There are many ways to raise your short or even mid-term numbers that have a net negative effect on the company over the long term. For example, if you want to

There are many ways to raise your short or even mid-term numbers that have a net negative effect on the company over the long term. For example, if you want to get monthly active users up over the course of 3-6 months to get a promotion, there are lots of ways to do it - you can do discount promotions, or even pay users to download and install and use your app. But the moment you stop doing that your numbers are going to tank, and in the long run you just cost the company money while also doing damage to how people perceive it. The massive drop in numbers after that is going to demoralize the team, as well. I've worked on a couple different teams where leadership did short-term-focused things like this to get numbers up and then the company paid for it later (typically after the leadership had exited or been pushed out). This is a type of superstar toxicity that can be really harmful to your company even if people aren't quitting in droves because of the toxic employee.