team, review customer feedback, brainstorm the next product innovation—now sat in her car for ten minutes, dreading to enter what was technically still “her” building.
“Ray, they want me to fire Margaret,” Sally muttered. Margaret had been Sally’s first hire. Twenty years of loyalty, one of her most capable employees, three kids put through college on the steady paycheck Sally made sure never missed a pay cycle, even during the lean years.
“The numbers don’t support her position,” the integration team had said. Clean. Clinical. Logical.
But numbers don’t capture how Margaret stayed until midnight during the 2019 product recall, personally calling every affected customer. Numbers don’t show how Margaret brought homemade soup countless times to the office when half the team got sick during flu season. Numbers can’t measure the way she’d quietly mentored and coached a number of younger employees, including Sally herself.
Sally had built something beautiful. A place where profit served purpose, not the other way around.
The worst part? The legal documents. Thick binders of non-disclosure agreements that made Sally complicit in her own silence. She couldn’t warn her team. Couldn’t prepare them. Couldn’t even hint at the cultural steamroller headed their way, as she was still holding out hope that her gut feeling was wrong. The integration project lead’s PowerPoint was titled “Operational Excellence Through Cultural Alignment.” Translation: Strip away everything that made Sally’s company unique and force-fit it into the new company’s efficiency machine.
I’ll let you in on one of Rising Sun principles: Prescription without diagnosis is malpractice. You can’t solve what you don’t understand, and you can’t understand what you don’t see clearly.
Sally needed space to see her situation without the fog of everyone else’s expectations. Without the pressure of the press coverage. Without the weight of the “successful female CEO” narrative that had become her public identity. She needed to remember who she was before the merger. Before the growth targets. Before the investor meetings and the strategic partnerships and the endless pursuit of “transformational impact.”
She needed to remember why she started the company in her garage twenty years ago.
She needed to remember, or reminded, of her identity, her purpose!
The world needs more than just efficient operators.
It needs more Sally Martinezes.
Leaders who understand that people aren’t resources to be optimized but souls to be served.
Leaders who know that culture isn’t something you manage but something you model.
Leaders who recognize that when you care about human flourishing, growth in shareholder value is simply a natural byproduct.
And what happened to Sally? She’s still on the journey—just like the rest of us. The story isn’t over.
At Rising Sun, we are developing the next generation of servant-leaders who are passionate about pursuing redemptive ventures. If you’re interested in how servant-leadership can drive high-performance cultures and deliver sustainable growth while prioritizing human flourishing, let’s connect.
