The Best Leaders I Know Don't Lead From the Front. They Clear the Path.

A reflection on servant leadership, focus, and what truly drives transformation

There's a question I've carried with me for most of my career, one that surfaces every time I walk into a new organization: Are people here treated as the greatest asset — or managed as a cost to control?

The answer shapes everything. Culture, velocity, outcomes, retention. I've seen it play out in startups racing to find product-market fit, in Fortune 50 enterprises navigating multi-year transformation programs, and more recently in the fast-moving world of private equity and AI-driven deal intelligence. The organizations that get this right don't just perform better — they feel different from the inside.

I recently had the privilege of sharing some of these reflections with Trisha Hall on Illuminating Insights. The conversation brought me back to a few truths I keep returning to, no matter the industry or stage of growth.

Leadership isn't about authority. It's about environment.

The most powerful thing a leader can do is create the conditions for their team to do their best work. That sounds simple. In practice, it's harder than any technical problem I've ever solved. It requires a leader to check their ego at the door, to stop treating people as interchangeable "resources," and to get genuinely curious about what's slowing the team down.

David Marquet framed this beautifully in his work on intent-based leadership: the shift from leader-follower to leader-leader changes not just decision-making speed — it changes who people believe they are at work. When people feel genuinely empowered, they stop waiting for permission and start solving problems. I've watched this transformation happen in real time, and it never gets old.

When everything is a priority, nothing is.

This might be the most consistent pattern I see in struggling organizations: the inability to focus. There's always one more initiative, one more stakeholder with a competing request, one more "urgent" ask that dilutes the team's energy and erodes trust in leadership.

Henrik Kniberg's work on flow and continuous delivery has shaped how I think about this. Teams don't need more capacity — they need fewer active work streams. Finishing things matters. Momentum is a product of completion, not busyness. When I've helped teams apply lean principles and genuinely commit to finishing before starting, the productivity shift is almost immediate. And more importantly, people feel it. The weight of perpetual incompletion lifts.

This is equally true in the AI product work I'm doing today at CTS Partners. Building ARIA — our agentic M&A intelligence platform — requires ruthless prioritization across dozens of competing scenarios and stakeholder needs. The teams that move fastest aren't the ones trying to do everything. They're the ones who are crystal clear on the next most important thing, and aligned enough to execute without constant check-ins.

"Momentum is a product of completion, not busyness."

OKRs are only as powerful as the trust underneath them.

I've seen OKRs save organizations and I've seen them become bureaucratic theater. The difference is almost never about the framework. It's about whether leadership is genuinely willing to let go of control and trust the team to own their outcomes.

Marty Cagan has been direct about this: the gap between empowered product teams and feature factories isn't a process gap — it's a trust gap. When leaders use OKRs to micromanage outputs rather than align on outcomes, the framework collapses under its own weight. But when teams have real ownership of their key results, and when leadership's job becomes removing blockers instead of assigning tasks? That's when the magic happens.

Teresa Torres adds another layer to this: continuous discovery keeps teams honest. It's not enough to set an objective and trust that you'll hit it. You have to stay close to the evidence — customer conversations, usage signals, real-world feedback — and be willing to update your approach when the data tells you to. This is the discipline that separates teams who deliver value from those who deliver features.

A story I carry with me.

One of the most meaningful moments in my career happened with a team that had been struggling for months — missed deadlines, frustrated stakeholders, low morale. When we sat together and got honest about what was actually getting in their way, the list wasn't shocking. Unclear priorities. Dependency bottlenecks. A culture where raising a problem felt career-limiting.

We didn't add resources. We removed barriers. We simplified the backlog. We gave the team a clear north star and got out of their way. Months later, they shipped something that genuinely exceeded what anyone thought was possible.

That experience lives in me. It's why I believe so deeply that leadership's highest calling is obstacle removal — not strategy decks, not status reports, not headcount management.

"Leadership's highest calling is obstacle removal."

The question I'll leave you with:

If you asked your team today what's slowing them down — not what they need more of, but what you could remove — what would they say?

That answer is your leadership agenda.

If this resonates, I'd love for you to watch the full conversation. Last year I sat down with Trisha Hall at Agility Insights for a deeper dive into these ideas — servant leadership, OKRs, cross-functional team design, and what transformation actually looks like from the inside. You can watch the full interview here: Illuminating Insights: Leah Jochim on Transformative Leadership

I'd love to hear what lands for you — or what questions it sparks.

Leah Clelland Jochim
Product & Engineering Leader | Convergence Technology Solutions (CTS Partners)
Leading product development for ARIA, an AI-powered M&A intelligence platform. Board member, Courage for Caregivers & Tri Delta.

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