Creating a Culture of Disruption to Foster Innovation with Lisa L. Levy

Join us as we talk to Lisa L. Levy, a disruption and innovation catalyst on the Seasons Leadership Podcast.
 
Show Notes:
Lisa shares our mission to make positive leadership the norm rather than the exception by leading by example. She shares how she knew how to be a good leader by following the mantra: “be the leader you want to be led by.”

A self-described control freak, Lisa shares how she learned to let go and foster a team culture where everyone could work together to get the job done. She reflects on her lessons learned from her personal leadership journey underscoring how true leadership is about more than a title on an organizational chart. 

We dive into Lisa’s journey to become a consultant – leaving her “dream job” because she was constantly running into a brick wall with no collaboration from other teams. She talks honestly about how she navigated that time and refined her leadership skills to support other leaders to build their self-reliance. She shares the one thing she asks all leaders – if they can step away for 30 days and not worry – and how that becomes a criterion of success for those she works with.

About Lisa: For over a quarter of a century, Lisa's experience has spanned diverse sectors, from healthcare and finance to government, navigating the complexities inherent in each. She holds professional certificates including Lean Six Sigma Master and Project Management Professional. In 2009, she started Lcubed Consulting. The firm's tailored approach fosters disruptive leadership, nurturing agility and driving businesses forward even amidst unforeseeable disruptions. Her book, "Future Proofing Cubed," encapsulates these insights, ensuring businesses are not only equipped for today but are resilient for tomorrow.

Resources:
The Preferred Disruption and Innovation Catalyst (lisallevy.com)
Future Proofing Cubed: The Definitive Guide to Improving Productivity, Refining Processes, and Bolstering Profitability: Levy, Lisa: 9798638377168: Amazon.com: Books
 
 
 

Join Debbie Collard and Susan Ireland, certified coaches and co-founders of Seasons Leadership, in making positive leadership the norm rather than the exception on Wednesdays on the Seasons Leadership Podcast. (Selected by Feedspot as one of the Top 15 Positive Leadership Podcasts on the web!)

And now you can join our community of values-based leaders on Seasons Leadership Patreon at Patreon.com/seasonsleadership. At our gold-level, unlock our exclusive Lessons in Leadership Column from our Resident Seasoned Leader David Spong, a lifetime member of the Board of the Malcom Baldrige Foundation and our Leadership Elements Series.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Hello and welcome to fall with the Seasons Leadership podcast, where we recognize the time in your leadership journey to integrate new insights and knowledge and to let go of what no longer serves you. Throughout the season, we will bring you actionable advice to improve your leadership and your life today. Thank you for joining me, debbie Collard and my co-host, susan Ireland. As certified leadership coaches and co-founders of Seasons Leadership, we share a vision to make excellent leadership the world-wide standard. Learn more at SeasonsLeadershipcom. Join us in making positive leadership the norm rather than the exception. By listening and engaging in the discussions that are featured on this podcast, you help us bring leadership excellence to the world.

Speaker 2: 0:45

Welcome today to our guest, lisa Levy, the preferred disruption and innovation catalyst For over a quarter of a century. Lisa's expertise has spanned diverse sectors, from healthcare and finance to government. Navigating the complexities inherent to each, lisa perceives patterns internal teams consistently failing to communicate technologies, false promise to fix flawed processes, and leaders feeling trapped within their creations. L-cubed Consulting is a testament to Lisa's commitment to aligning people, processes and technology. The firm's tailored approach fosters disruptive leadership, nurturing agility and driving businesses forward even through unforeseeable disruptions. Her book, future Proofing Cubed encapsulates these insights, ensuring businesses are not only equipped for today but are resilient for tomorrow. Perhaps the most potent testimonial to Lisa's influence is the autonomy she instills in leadership teams. By embedding self-reliance, she ensures businesses thrive even in her absence, breaking the typical consulting model and proving her role as the true catalyst for change.

Speaker 1: 2:11

Welcome to the season's leadership podcast, Lisa Levy.

Speaker 3: 2:17

Thank you both for inviting me to the conversation.

Speaker 1: 2:20

We're so glad to have this conversation with you today, and I'm going to dive right in with an open-ended question for you what does leadership mean to you, lisa?

Speaker 3: 2:33

Leadership is the choice in how we show up, and it is not a role that is a box on an org chart. It's how we show up, day in and day out, with integrity, with authenticity, with the desire to make an impact for our clients, for our customers, for our employees.

Speaker 1: 2:54

I love that you said it's not a box on an org chart, because so many people out there seem to think that's exactly what it is. I've arrived, I've made it, I am now this title at this level on the org chart. It's not about that. It's about exactly what you said and it's a responsibility that we have when we're in those positions to think about those types of things.

Speaker 3: 3:24

Absolutely the most effective leaders are people who may not even know that they're leading. They set a tone, they set a pace, they create an energy where people want to come around them, and so the team gets stronger and there's more momentum and things get done somewhat effortlessly, or at least we'd like to think that it appears that way. But yes, some of the best leaders I've ever seen would not be people who are sitting in the C-suite roles. They're out on the floor, out in the line, working day in and day out doing work by showing up as a leader.

Speaker 1: 4:04

And inspiring others. Inspiring others to do things they maybe otherwise wouldn't do, and so that's why you see leaders every place at all levels, and maybe not as often as they need to be in those C-suite levels.

Speaker 2: 4:21

Right, Lisa. I'm curious how did you learn your leadership lessons?

Speaker 3: 4:30

Oh, that's, that's the loaded question, because there are so many answers, so let me start with the one that makes the best conversation right. I learned by having a supervisor who did everything I never, ever, ever want to do, who had this philosophy and the philosophy is good, right, it comes from the book Good to Great. As a manager, as a leader, I give praise by looking out the window at everybody around me who made it all possible. And when things aren't going the way that they're supposed to be, I look in the mirror and reflect on it. Great wisdom, except Matt particular supervisor implemented it in the opposite direction. When everything went poorly, everybody is your fault and blame, and blame, and blame. And oh, when things are great, look at how glorious I am. And so that was my first real lesson of what I never wanted to be.

Speaker 1: 5:33

Yeah, there's a saying out there be the leader that you want to be led by right. And not enough people look at that, and so they do the opposite thing you've talked about, which is why Susan and I are on a mission to create more excellent leaders out there in the world and spread leadership excellence around, because there's too many mediocre or even bad leaders out there today.

Speaker 2: 6:02

Right, so what did you do differently?

Speaker 3: 6:06

So right at that time it coincided with my role actually being. I was taking and stepping into the role of a director of a project management office. I was building this team. It was new to the organization, I was young and I really had no idea what I was doing. So the first thing I did was find some really good people, smart people that were excelling in the roles that they were already in. They may or may not have been disciplined project managers at that point in their career, but they were really great people because even at that point I knew I could teach them how to do project management right. It's a skill Anybody can learn it.

Speaker 3: 6:48

And so we started building the team of the right people and that was great and that started a little bit of momentum and we had a right. So now there's a vibe, right. People wanted to be a part of it. They didn't know exactly why, but something was different, and so we started growing with that and that was really awesome. And then I had to really be aware of what I was doing and why I was doing things, because I'm going to be really honest with you both, I'm a little bit of a control freak, just a little bit, and so I have a natural tendency to want to micromanage. I will tell you what to do, I will tell you how to do it and I will tell you what will happen when you do the things I tell you how to do, because they will be perfect if you just do them the way I say.

Speaker 2: 7:35

Oh, so you're a perfectionist too.

Speaker 3: 7:38

Let's throw that right on in there right, so I'm a hot mess of a whole bunch of things that can make bad things happen. So by having that team of really great people around me, I also had a team of people who are willing to say hey, lisa, you're being a little overbearing. Hey, lisa, I have an idea. Will you listen to it before you tell me what's wrong with it? And I had to do a tremendous amount of learning on the fly because I had I'm some instinct, built a team of high performers who are really capable and very quickly made it obvious that I was not the smartest person in the room, and so that first experience let's own it. It was a little bit accidental, right? It was not necessarily because I truly understood and had learned or been taught what it is to be a great leader. I had a couple of good instincts and then, by following those, the team that I built, right, we all rose up so much higher, so much faster.

Speaker 1: 8:46

Well, it sounds like the team that you built, that was a great leadership instinct, that you listened to yourself, but then also it sounds like, if that became successful, that you actually, whatever you had to do, tone down the control freak smidgen that you have, or the perfectionist smidgen that you had, and actually listened to the team that you had put in place.

Speaker 3: 9:12

Well, right, and then we had to learn together, right. So there were things the team itself, we were working inside a financial institution, we were a team of project managers, so, okay, character traits that we all had in common, right, we're all like type A, get it done sort of personalities. Project management is about planning something out, doing the work and then moving on to the next thing. So, right, there's an energy that comes with that and maybe a little bit of adult ADD, because, right, we never do the same thing for very long. A project has a beginning and an end and next and we move on.

Speaker 3: 9:50

But there were lots of things in that space that we were seeing didn't work, and so we had to learn other things. Right, it wasn't just about being good project managers. We started to learn that we had to understand process and what other teams and how they ran their business, so that with the project work we did, we were actually helping them solve business problems and understanding what a good process is right. And so we went on this journey together of continuous learning, and the scope of what we were able to touch and influence just kept growing. Because we kept growing.

Speaker 3: 10:27

And that was a challenge that the team posed because if we hit a roadblock, they weren't you know the roadblock. They were unwilling to accept the stop right. So how do you go over it? How do you go through it? How do you go around it? And it really was an awesome time to start seeing that. You know, our box on the org chart said we do these three things. But as we learned to do three things around that and three things around that, we were delivering value in a way that we didn't plan for. Right it was. It was serendipitous, I guess.

Speaker 2: 11:10

So, as the leader of that team, I'm just wondering, you know, did you do it all by instinct, or how did you stay ahead of the team in that you were looking forward strategically to the next thing, to the next learning edge? You know, what resources did you have? Did you have a mentor? Did you you? Know, did you? You know how did, how did you know?

Speaker 3: 11:41

So let's, let's just take a couple of pieces of that. I did not have a mentor and put it in context, I was also about 30 years old and I didn't know that I was missing out by not having a mentor. Right, you don't know what you don't know, but I was also the only female at the management team level inside of an IT department inside of a financial services organization. So there was a tremendous amount of resistance that I was also facing, just sort of having and taking my space in that conversation, and there were absolutely so, right, that supervisor, who taught me all the things I never wanted to do, and then I had other lessons I learned from him, came in the form of you're here at the table with us, but when I want your input, I will have told you what I want you to say before. We're in a group setting, so I was really told to sit back, be pretty and not rock the boat. So in this whole journey, in this experience, right, I'm building a team and they are doing amazing things. My supervisor is taking all of the credit and I'm in the middle of this negotiating, keeping him at a distance because he will destroy our psyche and our everything that we have going on and keeping the team lifted and I'm kind of the tug of war rope in the middle between all of this and it was exhausting, but to feed the team and the results that they were driving for the organization right, learning and education became an important part of what we all did. So project management is a skill set. You can learn and get certifications and you can prove your capability and expertise.

Speaker 3: 13:35

The next part of that piece that we were playing with were processes, and so we started doing the formal training on what our process is. How do they work. So I had project management professionals, we started working on six Sigma, process certifications, right, and so building skills and capabilities, because we were watching patterns and there were things that we were seeing and we were tracking and starting to understand and what has become a foundation of my consulting practice this idea of you need to have the right people doing the right work, they have to be utilizing processes, and by that I mean it has to be written down and absolutely repeatable to call it a process, and then we can enable it with technology. So people plus process times, technology equals growth and scale, and we were building on that model. This really is almost 20 years ago 1820 years ago, that we were doing this work and it was setting the stage for things that were to come.

Speaker 3: 14:37

But it was that foundation with this really cool group of people with minds that were different than mine, with personalities that were complementary to one another but very much different. There were no two people alike on the team and, again, some of that was just luck and being in the right place at the right time that we had this really cool group of people. But as we're talking about it, and I stop and think about where they all are now, which is we've all gone in very different directions, we're all still doing some pretty impressive things, and I think that we had kind of a five year run together that set a foundation of what we all now know is possible, and we're out trying to reproduce it in our own unique and different ways.

Speaker 1: 15:23

Wow, that's an amazing story, and Camelot kind of comes to mind. The word Camelot comes to mind because when you think back on things that you've accomplished, you're in the thick of it at the time and you're not taking time necessarily to recognize wow, look at what we're doing, look at what we're accomplishing. But when you look back on it later it's wow, that was the perfect, the formula that you mentioned, the perfect people and processes, times, the technology that enabled us to get the results that we got and provided that foundation for you. It's just a fascinating thing to look back on, and I think we as people don't always take the time to do that. So kudos that you've taken the time for that reflection. I have another question for you, though. So if you think back, reflecting over all your leadership journey to the point where you are now, what would you just say is a defining moment in that journey for you?

Speaker 3: 16:35

So for me, that defining moment came in 2009. I was working at a startup. It was a rocket ship ready to take off go gangbusters. I'd been brought in to build the program management department for that organization, but, based on the success of the previous one we were just talking about, and it was truly my dream job I had money to fund and get the team that we wanted, with the toys and the technology, and that everything we wanted was at our disposal. And yet I broke down into tears almost every day driving to work because the environment was toxic for me. In 18 months that I was there, I reported to seven different C level executives. No, but I was there to build this team, to work cross functionally so that this company could grow and scale.

Speaker 3: 17:35

Well, I was watching hired gun C level executives build the best sales department that has ever existed, the best HR department, the best sales operation, the best marketing. And because they were all hired guns from coming coming from around the country, they would jet in, jet out. There was no collaboration. They built teams of consultants around them to build their walls reinforced. Their structure of this is what the best sales organization looks like, the best back office and I was supposed to make them all work across the function so that we could deliver results to the one word.

Speaker 3: 18:13

We very seldomly talked about our customers Exactly, and so I had, and I describe it sometimes as a in the parking lot.

Speaker 3: 18:26

We can call it a meltdown, we can call it a temper tantrum, we can call it a moment of euphoria and epiphany and I decided that I was done trying to offer the guidance that I was hired to do, to help them do what they asked me to help them do, and fight it every single day where it felt like I was pounding my head into a brick wall over and over and over again.

Speaker 3: 18:48

And I, in that moment in 2009, decided I was opening up a consulting firm and I was going to work with companies to do all of the things that I knew were possible but that actual consulting companies weren't doing well, and I was going to make take a swing at doing it differently. And yes, I'm going to say that again. In the midst of 2009, I left a job with a salary, with a 401k, with paid time off, a cushy corner office with glass, looking out on on the lake, and which, in Arizona, is unique to be able to say I'm looking out at a lake Right. I left it all behind because it didn't work for me.

Speaker 2: 19:28

Wow, that is brave.

Speaker 3: 19:32

Thank you.

Speaker 2: 19:35

And a little bit crazy, yeah, but but I'm looking behind you. You've got two books back there and a consulting business that has lasted. So you've, got a lot of webinars. Yes, so it was fueled, you Right.

Speaker 3: 19:51

It did and, like so many things on journey, right where I was and what I started doing then and what we're doing today that have navigated time.

Speaker 3: 20:03

But where we are today is very different and it really is about we're tying in.

Speaker 3: 20:10

The cornerstone of the work that we're doing now and into the next couple of years is really focusing on leadership and leadership teams.

Speaker 3: 20:19

But again, where are the leaders in the organizations? Because I firmly believe that traditional consulting organizations build a dependence on themselves to feed their profit margin and their run rates and have lost track of adding value to their clients and, ultimately, their clients' customers, because that's really the end that we're trying to influence when we're helping a business as a consultant. So we're doing more in the what I would call executive advising or coaching space to ensure that we're building self-reliant leaders, so that we're giving them skills and capabilities so that they can make decisions, that they can experiment and test outcomes to see what actually works. Not to be afraid of the word failure, because it's not a failure, it's a learning opportunity. We never get the exact results we expect when we conduct an experiment or when we take a product or service to market, but we have to be willing to take the calculated risks, to learn and to do that we have to feed and support the leaders throughout an organization to be empowered to do that.

Speaker 1: 21:35

Absolutely. That is so wonderful to hear. Well, first of all, having worked in, susan and I each spent 30 years in the Boeing company and we had lots of different consultant teams that came in and it was the flavor of the day I'm probably committing heresy by saying this of whatever was coming in, but it's so refreshing to hear a consulting firm talking about well, we have to see what is the best fit and that it's not going to work right the first time and not be afraid of that happening, taking those calculated risks as leaders. Lisa, I'm really curious about this. What do you find is the most frequent piece of advice that you give leaders? There has to be a theme on that, I would think. From all the things that I'm hearing from you, I guess the one piece of advice.

Speaker 3: 22:36

Maybe I would turn that around just a little bit into the one thing that I ask. The thing that I ask that I want to start with, and everything in my mind begins at the top. I really always start the conversation and the learning about a new environment at the top, at the tone at the top. My first question to that founder, business owner, ceo, president, whatever that title is that we're going to put there my first question is can you walk away from your business for 30 days and not worry about it?

Speaker 1: 23:08

I love that.

Speaker 3: 23:12

Great.

Speaker 3: 23:13

I've never had anybody say yes, and so that sets the tone for me of defining what success looks like.

Speaker 3: 23:24

And that means that at the very top of the business, that founder, owner, ceo, should be confident enough in the operations of that business that they would know that they could step away for 30 days, preferably for fun, but it could be for health, it could be for family, right, but 30 days they can walk away and the business will run successfully.

Speaker 3: 23:51

That's my number one criteria of success is getting that top, that visionary, that person who really should be focused on the future and what's coming and what they want to influence in that right space, by building underneath them a senior leadership team that is self-reliant to run their pieces of the business, who work together as a collective team, they challenge each other, they support each other, they test, they play with ideas, and that underneath each of those leaders, the teams that are underneath it, have people who are empowered to make decisions, who are going to drive forward in their area of subject matter knowledge, whatever it is that they need to do to push the business forward, with the mindset that everything they do, every moment of every day, should be delivering value to the customer, and if they do something that they consider to be worthless to the customer, they need to raise a flag and wave it big and loud and say, hey, we're wasting time, money and energy. We need to change.

Speaker 1: 24:57

I love that.

Speaker 2: 25:00

So at least we also like to give our listeners some actionable advice. So for leaders today like maybe it's somebody who is just starting to climb the leadership ladder what advice would you have for them to develop their leadership skills?

Speaker 3: 25:22

So read and learn and absorb information right. In this day and age, there is so much that we can consume in so many different ways. So always make that commitment that we're always learning, especially right. Some people consume an audible book, right, you listen to it at two times the speed and it just sort of you get information. You're not gonna retain that with a great depth, the way that you would if you had a highlighter and you're taking notes and you're doing all that, but it's feeding your brain and the reason that that's the most important thing that we can do is ideas are the most important commodity that we have inside of any business. And so this step, this idea of experimenting in all of these things, it is about being innovative, it's about being able to write. We've talked about playing and experimenting. Well, it's a three step process. It can be done at any level of the organization by anyone, as long as they have the safety to play a little bit.

Speaker 3: 26:25

First step generate ideas. Get a group of people together at lunch, over happy hour, during a time where you carve out to do ideation, and just start creating a list as big and broad of the topics of things that you could do. That would improve how you run the business. That would improve your product. That would improve your service. That would be a new product or a new service. Create a huge list of ideas. The bigger they are, the more silly they are. The more obnoxious they are, the better, because we wanna be creative about it. Some of these things are never gonna see the light of day, but as we joke about them and we laugh about them and we talk about them, they're gonna seed the thought for that next thing and maybe it's the thing after that. That is the game-changing idea. And so we have to have this list of ideas and we need to constantly have things going into the list. Then we need to take the list and say, okay, these 10 things are ridiculous, we're gonna leave them on the list, but we want them out there because they spur the creativity. But these three things are interesting. And those three interesting things is group of people 10 people, different functions, different roles right. We want lots of different perspectives. Sit around a conference room table or your Zoom box, right.

Speaker 3: 27:52

And what does it take to make this idea real? Design and create the prototype as a thought exercise, not investing time. We're not building a prototype. We're not doing anything, but we're conceptualizing what it would take to take it to market. Of those three ideas, two of them may have things that just prevent us from even considering taking them any further. But maybe there's one and maybe it's one this quarter and not one next quarter, but it's a really cool idea and you have an outline of what it would take to make it real.

Speaker 3: 28:24

Take it up the ladder, see if you can get some support and start having these conversations from the ground up. That's really where the best ideas come from. But again, I said earlier that it all starts with the tone at the top. So you have to have that safety across and down that says we can have the time to do these sorts of things. So we've got a list of ideas. We've played with some of them.

Speaker 3: 28:49

We have what I call conference room prototypes and then we have that one or two that we're gonna try and actually get some support for and with that you probably wanna take it and get some input from your clients, get some input from your customers. If you can do an ad hoc focus group, if you have a really robust marketing team that can help you do something that's a little broader in a survey or whatever, where you can get some real info, figure out if it's gonna work. I love taking those ideas to a client or a customer that we have let down in the past and testing this idea, because I understand, debbie, that the last time we worked together we didn't get the outcomes we were looking for. But in listening to you, we heard that these things might be interesting. And here's our new product or service that we think might be fill your needs better. What do you think, debbie? Would you sit down and have that conversation with me All day long? Right, yeah.

Speaker 1: 29:50

All day long I'm gonna have that conversation instead of you coming in and telling me here's what you need to do. You didn't do it right, so that's why it failed, blah, blah. I'd much rather have a conversation about it, absolutely.

Speaker 3: 30:05

No, and so that is. I call that running an innovation engine. It's something that we can do right. That is down and dirty. That is the simplest, most rudimentary way we can do that. There's all sorts of ways of maturing that through and especially in. You know, if we're really truly developing and doing research and development and taking products to market right, it gets so much more complex than that, but fundamentally at the root of it, that's the three step process that drives innovation in any business.

Speaker 2: 30:36

That's great, thank you.

Speaker 1: 30:38

Yes, yes, thank you, lisa. This has been so much fun having you on today and diving into these leadership topics and I see why you have received recognition that you have received as a leader. And if I could be so bold as to say, I don't know what that guy was thinking that told you to sit down, be quiet and just be pretty in the room. I don't know what he was thinking.

Speaker 2: 31:04

I agree.

Speaker 3: 31:06

There's so much that we can, just we can let that one be, but yeah.

Speaker 2: 31:11

We want to give you to a minute or so, lisa, to tell us, tell our listeners how do they get in touch with you. I see your books in the background. What else do you have to offer?

Speaker 3: 31:23

Absolutely so. One of the things and I love conversations like this and I host a podcast called Disrupt and Innovate. You can find it on YouTube, on all of the audio platforms and the landing pages, disrupt and innovatecom. But besides that, you can find me, lisa L Levy, on LinkedIn and the YouTube channel is L-Cubed Consulting, and if you want to learn more about our leadership team program, you can find that at LisaLLevycom.

Speaker 2: 31:54

That's great. Thank you very much. We appreciate your time and this was a great conversation.

Speaker 3: 32:01

Thank you for allowing me the time to join you.

Speaker 2: 32:04

Thank you, listeners, for joining us for the Seasons Leadership Podcast. We hope you take these words of excellence with you to help you strengthen the organizations and communities in which you live and work and join us in making excellent leadership the worldwide standard. We have many ways for you to read, listen and watch as we explore what it means to lead with excellence. You can subscribe to our free Newsletters, podcasts and YouTube channel. We also offer exclusive leadership resources through our Patreon Leadership Community. Visit Patreon P-A-T-R-E-O-N dot com. Slash Seasons Leadership to become a member and begin working toward your full leadership potential and support our mission of making excellent leadership the worldwide standard. Remember, no matter what level or role, you can become more than you are today. We would love to connect with you as we build our community of excellent leaders. Until next time, we're sending you positive vibes for integrating these new leadership insights into your leadership and life.