Illuminating Insights | Leah Jochim on Transformative Leadership and Team Dynamics

Illuminating Insights: Leah Jochim on Transformative Leadership and Team Dynamics

In this episode of Illuminating Insights, host Trisha Hall converses with Leah Jochim, a seasoned innovator with over 20 years of experience fostering high-performing teams. Leah shares her philosophy of servant leadership, emphasizing the importance of involving people in transformative processes. She discusses various strategies to create efficiencies within organizations, focusing on cross-functional teams, clear communication, and prioritizing outcomes over outputs. Leah also touches upon her work with non-profits and the unique challenges they face. Through her extensive experience with both Fortune 50 companies and non-profit organizations, Leah provides valuable insights into leadership, teamwork, and achieving meaningful results.

00:00 Introduction and Guest Introduction

00:36 Leah's Leadership Philosophy

01:26 Transformative Leadership in Action

05:40 Creating Team Efficiencies

08:56 Importance of Communication and Alignment

12:14 Challenges in Leadership and Change

24:14 Nonprofit Leadership Insights

32:12 Final Thoughts and Optimism

About Leah Jochim
Leah Jochim has spent 20+ years as an innovator and transformer who is passionate about fostering high performing teams and exceeding customer expectations with world class experiences. She has led transformative change in startups as well as Fortune 50s while on her mission to help deliver customer value sooner, better, safer by happier teams.

Leah believes in servant leadership. She lives, learns and leads by the fundamental belief that the greatest leadership achievements are not grand acts but rather the ability to create environments that help others attain greatness. Leah also believes it is important to give back through service, leadership and mentoring. She is a long time volunteer and serves as an Board Director on for two not-for profit organizations: Courage for Care Givers and Tri Delta.

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Transcript

0:09

Thank you again for joining us on this episode of illuminating insights. I'm joined today by Leah Yochum. She has spent more than 20 years as an innovator and transformer who is passionate about fostering high performing teams and exceeding customer expectations with world class experiences. She has led transformative change in startups as well as fortune 50s while on her mission to help deliver customer value sooner, better, safer, and by happier teams. Leah believes in servant leadership. She lives. Leans and leads by fundamental belief that the greatest leadership achievements are not grand acts, but rather the ability to create environments that help others attain greatness. Leah also believes it's important to give back through service, leadership, and mentoring. She's a longtime volunteer and serves as a board member for two not for profit organizations, Courage for Caregivers and Tri Delta. Leah, thank you so much for spending time with us today. Thank you so much, Tricia. It's, uh, fantastic to be here with you. I've loved. collaborating over the years on our, our journey together and a chance to share learnings and help others hopefully on their journey as well as something that, uh, I enjoy doing when I have the chance. So thank you for that. It's so exciting to see you. I first met you when you were working in one of the, I think it was a fortune 10, not even a fortune 50. And you were leading the transformative efforts of that organization. Um, and I got to see your servant leadership style firsthand. And one of the things that was most important to you was making sure that the people were a part of the transformation. And this was something that was done with them and not to them. Can you share a little bit about that experience in that philosophy? Because I think that's something that's really important for leaders to understand. Absolutely. Um, thank you, Tricia. Um, people are most important value and should be our most valued asset, right? That in the end, the talent, the energy, the problem solving the skills, the camaraderie. That people have, that's, that's a true value, right? And that without that, we wouldn't have the innovations and great solutions that we rely on in our everyday life. And of course our businesses, and yet it's, it's been interesting to see over the many years of my career that some get more focused on, the end result and, refer to as resources. And I, I try always to pause and have the learning moments, especially with the senior leadership to say, you mean your talented teams, you mean your dedicated team members, or your team of teams in many cases, especially for the enterprises that we all work in, where I understand for senior leadership and especially executives, they, of course, do a lot in numbers. And so it does help escape. The personal human side of it, yet so many of the challenges we face and the opportunities we have therein lie with the people that rather than cost cutting and reducing a team here and increasing a team there, actually looking at what the team dynamics and seeing who they need, what talent they need. Maybe it's not about adding more people at all. It's removing the things that are slowing them down, or as we like to say impediments, right. And that by simply taking things out of their way and leaning it out, right. And I'm, there's so many people that can speak from a house and lean perspective far better than me. Yet if we all as leaders, and that's where the servant leadership piece really comes in. If we make it our responsibility, and that we're accountable for helping our talent. Be able to operate in the most efficient way with whatever is slowing them down, whatever stops them, heaven forbid, right? There are work stoppages that we take it on ourselves to see what's doing that and how we can help versus pressing down on them. And heaven forbid, you know, taking them away, right. From being able to solve the problem or, or cost cutting can actually be. counterproductive, truly, both in terms of the team productivity and getting to the outcome that the leadership are actually after. Um, so long story short, I've, I've seen it over and over again, that the right investments in the team dynamics, and especially teams of teams, because that's where it does get much more complex. And in the proven practices are there, just many don't either aren't familiar with them, may not give it enough runway to try them, don't have people with enough experience to lean into those. Um, but that when you get your team of teams operating, um, in an aligned, effective way together, they will accomplish great things. Right. And that as leaders, if we can help set them up for that success and remove the barriers in their way, you actually can, you know, improve the bottom line without cutting a single dollar or a person. I love that. I love being able to create efficiencies inside of organizations with just your existing team and leaving the team intact. What are some of your favorite ways of doing that? Well, it's, it's been interesting, right? Some of them are really simple and people have been talking about them for a very long time, like cross functional teams. And that's a mouthful, I get it, but ensuring that the team has all the talent that they need to be able to accomplish something versus having to borrow from somewhere else, right? If I need to go borrow, you know, an ingredient from my neighbor, the time that takes, I could already have something made up and, or heaven forbid, if I had to go all the way to the store, and I know that seems like a mundane, you know, domestic reality or, or metaphor, but at the same time, it bears true in work environments all the time, right? The other piece is focus. If we have too many priorities or everything's a priority, nothing's a priority. And we've all seen, right? We all multitask. I'm guilty of it. that, that's going to happen. I'm not saying we defy human nature. That said, when you have everyone saying their thing's the most important. A, the emotion and the noise and the stress it creates, it's not helpful. Uh, and number two, like we can, again, embrace some proven lean thinking. There's so much math and science behind it that we could flash up on the screen, right? Around if we double down and ensure we get to done sooner. And we, we start finishing and stop starting so many things. We actually get a lot more done. And like I said, there are those that are thought leaders in the space that I've learned from, right. And I just try and keep it, keep it real and keep applying that we have to have. And again, there are a lot of priorities. So let's talk about sequencing them, right. And, and keep it In a ranked sequence. That's clear. And let's make sure as well in that clarity, right, that we have that alignment across everyone involved, because even in a relatively small company, let alone an enterprise, there are multiple teams involved in, you know, even the best cross functional team is still going to depend on another team or unit for something, right? And so we want to make sure everybody's clear on the vision. And the business and the customer outcomes involved so that they can go solve for that. And have line of sight where others depend on them. And that's where we start getting in the, the team of teams, the people working better together at scale, right? We don't scale agility. We use proven practices and methods that help us, work better across teams and the people they're in, right. And that involves. You know, most fundamentally communication, right. And whether you're doing scrum and it's scrum of scrums or something like that, or it's a regular sync up to talk about impediments, to talk about deployments, to talk about when we're launching, right. To talk about quality, right. The conversations of the things that matter, are we actually getting to the outcomes or are we focusing a lot of energy on the output. But we actually haven't clarified the outcome, right? That communication, which starts with understanding and alignment and then making sure we coordinate along the way. And all of that comes down to the written. As well as the verbal communication and tools that can support that. Right. Whether you're a fan of Kanban boards or backlogs, and there's any number of great tools for both. Right. There's been an explosion of those tools. It's knowing you still have to have those fundamentals around. Communication of the clarity of what's most important. The outcomes of what that actually is driving. Because the final piece is, that prescriptive side that I've seen is we often forget that we have these brilliant knowledge workers and problem solvers, especially I work a lot with engineers and I mean, they're some of the best problem solvers in the world. And yet. We prescribe stuff up front versus saying we're actually trying to create a customer experience that does the following. Uh, bring them the problem to solve rather than telling them the solution. Exactly. And that's where the, you know, objectives and key results or OKRs, um, that again, have been popularized. And I, I'd like to hope are much more commonplace are a great tool set. And Easy to adopt and provide that type of clarity and a really good mechanism to communicate, communicate, communicate. Are we clear on the objective? Are we clear on the type of outcomes that means? What are the results that matter? And if there's too many results, then let's, let's have a meaningful conversation about that. And if some results aren't feasible, let's talk about those. Right. Well, and I think you've struck on something that's very key and something that we talk a lot about with our customers is, are you focused on the output or do you really have an eye and understanding of what the outcome is that you're trying to achieve? We've done so much with our teams about what's the work that you're doing. But, you know, what's the value that you're getting out of the work? What are you actually getting to the finish line for the company? Um, and so it's interesting to hear you talk about that. That's, you know, the conversations that you're having as well is because the outcome really defines the value, right? What is it that we're really trying to achieve to move the needle for the company, whether you're a software delivery team, a marketing team, a sales team. What is it that we're really trying to do to help the company move forward? Exactly. And, you know, you spoke of the Fortune 10 that I was part of when we first met, and we did a lot of things and transformed a lot people processing tools, if I had to laser in on one area that was a game changer for the entire enterprise. It was around objectives and key results that as a company with the senior leaders, getting them to start speaking a similar language where they got out of their specific lingo for their divisions, given products for their divisions, revenue and third division, right? And that lingo ended up, I discovered, because I was newer to the industry and they were actually asking for a lot of the same things. And we had a juggernaut with a set of engineering teams that we, set up a value stream around or an efficient team of teams for a given, customer journey. And all these asks that came in from three competing business units. By adopting objectives and key results together, they went from literally, this really happened in New York, sitting all of them at separate tables in a very expensive workshop. Right. And the first day we're like, all right. And we made them share and we made them talk about the outcomes, the objectives that they were after. And by the afternoon of the first afternoon of a two day workshop, they changed where they were sitting. They literally said, Oh, those people, that team, they want the same thing. They call it something different because their business is consumer focused versus commercial. Who cares? It's still asking the same basic work of the engineers. But if you compete, if you ask for it in different ways, we see it as two different asks. Right. Exactly. Where we were able to adapt to. Yes. It was such a game changer. I wish I'd known sooner, right? Because I had been at the company probably almost a year by that point yet, um, again, sometimes the simplest things also adopting across the leadership, not just in one unit made all the difference. Right. The magic of getting people to actually talk to each other and figure out how to, um, one of the things that we call it here is take off my me hat and put on my enterprise hat. So talk about what's good for the business, not necessarily what's good for my business Right. So that we can start to prioritize across the organization. Not only is it better for the organization, but it's easier for the people doing the work, because then you don't have 10 people coming at you or 20 people coming at you and saying, here, I need this right now, because this is a priority. There's one prioritized list of. This is what the organization needs. Exactly. Have you seen that one was aligned to it, right? It reduced all this friction and stress. And most of all, it reduced the demand, right? That was overloading the engineering teams and, you know, causing them chaos, right? The opposite of what we talk about from, trying to be our best and provide an environment for others to thrive in. Right. So it was beautiful seeing downstream that the other things we were doing to try and light up these teams and, and, you know, That they could make their lives better so they could do their best work right that they had clear outcomes they were aligned to and that they could be passionate about right that even though the hours end up being longer, even though they're still complexity, they're still working with a lot of different teams and compliance and all the things right that they could double down and know what they're solving for who it's for why it's important. And that they're empowered and valued to go solve for it. And, you know, teams like that, they not only do their best, they'll put the hours in that are needed, right? it's not about logging time. It's about getting to that finish line of a truly meaningful outcome. Right. It's a beautiful thing when you can see it. Oh, it is. It's amazing. Now that was, you know, several years ago that you and I did That work together. And I'm not going to say how many years, cause that will date us both. And we both just started our careers. Right. Um, for sure. No, not really. But, um, so I know that you've taken that experience and you've done some amazing things since then. So I'd love to hear about, you know, kind of what you've been up to lately and where you've taken that experience. It's been quite the journey, you know, all of those learnings continue, um, to apply and every context is different, right? Um, I find more and more, I'm realizing how the most ambitious companies will have these hairy objectives. And the most important part is verifying their intent to change and what they think needs to change. That, um, our recent engagement and transformation could only go so far because the leadership felt that, you know, technology or tech or IT, whatever you want to call it, they're the problem and they're the ones to go fix. And even when you say, well, wait a minute, uh, you're planning and waterfall over here, and you're setting an iron triangle of scope, budget, timeline, and the people scoping it aren't even the people building it. Right. So these engineers are completely underutilized in terms of their problem solving skills. And I've seen on multiple accounts, what was scoped well, great intentions, very hard work, I saw a 200 line business requirement document, not to mention 20 page verbiage in another doc where they missed a fundamental area of like, let's use. APIs to do data transfer versus secure file transfer that has since caused all sorts of problems and slowed the project. Oh, right. Yeah. And it's, it's hard to come in midway and, and, you know, you always need to be respectful and You know, see the root cause and then find, find the way, so to speak. So many of my teams, that's the motto that we've adopted, right? Um, the teams they've worked very, very hard and we've removed impediments for them. We've elevated product ownership to really, you know, be much more customer centric and to really try and work end to end and sequence, you know, clear objectives. It can only go so far when the most senior leadership still has this mixed model, this prescription to technology and an unwillingness to change, right? That, um, I embrace enterprise agility and I realized without the other units, it's moot that technology can operate as efficiently as it, as it can. But if it's not part of. A truly integrated collaborative unit in small or big company, you're only getting half the value out of it. And so that's been, that's been a troublesome one to experience. You know, at this point in my career when, you know, I'm always optimistic and I'm this believer, like this is all possible. None of this is rocket science, right? These are logical. Principles, proven practices that the biggest investment they take are the faith and that bit of time with experts or thought leaders, people that, have the right expertise to help with the adoption, same time, you have to recognize, are they really committed? To changing what's needed to get the outcome that they say they want, right? They say they want to grow the business. They say they want technology to be enabler, right? And what company isn't a digital first company anymore, right? Or entirely dependent on a digital platform, some kind platforms. If that's the case, why would you separate out technology and not integrate it in terms of a clearly aligned set of outcomes? And a model that's truly across the enterprise and that what pains me the most is seeing the waste, seeing the waste. If you're going to go scope this over here in a certain way, which there's nothing wrong with waterfall. If you're going to be waterfall, just be waterfall. And then have it re scoped after the fact downstream where things. We've missed all this other opportunity of the original ideation and working with the whole range of stakeholders versus the few still engaged. Um, so there's a ton of lessons learned. We've made it through some, yet until the executive team, unless they opt to switch and really be part of the change and champion that kind of, truly, integrated model, they can only go so far. Do you think, Leah, that we're stuck somewhat still in the belief that change is something someone else does and it's not something we're a part of? Yes. Yes. And, you know, there's still different. Business schools and so forth. Well, they'll, they'll talk lean and, you know, innovative thinking and ideation and so forth. Yet so many of the executives you talk to. It's still the iron triangle, right? That, just even getting to funding engineering teams, like you fund any part of the company, there's a project based mindset, right. That is part of it that has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with the sort of business approach that they have. And if you see engineering and engineers as resources and widgets, That, you just optimize in their slots. You're only going to get half the value you're not getting the problem solving from them. You prescribe it up front without your engineers, you're missing the entire opportunity. You're missing the investment altogether, right? this is knowledge work. This isn't factory assembly line. Waterfall has its place in time, right? I'm not putting waterfall down. I'm saying use it at the right time and in the right. Yeah, no, That makes sense. So you do a lot of work with nonprofits as well as commercial. Is it different when you work with your nonprofits? I know the ones that I work with, it can get a little squirrely. I'm fortunate to serve on the boards for two incredible nonprofits who are full of dedicated people that are also overachievers. And so in the, in the objectives and key results are okay. Our world, what we see is the number one challenge, right? You know, that was something we shared for like, we understand there's lots of data, there's so many good things. There's so many actions. There's so much output. That's great. We know people are working hard. Are we working smart? Are we working on the right things? Are we clear on what the outcomes are? Right? And more importantly, to leverage us as a governing board with all of our experience. And I mean, you look at the other leaders on the Tri Delta board suite, we have three entity boards because, you know, Tri Delta, we do things in threes and the executive board may be our primary governing, but we also have housing and foundation. And that can create so much churn and so much work for the staff. It's because we do have a small paid staff, right, to ensure the enterprise. Of this incredible, uh, not for profit continues to grow and serve its members and, and sisters truly helping sisters as part of the philosophy, uh, we embrace that we have, we get lost sometimes in too many outcomes, too many things we're trying to accomplish, which you try to be all things. And do all things, you'll do nothing exceptionally well, right? And as a governing board, we also want to know, like, leverage us for what keeps you up at night. What, what challenges as a growing enterprise level nonprofit are you having? Where, where can we lean in and help remove those impediments or think differently about them? Right. Um, so on one hand, It's different because you're not just throwing money at it, right? you're forced to be more creative. And so much of the work is done by an army of volunteers. We have like 50 staff compared to almost 3000 volunteers. And you know, some of the best thought leaders. On the for profit commercial side, let's say I treat my teams like they are volunteers. Well, when you're really working with volunteers and even as a volunteer board member, you appreciate that even more that their sense of purpose and being valued and given something, you know, that they believe in to work on is critical, right? Ours were something we introduced in the last biennium, because our Selected every two years with the paternity governance. And I was on the board last year when we introduced, and of course the OKRs, there were so many and they're very exciting, right? To have that clarity, to have so many objectives and key results. And the one thing I'd flagged taking off my governing hat and just as a board member experience and passion about this, you need to have your, which ones really matter, right? Sometimes the ones that really matter are the hardest. They are the ones that, you know, are even hard to articulate and capture and measure. But yet, that's what really matters. So, let's fixate on that and not just go for the easy ones, right? I can put out 50 features on time and so forth. But if the members, don't care, if they don't use them, why buy it? If it's not creating value. Exactly. And so on one hand is so many of the same principles in terms of valuing people, servant leading and taking impediments out of the way. And most important of all, providing that clarity as much as possible and that sequence of what are the most important outcomes and trying to help enable the teams. Be them volunteers or engineers. It doesn't matter. They're people seeking to make a difference and to do that as best as they can with the teams that they know, right? So it's very rewarding in general, um, and challenging switching context. But recognizing in the end, you know, people need some of the same basic, you know, right stuff to be successful. No, I find that same thing with the boards that I serve on and helping people that have been doing the same thing for years. And we see that in organizations for profit, nonprofit see that potentially there's a different way to do things. And it doesn't mean that the way they've done it before is not valuable, but maybe we should look at something new. It's hard. Because change is hard and helping people form those new ways and new patterns of thinking and doing things. Right. It's not easy. That's why we're called change leaders. Absolutely. And you know, I cannot stress enough how communication keeps coming up, right. But yes, we have all these great tools and you know, we chat on teams, we post things, we send general messages, yet. Making sure that people are clear on what is important and restating that in all the different ways people learn and connect. The one thing that I think for me is the easiest because of my bias and yet I see is such a challenge in a number of organizations and, and of course people like there's personality types to right where I respect that, you know, we're not all extroverted and so forth. So all the more reason why we have to communicate these important objectives and key results that clarify and align and, and really rally us to the cause, so to speak. In as many ways as we can, right, especially if we're trying to go in another direction, we have to bring people there. you have to communicate in the different modes and mediums. that work for them, which means I think the science says at least seven ways, and I'm going to go with 11, right. But you can't over communicate enough. And yet, especially with transformative change, I see a lot of under communication and secret squirrel kind of stuff. And I get there's NDAs and a reason early in a, in a new innovative area to, to be on a bit of lockdown. Yet, To bring everyone along on the journey, you have to, you know, get to a well communicated aligned place or the rest of it ends up being kind of moot. Couldn't agree more. As we wrap up our time today, any final thoughts, Lea, anything you'd like to leave our audience with? Oh, there's so many. Um, I like to end on a note of, of hope and optimism that we have incredible people constantly trying to do the right thing. And whether you're in senior leadership and in trying to affect change in and fix a gap or are going to a new space, uh, and bring your teams along that focusing on the people right and being clear and, you know, brutal prioritization about what's really most important to accomplish. And, and align and empower people to solve for that and set them up in an environment for success. It's, it's not only possible, it's truly life changing when it happens. Uh, earlier in my career, this would be at least 16 years ago as part of a transformation of a, a company ready to fold. They had tried to relaunch their platform twice internally. I was part of a team brought in to completely reboot them and transform all of engineering and product. And in eight months, we not only replatform the new solution was something the company and its customers, were thrilled, actually exceeded their expectations we had nailed the scenarios the technology worked to support the scenarios. Right. And most of all, the team of teams went from this fearful, we can't do it, it's failed, to wait a minute, every sprint, every two weeks, they were releasing value, getting it validated by the users internally, then externally were using it with the customers, and able to iterate and learn and grow and just do it. And I could just see month over month, how we were accomplishing that major mission. And the team's like, I'm still in touch. One of them is on a current transformation I'm on. I was like, Hey, if you're even remotely available, I pulled them in a year ago. I said, let's work on this other area together. And it changed my life and made me believe what was truly possible when you have The right focus, the right clarity and alignment for talented people, right? And with that, you can accomplish anything. That's amazing. That's amazing, Leah. Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts and your experience with us today. And we'll see you next time on illuminating insights. That was my pleasure. Thank you so much, Tricia.