How to Create Independent Leaders Inside Your Org with Sarah Levitt, Author, Speaker & Trusted Guide to the C-Suite
In this episode of Exploring Growth, host Lee Murray talks with Sarah Levitt about the critical shift from Founder to CEO. She offers practical frameworks for externalizing thinking and empowering teams to take initiative and operate independently. The conversation explores how proactive leadership and transparency drive high performance.
Have a guest recommendation, question, or just want to connect?
Go here: https://www.harvardmurray.com/exploring-growth-podcast
Connect on LinkedIn:
Lee – https://www.linkedin.com/in/leehmurray
Sarah – https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahlevitt/
Sarah Levitt
00:00:00
A founder is used to kind of not only being the captain of the ship, but overseeing everything and oftentimes having a finger in every pie, so to speak. And that fundamentally has to shift, frankly, whether they're a startup founder, an entrepreneurial founder, or or an executive inside a fortune 500 organization. When people level up, when leaders level up, and the playing field fundamentally changes, so the visibility gets greater, the spotlight is brighter and hotter, and the responsibility is greater because as an organization grows, more people are depending on that particular executive.
Lee Murray
00:00:44
For growth to happen, CEOs have to pull themselves out of the day to day management and be looking to build for the future. And this is much easier to do when you have a team of capable people who own their roles and are looking forward to. our topic today is focused around how you can create independent leaders inside of your organization. And my guests to walk us through it is Sarah Leavitt, author, speaker, and trusted guide to the C-suite.
Lee Murray
00:01:13
Welcome to the show, Sarah.
Sarah Levitt
00:01:15
Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Lee Murray
00:01:18
Me, too. I'm glad we got connected. And, And I think this is going to be a really good topic. I have some personal, experiences that I want to bring to the table, and I've seen a lot working with a lot of companies. you know, this is this is a very difficult topic for, CEOs and founders who started the company. And that had to transition to be a CEO. you know, keeping that in mind. So, you know, let's just kind of jump jump in to the topic. And actually, before we do that, I want to ask you a little bit about you and your background. Just kind of give us a quick, brief synopsis.
Sarah Levitt
00:01:56
So in a nutshell, I essentially work with people who run companies. So CEOs of small to medium sized businesses, typically 500 million and a billion and up, and then fortune 500 senior executives who run divisions and have personal responsibility.
Sarah Levitt
00:02:13
So I like to say that I work with people who are kind of running people and and a PNL.
Lee Murray
00:02:20
Oh, good. Yeah, I like.
Sarah Levitt
00:02:21
That and do a lot of work with not just the executives, you know, the executive leader, but also their team, because you can't really separate the two in terms of performance.
Lee Murray
00:02:33
Right? Okay. Well, this is going to be this is going to be good. So, like getting back into what I was saying at the beginning, when I intro a lot of founders, CEOs, they're building teams and they have trouble creating leaders who take ownership over their roles and really spur growth from that mindset. What can CEOs do to, you know, Fine. Cultivate, you know, to, to to put this in their organization.
Sarah Levitt
00:03:01
So let me actually don't mind let me back up to because I think there's a distinction between founder and CEO. So I, I've also, for the last decade plus coached in the MBA program at UNC Chapel Hill at Keenan Flagler Business School.
Sarah Levitt
00:03:18
And which is like playing in a sandbox for me. It's just. Yeah, yeah, it's just.
Lee Murray
00:03:25
A.
Sarah Levitt
00:03:25
Lot of fun. It's a ton of fun. but there is a distinction or I like to make a distinction between founders and CEOs. Now, some founders can move into kind of the ultimately the CEO role. In other words, initially a founder is a CEO. They're the captain of the ship. That's right. But as the organization grows, the skills and competencies that and I'm sure you you see this leave. But the skills and Competencies that are needed are different, some of them are overlapping and some of them are different. And so what you'll find is that. So I want to break that out first when when folks are making that transition that's the first issue is are they. Well first of all, do they want to do it because a lot of of founders love the ride. As a CEO once said to me, they love building, which is a very different mode than running.
Sarah Levitt
00:04:29
Does that make sense?
Lee Murray
00:04:31
Yes, totally.
Sarah Levitt
00:04:33
and so that's the first thing is actually do they want to make the transition. And then the second thing is oftentimes there is and we can move into this in just a bit. But a founder is used to kind of not only being the captain of the ship, but overseeing everything and oftentimes having a finger in every pie, so to speak. And that fundamentally has to shift frankly whether they're a startup founder, an entrepreneurial founder or an executive inside a fortune 500 organization. When people level up, when leaders level up and the playing field fundamentally changes, so the visibility gets, greater, the spotlight is brighter and hotter, and the responsibility is greater because as an organization grows, more people are depending on that particular executive. That's what I mean by the playing field shifting. And they they simply this is you know, what I've observed over and over and over again has to make the transition from kind of having a finger in every pie to having a finger on the pulse of the pies.
Sarah Levitt
00:05:43
Yeah. If pies have pulses, you.
Lee Murray
00:05:45
Know, they do.
Sarah Levitt
00:05:46
I'm, I'm mixing my metaphors here.
Lee Murray
00:05:48
But it's real.
Sarah Levitt
00:05:49
Right. But having, kind of having a finger on the pulse and having a team that is and what I call goes beyond, high performance to a self-correcting team. And I'm happy to talk to you about that. But that's essentially a team that can, for all intents and purposes, function pretty darn well without you. And I can I can talk.
Lee Murray
00:06:10
Almost like a mini CEO of a department or of a domain.
Sarah Levitt
00:06:14
As and as a unit. Right? So they're able to pivot, you know, they're kind of three thing. You know, they're able to pivot quickly. They're able to take in information and make decisions, but they're also able a self-correcting team is consistently able to go to their superior, whether that's the CEO or a senior executive leader. Let's say, you know, division president and say, we're in over our head. We need your guidance. So they're actually able to discern that as well.
Sarah Levitt
00:06:45
They're also incredibly highly accountable Because that's the other piece, is that as an organization grows. Whether it's a CEO or a senior executive. What can happen is so they need to kind of let go a bit, which is very difficult. You know, when people say, just delegate. I'm like, are you kidding me? Like, you know. And I actually developed a process for it. But because it's very difficult, they have to let go a little bit, but they have to trust that things will be executed in a timely and efficient manner. And that requires a kind of a bidirectional trust between team and and executive leader.
Lee Murray
00:07:28
Well, I like that you're making this distinction sort of out of the gate because, I think there are a lot of people who are in the weeds and they aren't just aren't aware enough to think about this distinction that founders who start companies are, entrepreneurial, typically, they're visionaries. They're they're forward thinking, they're builders, as you mentioned, and there's very few that I've seen that want to make the transition and, and do make the transition to SEO, and do it.
Lee Murray
00:08:01
Well, you know, I think that you have to have that, kind of, you know, you have to be very aware of your capabilities to know, do you want to make that transition and what's that going to look like for everyone involved? so I think that's that's very important. And there's, somewhere like, maybe it's like the 21 Laws of Irrefutable Leadership or some book that was written back in probably the 80s says something about the law of the lid. I don't know if you've ever heard that one, but it's essentially what you're saying that, you know, if you you can only go as far as you can go. And as long as you're aware of that, you allow people, you allow to step aside and raise people up, then you will not become a lid that people hit themselves against. that's that's.
Sarah Levitt
00:08:45
A metaphor.
Lee Murray
00:08:46
You know, sort of another way of saying being a bottleneck. but as you're, as you're sort of describing this, it makes me think that, you know, founders that are or even founders, CEOs that are listening.
Lee Murray
00:09:01
One thing to think about is you can only do or think as much as you can do or think, you know, but when you start putting these other, leaders in place over their own territory or domains, if you raise up good, forward thinking people, they are going to be able to do exponentially more than you can do as one person. So, that that's encouraging to me.
Sarah Levitt
00:09:26
And you need them to. Right? Because as the company, as the organization grows, you know, one of the, wonderful quotes that I always kind of remember, by a leader and a serial CEO, an entrepreneur. So someone who enjoys building companies and is quite good at it. Glenn Tolman, he's actually featured in my book and is now a friend. But one of the things that I remember from the very first time that I interviewed him was he said, one of the blessings of growth is that you have to learn to delegate real responsibility, like there is no other. To your point about the lid, there is no other option if the organization is going to grow.
Sarah Levitt
00:10:09
That's right. And as we were just saying, some people just want and there's no value to this. You know, some people just want the energy and the excitement of the starting. Yeah. And and the launching and the ideation. That's right. yeah. But there is no growth without that, without bringing a really exceptional team along with you because you just can't do it all yourself.
Lee Murray
00:10:38
So then what gets in the way.
Sarah Levitt
00:10:40
Of.
Lee Murray
00:10:41
How.
Lee Murray
00:10:42
Much time you got? guys. That's right.
Lee Murray
00:10:46
Tell me. Tell me what? Your penny for your thoughts.
Sarah Levitt
00:10:51
So, when I think of, you know, clients where I'm working with them to build self-correcting teams. So typically, so there are a few things. One is what I call controlled delegation, which is actually a process. It's not just like here, take the football and run. Right. But there's actually a process to it that is not happening. And the reason that's not happening can be multi-layered. But oftentimes a leader has attempted to delegate something without process behind it.
Sarah Levitt
00:11:29
The person, the team member who's taken on the responsibility doesn't have clarity. There isn't real, kind of explicit communication on the delegation and other. By that I mean timeline. Hurdles. Things that can impact when the leader needs to be like all of that stuff. Right. And so something goes off the rails. And what happens is the leader then holds the reins more tightly afterward. So I would say that's the first thing, is that there isn't a process in place for, making making delegation actually work for both for both team member and leader. And again, like that we could do a whole lot. We could do a whole conversation on that. Yeah.
Lee Murray
00:12:17
the other.
Sarah Levitt
00:12:18
Is that the leader because they are high achieving. You know, I've, I've never met a senior executive who isn't super high achieving, whether that's a CEO, right, or, or a senior executive. and they care a whole heck of a lot.
Lee Murray
00:12:33
That's right.
Sarah Levitt
00:12:34
Right. Like their name, of course. So their name is on it.
Sarah Levitt
00:12:37
Their reputation is on whatever initiative or initiatives or organization in the case of a CEO that they're leading. And so there is a tendency, a natural tendency to be two things, not only further in the weeds than they need to be. Again, that's connected to delegation. But also what I see as a pretty strong pattern among clients when we first start working together is that they're the central point of communication. So they're the hub. So if you can imagine, you know, spokes team members coming to them and you are. And the third thing would be you're unable to kind of function at the strategic level that you need to. And there are several things there. That's right. So kind of clear obstacles out of the way. Have a vision, pull people along and frankly meet your meet your objectives. So that's the first thing is am I getting sucked into the quicksand more often? And I'm than I need to be, and am I not being able to get to the stuff. So that's the first thing.
Sarah Levitt
00:13:39
The second thing is, if you're being pulled into the quicksand to I think this is where your question might be going. If you're continually being pulled into the quicksand and you're running on that treadmill, it will feel impossible to pause and step back. It'll feel a most derelict, actually. It'll feel impossible if not derelict, to pause, step back and say, okay, we need to reset. And that's often where I come in.
Lee Murray
00:14:10
I'm nice. Okay.
Sarah Levitt
00:14:13
Because. Because it is right. So we'll do. We might do an intensive offsite for, a day or two half days, and then we make a plan for the next six months and at the end of six months to nine months, certainly within a year. But much sooner than that, the team is functioning much better.
Lee Murray
00:14:34
Yeah, because I can see that a lot of, leaders are. They see the need. They see they're in pulled in. They they go through this process of raising someone up, and then that person just happens to not be qualified.
Lee Murray
00:14:47
They happen to not be the person for whatever reason. Now they're sucked back into it, but they're now have this higher level person that they're dealing with. so that could be miserable. Yeah. You know, because now you're doing your job and their job.
Sarah Levitt
00:15:01
Yes. And oftentimes when it's the CEO, it's again, it's kind of monitoring multiple people on a senior leadership team and being that point of not just communication but accountability. Yeah. which is not in the end, it's it's just not sustainable for how that CEO needs to actually function.
Lee Murray
00:15:20
Yeah. So let's switch it then. Let's say I recognize that this needs to happen, I delegate it, I, I, you know, I raise someone up and they are the right person. And it's it's a good, good path. Ron. what can CEO do to encourage the mentality of forward thinking and ownership and all of this with our team?
Sarah Levitt
00:15:42
So the first was that there kind of two pieces to this. The first is in terms of building a self-correcting team.
Sarah Levitt
00:15:49
And I would think of anticipatory initiative, which is what you're getting at. We're going to talk about that. these are kind of pieces that dovetail. Okay. You need your team in today's business climate. I mean, I was just listening to a global expert talking about the future of AI. And in the next 3 to 5 years, it is seriously going to change. Seriously going to change. Right. In ways that we're probably having a hard time fathoming. That's right. That's that's just one small example. But so in today's business climate to be competitive in your market, there is no other option but to have anticipatory initiative. And it can't just be the CEO or the senior executive. It has to be the. It has to be the team. So the first thing is to build a self-correcting team around you that's highly accountable. And that's no small thing. So that's the first thing building a self-correcting team. One of the precepts is having a highly accountable, highly responsible senior leadership team. The next thing is to kind of inculcate or expect, and this is key to have the expectation, because I often see this is kind of a missing piece to have the expectation of anticipatory initiative.
Sarah Levitt
00:17:11
And so let me talk about kind of what that is. In a nutshell, it means that your team members, your senior, you and your team. And by the way, let me back up for just a second. CEOs are naturally anticipatory. It's almost like breathing.
Lee Murray
00:17:30
Yeah, that's what they're trying to continue in that same vein. That's what they're.
Sarah Levitt
00:17:34
Trying to be. They couldn't be. What? Doing. And a senior executive running in division. Right. Can't do what they you can't be the captain of the ship without being anticipatory. The problem is not with that. It's that their other their team needs to be doing the same thing. They can't be the the business climate and world is too difficult. There are too many challenges for one person to be the only one looking down the road. Does that make sense? So the first thing is to kind of set the expectation that everyone needs to be in kind of leading from the for if that, if that makes sense. Leading from the front three precepts that I kind of think of as part of anticipatory initiative.
Sarah Levitt
00:18:18
The first is curiosity. And that's probably the most important. Okay. So true curiosity. And I'm going to kind of give you a case study that I work with clients on when we do this and kind of deep dive way. But true curiosity about internal and external factors, what is currently going on and what can inhibit what might be coming down the road. And I can give you some specific examples, but the first is curiosity, the second is monitoring. If you talk to any CEO, they are monitoring far more than just the requisite KPIs. I mean, frankly, they have eyes in the back of their head. One of my clients said their head is on a swivel. Yeah, right. Yeah, that's a great way to describe it.
Lee Murray
00:19:04
That's right. That's what it feels like too.
Sarah Levitt
00:19:05
But. Right. It does. But that's not enough for just the CEO. The team needs to be kind of thinking in a 360 degree manner. So curiosity, are we doing things the most efficiently? Are there different practices? What's our competition doing? What's happening in the industry? I mean, I have a whole list what's going on across industry, right? What are the best practices that we might adopt? ET cetera.
Sarah Levitt
00:19:30
ET cetera. ET cetera. Okay, so curiosity monitoring. And then, probably the most important is having the expectation that people will be looking down the road and not just running on the treadmill. So there's kind of three precepts to that anticipatory initiative. And one of the case studies that's very recent. I mean, I can give you all kinds of examples. China, in terms of when we look at the globe, is probably one of the most adept countries at anticipatory initiative. They are looking down the road, if you look at what they're doing in terms of EV battery production, for example. Yeah, they're looking down the road. Okay. On the home front, we've just had these horrific and destructive fires in Los Angeles. There was a and this is in the Wall Street Journal. You can go look it up. Anyone listening to this can go look it up. But it's a wonderful case study. I use it with clients now in anticipatory initiative and kind of leading from the floor. There was a whole article on the Getty Museum in Los Angeles which has a priceless art collection.
Sarah Levitt
00:20:45
So long story short, what was happening was everything around the Getty was destroyed. They have two campuses. Okay. When the fires came, they got to within six feet of one of the buildings, but no further. And the article details not only the measures that were put in place in an anticipatory fashion. So it's not that they tried to prevent the fire. This is a key distinction. Yeah, right. It's not that they tried to prevent the fire because that's something you can't control in any real way. So if you think of that in a business context, there are lots of market factors.
Lee Murray
00:21:30
For external threats.
Sarah Levitt
00:21:30
That you cannot control, right? But they anticipated the prospect of a fire. And therefore from that anticipation they did all kinds of things. I mean down to the way the structures were built, where the art was housed, what employees were doing, the technology they used to monitor the fire extinguishers, protocols, everything, everything. So it's and this is key. It wasn't about prevention.
Sarah Levitt
00:22:01
It was about anticipation because when by the time there is a problem at your front door in the business world and you're playing catch up, you're already behind the eight ball. Right.
Lee Murray
00:22:19
By the way, you're reacting, right? Instead of following protocol that was built out of anticipation.
Sarah Levitt
00:22:26
Instead of anticipating and. Yeah. And interesting or. Mitigating it so it kind of foresight and mitigation. Let me just quickly. Yeah. Yeah it's always going to be less costly than playing catch up.
Lee Murray
00:22:39
Yes.
Sarah Levitt
00:22:40
Always.
Lee Murray
00:22:41
I it's interesting though, I can see a, I see a connection between curiosity and anticipation because I think that. You know, some of you I can see this. I'm just thinking about it in my work, like, what can go wrong? And if you go through your tools, if you go through your, you know, your process and you start to be curious about the negatives that can't, you know, the problems that could arise, you will you will find places, you know, where you can fill a gap or plug potentially a hole.
Lee Murray
00:23:19
and curiosity is going to make you look outside of your sphere. So you're going to be looking at the world with that lens of risk mitigation. when you when you're thinking that way even and sometimes when you're not thinking that way, a truly curious person's always curious, always taking in information and, you know, parsing it. So that makes a lot of sense to me. I think the hard part is the expectation part. Setting expectations. because if you set the expectation to be anticipatory, that's I think where I would have the most trouble is, is, is sort of like committing to letting myself commit to are my leaders going to actually come through and be anticipatory, and then not be let down, you know, when it actually doesn't occur?
Sarah Levitt
00:24:14
Well, right. Yes. So in practical terms, there has to be a clear expectation. So oftentimes what will happen is that expectation is shortcut. Because what happens is again CEO is naturally anticipatory. They couldn't be a CEO without it. It's frankly like breathing to them.
Sarah Levitt
00:24:30
That's right. Senior executives who are responsible for PNL. Because if you don't look down the road, you get into trouble. So by the fact that it is natural to them, it can often feel like it should come naturally to others. And when it doesn't, they think others oftentimes are not capable of it. And again, they pull back and they take on more of it themselves. But in.
Lee Murray
00:24:53
This.
Sarah Levitt
00:24:54
Sense, in today's business climate, as we've been talking about, it takes more than one person being anticipatory. So the first thing is to set the expectation in what it actually means. And a number of people, they'll think a leader will think, oh, XYZ, my CEO, for example, I'll make this up, is not capable of it, but they haven't set the expectation and they haven't externalized their thinking. sinking. This is key. So let me break this down kind of in very practical terms. Okay. I'm thinking of a particular client. A CEO whose CEO was, really struggling to anticipate.
Sarah Levitt
00:25:34
And one of the first things I did when I was talking to the CEO was I said, share what you are thinking. And I have a whole kind of framework on this because it's got to be practical and applicable. But what are you thinking? In other words, what are you monitoring? What are the patterns? What are the trends? Again, someone who's anticipatory in their initiative and leadership is going to do this almost like breathing to someone who's learning. It will not feel as natural. So you kind of need a template for it. So yeah. What are you monitoring? What are you curious about? Frankly, what are you reading? Who do you talk to in the industry? What patterns catch your attention and why? So why are these particular things, the things that you are monitoring and curious about as opposed to these other things? Could be any it could be any number of things, could be your competition. It could, it could be any number of things. But the so by externalizing your thinking, I what I mean by that is make transparent to the person that you have the expectation of.
Sarah Levitt
00:26:39
Make transparent what you're thinking and why. And oftentimes you'll find that a CEO is monitoring particular patterns could be a region and what the revenue is doing. And that CEO is going to notice the dip in revenue before anybody else. And they're going to be watching that pattern. Yeah. But they're also going to be monitoring the factors that are leading to that dip in revenue, for example. Sure. Right. Yeah. Because often there is a cascade effect.
Lee Murray
00:27:08
Right.
Sarah Levitt
00:27:10
so the first thing is kind of externalizing your thinking is having the expectation, externalizing your thinking and then getting agreement by your, let's say, your chief of staff, your chief operating officer, your entire senior leadership team that they're in on this and that they want to learn how to anticipate with you. Yeah, I love that. And in stride with you. And then you have to build an accountability. And what I do is senior leadership teams is often do the notice and naming thing, which is at first just bring your senior leadership team together to have a safe.
Sarah Levitt
00:27:51
And by that I mean it feels comfortable for everyone to share their observations. There's no judgment. It's this is what a no blame. It's this is what I'm noticing. Just the practice of this is what I'm noticing in a cohort of other senior leaders on your team will be of benefit. And then what are proposed solutions. So I'll give you I'll give you a very practical example. So I'm working with a senior financial official and a fortune 500 company that was due to be promoted to CFO. And when I arrived, his team was functioning suboptimal, let's just say. So much so that when they had to deliver the book annually. Yeah. My client was essentially out of pocket to his family for 3 to 5 weeks. He was on the treadmill exercising at the office at 11:00 at night. He was bringing a change of clothes, and executives who were caught in the weeds in quicksand will know exactly what I'm talking about. Yep. what I suggested was that he bring his team together once a week.
Sarah Levitt
00:29:09
Not for readouts of progress reports, but to come with the expectation of what's going well. He looked at me like I had three heads. He's like Sarah. There's very little going. Well, I'm having to fix the mistakes all the time. Yeah. What's going well? What they're noticing is not going well. And this is key what their proposed solutions are. And then I suggested that they come up with a team experiment. Small. I'm a huge proponent of small experiments because you learn as you go. and they did this and they did it for six weeks. Long story short, he stopped looking at me like I had three heads. And I said, look, I'm a big proponent of experiments with my clients. If it doesn't work, let's chuck it after a few weeks. Like there's nothing that's etched in stone here, right? and the inefficiencies and the mistakes were rooted out, but they were rooted out by the team itself, not by some external consultant coming in to tell them what to do.
Sarah Levitt
00:30:12
Not by their boss. Who was my client. And what began happening was they developed their own best practices and thinking and anticipatory initiative and leadership. They began thinking for themselves. He, I call it exercising their muscles of contribution. So rather than him stepping in to be the stopgap measure and the safety net every time, which is totally understandable when you're under a deadline, right? He took the gamble and he said, let's try this experiment. And when he turned in the book, the CEO of the company and by the way, nobody knew about this except myself and the client and his team. Co came to him and said, I don't know what you did this year or what changed, but you were more efficient with fewer errors than I've ever seen you. He changed the way his team behaved and how they were accountable.
Lee Murray
00:31:06
Yeah. That's amazing.
Lee Murray
00:31:09
I love that.
Lee Murray
00:31:09
And it's such a simple model of reporting essentially wins problems and solutions. And I love it because first of all, it's simple.
Lee Murray
00:31:19
And, you know, simplicity is is always a good start. And the sort of reporting or bringing forward the solutions that they propose to, the problems that they see or the insights they might have is going to show him everything. It's going to show the leader. Is this person able to think forward thinking or be anticipatory? Because if they if they can't come up with solutions to their own problems that are that are measured or valuable, then therein lies the problem. And if they do, then it's that's great. Now that's a starting point for that conversation to be fruitful.
Sarah Levitt
00:32:02
And when it's happening on a team, because again, if I'm working with a senior executive and their senior leadership team, which is what I'm often doing. It does a couple of other things to me. It sets the sets, the expectation. It changes the culture of the team so that it's okay to show up and say, I'm. And oftentimes people don't have language for this. So that's some of what I'm doing as well as adding language.
Sarah Levitt
00:32:25
Right. So I'm wondering about or I'm curious about or I'm concerned about. Right. There's no blaming there. There's no finger pointing. It's simply using curiosity to say, we're not doing such a great job of this. How can we do it? How can we do it differently? And it builds a different expectation and culture and frankly, accountability on the team.
Lee Murray
00:32:47
That's so interesting. It's like you're putting curiosity at the middle, in the middle hub of the conversation. Because originally I was thinking of curiosity as thinking out and anticipatory forward, which it is, but you're also using it as a mechanism to look inward and almost, you know, as a mechanism for accountability. I love that. I mean, because you're you're you're essentially saying, I'm curious about what's going to come and think about how to mitigate risk and, and move forward. But I'm also curious about what we're doing and how it's going.
Sarah Levitt
00:33:21
How are we doing this and when there is a problem. What are the number of ways in which we might solve it? Right.
Sarah Levitt
00:33:31
I mean curiosity, if I think of kind of anticipatory initiative and leadership as being kind of made up of, you know, curiosity and monitoring and the expectation of kind of thinking that way. I would say curiosity is the most important because it, it governs the other two. Like without curiosity. I don't know that you can be anticipatory in a successful way.
Lee Murray
00:33:59
Yes.
Sarah Levitt
00:33:59
In a successful.
Lee Murray
00:34:00
Way. Agreed.
Sarah Levitt
00:34:01
Right. So simply, you know, in the case I just gave you, they were having tremendous errors entering numbers. and they got curious about that. Like, why was that happening and what could they do to change it? Right. So that there wasn't all the remedial work of having to go back and and fix it later.
Lee Murray
00:34:24
That's really interesting. there's one other concept we talked about on our pre call that I wanted to get to before we, we wrap up here. And this is the idea of building a self-correcting team. You mentioned it earlier or alluded to it. and it's this idea of moving from high performance to self-correcting.
Lee Murray
00:34:42
I'm I'm really curious. No pun intended.
Sarah Levitt
00:34:45
You're really curious. Great. Yeah. So I used to think my thinking has changed on this in the last, oh, I'd say 7 to 8 years. So I used to think that the standard of performance for a leadership team was high performance. and what I began to see, frankly, through work with clients was that it wasn't sufficient. What my clients, all senior leaders need is a team that can essentially function very well. without the, not entirely, but very well without them. Because the converse, what I was seeing was CEOs were being, called into the sandbox to referee, or they were spending time, as I just described, with the senior financial official, they were spending time, doing remedial work or as I talked about earlier, being the hub of communication, all of which pulled them out of what they need to be doing as the captain of the ship. And so a self-correcting team can essentially, taken in. I mean, there are lots of but I'll do the abbreviated version here, like.
Lee Murray
00:35:53
Yeah.
Lee Murray
00:35:53
Yeah. Sure. Please.
Sarah Levitt
00:35:55
Because I do a lot of work on this, but I'll do the abbreviated version. They are able to be flexible. so they can take in information and pivot accordingly and in a timely manner. They're highly accountable and they're cohesive. So the senior leader or the CEO is not playing referee in the sandbox. This team is accountable not just to the leader but to themselves and one another. And oftentimes cross-functionally we haven't even gotten there yet, because a big part of anticipatory initiative and leadership is being able to coordinate, cross-functionally and anticipate together. Right. Yeah. Sales and R&D might be I can give you how many examples of those might be a perfect example.
Lee Murray
00:36:39
Yeah. Right.
Sarah Levitt
00:36:41
and they need to be, highly flexible and have the knowledge. The combined knowledge doesn't have to sit with one person, but have the combined knowledge on the team to be able to take in new information and course correct, if necessary. Or, as we were talking about earlier. Raise their hand.
Sarah Levitt
00:37:02
Go to there. I mean, I have a client right now. We've done some significant work over the last two years where their team, they were always the hub of communication and direction for their team. And when we started working together, they said, this is a sustainable for me. I can't be focusing on the stuff I need to be focusing on, right? I'm playing too much, and now their team is to the point where the team functions on significant issues and initiatives outside of their leader, and they come to the leader, my client, and they say, this is what we've come up with. That's a very different kind of very different and responsibility.
Lee Murray
00:37:45
Yeah, that's that's the place you want to be.
Sarah Levitt
00:37:48
Right. And that's a self-correcting team. And again, they have to have the enough kind of competence and competences on the team to know when they need to raise their hand and go to their leader and say, we want to run this by you. We're stuck.
Lee Murray
00:38:07
Yeah.
Lee Murray
00:38:07
It's such an interesting balance of knowing when to reach out to leaders, to leadership for assistance and not, you know, handling the problem themselves, which is what leadership wants, but also leaning on leadership when it's needed.
Lee Murray
00:38:25
and that takes a I think I keep coming back to this idea of awareness, like self-awareness individually but collectively as a team. being aware of their abilities and capacity and, you know, where they are and where they're going. All of this at one time, in order to be a self-correcting team.
Sarah Levitt
00:38:46
And also I want to say, and this goes back to delegation and setting expectation. Also, you know, when I'm working with clients on a process I call control delegation, we are Explicit about expectation and guardrails and guidelines. So a senior leadership team without guardrails and guidelines or any any kind of working relationship without guardrails and guidelines, by that I mean, what are the things I need to be notified of? What are our deadlines and what are the red flags or the red lights? When it looks like the train is going to be coming off the tracks, what are those markers that I have to be notified of well, in advance of that ever happening, because without that made explicit, it's unfair to expect of the team that they will know when to raise their hand.
Lee Murray
00:39:39
That's right.
Sarah Levitt
00:39:40
Does that make sense?
Lee Murray
00:39:41
It does. Yeah.
Sarah Levitt
00:39:43
So it's it's key. And again this is why kind of these are interlocking pieces of control delegation building a self-correcting team. And developing and grooming leaders and leadership teams to be anticipatory and have anticipatory initiative. You can't. They're interlocking puzzle pieces.
Lee Murray
00:40:09
Yeah.
Lee Murray
00:40:10
Yeah. This is awesome. I there's so much value here. I appreciate you coming on and talking about this. I mean, it seems like we could probably spend the next two days unraveling all of these.
Sarah Levitt
00:40:21
Each of these pieces.
Lee Murray
00:40:22
Yeah. I mean, because it really is a puzzle that we're putting together here. but but thank you so much for your knowledge and insights and wisdom of, you know, working with your clients and and giving that to us. I appreciate that.
Sarah Levitt
00:40:35
Thank you for having me. It's been fun.
Lee Murray
00:40:38
Yeah. So I'm sure people are going to want to reach out and get in touch with you. So where can we send them?
Sarah Levitt
00:40:43
So best place is my website which is Sarah Hyphen levitt.com.
Lee Murray
00:40:49
Perfect. Love it. We'll have to have you back.
Sarah Levitt
00:40:53
Thanks for having me. Lee.