“We gave you a seed

But you made it grow.

You tended the soil,

You trusted it so…”

— Shel Silverstein, The Gardener

In Silverstein’s poem, there’s no applause. No spotlight. Just a quiet act of trust and care. That image of someone tending a seed with no guarantee of bloom has stayed with me.

Because some of the most enduring leadership I’ve seen isn’t loud or dramatic. It’s soil work. Infrastructure work. The kind that happens beneath the surface, where systems take root and grow—long after the leader is gone. 

This kind of leadership isn’t built on visibility. It’s built on discipline. The discipline to invest time in things that won’t show results tomorrow. The discipline to design not just for efficiency, but for continuity. To focus not only on impact—but on inheritance.

It’s easy to get caught in the urgency of short-cycle leadership. But sustainability starts with how we prepare the ground.

Soil That Holds—Systems That Scale

Every leader knows the pressure to deliver fast—tight timelines, strategic initiatives, major transformation milestones—all needed yesterday. I’ve spent a lot of my career in that pace. Led large transformation programs. Designed and led rapid implementations. But the work that lasts—truly lasts—isn’t about velocity. It’s about soil.

Soil, in leadership terms, is the system underneath the surface. It’s the operational layer that holds everything else in place: your workflows, governance, routines, rituals. And when that soil is healthy—when it’s structured intentionally and nourished consistently—it allows everything above it to thrive, even when the original gardener moves on.

Last year, we developed a new workflow management tool and reporting suite for our global teams. At face value, it was a way to streamline work and reduce cost and manual tracking. But the deeper value was in what it made possible.

By centralizing reporting and giving us both a 1,000-foot global view and a ground-floor perspective on individual contributors, we were able to see performance patterns we hadn’t seen before. It changed the way we coached. It revealed bottlenecks early. It helped us shift from reactive triage to proactive support.

And it endured—because the soil wasn’t just present. It was prepared, structured, and strong. Clear inputs, intelligent automation, and embedded visibility meant the system worked even when the day-to-day changed.

Watering the Work—Cadence as a Leadership Practice

In any garden, growth requires rhythm. Not just planting once, but returning to water, to nourish, to adjust. That’s what cadence does in a high-functioning team.

Cadence is your watering practice. It’s your check-ins, retrospectives, performance touchpoints, quality reviews. Not performance theater—but purposeful reinforcement. When done well, cadence creates stability. It builds memory into the system.

I’ve seen the power of this in multiple programs. But most clearly when I supported a European client with a regulatory process they had never handled before. Their landscape was disjointed: disparate systems, no internal precedent, copious data sources, and a regulatory clock ticking.

I spent weeks on-site—not rushing to deliverables, but understanding. Mapping data architecture. Surfacing strategic priorities. Listening to the story behind their complexity. We guided them not only through compliance—but through capacity-building. Designed a delivery model that made sense for their reality: clear roles, efficient handoffs, embedded feedback loops, and scalable documentation.

And just as important, We gave them rhythm—templates, automations, and consistent review loops that created sustainable flow. Guidance rituals that supported learning. A cadence that let their new process breathe and evolve, without collapsing back into chaos.

When our engagement ended, they weren’t just operational. They were confident. That rhythm had taken hold. And the garden was theirs.

Root Systems—Culture That Anchors 

Roots don’t get attention—but they determine everything. In organizations, roots are culture. They’re how values get enacted, how feedback flows, how trust is built. And when culture is rooted in strong systems and consistent cadence, it doesn’t require constant intervention. It stabilizes and spreads.

When we stood up the Canada Delivery Center, we weren’t just expanding capacity. We were building a delivery ecosystem from scratch: governance structures, onboarding paths, quality systems, and leadership development that would set the tone for years to come.

It wasn’t the speed of the stand-up that mattered most. It was the clarity of the root structure. Roles were defined. Feedback was embedded. Leadership expectations weren’t just named—they were demonstrated consistently, setting the tone from the top. And because of that foundation, the center grew—not just in size, but in strength.

That’s the kind of leadership that becomes invisible by design. It’s not about control. It’s about what continues when you’re no longer the one tending it.

Soil Testing – Diagnosing and Tending the System

Healthy growth doesn’t start with planting. It starts with testing the soil.

Before I build a system, I start by understanding the environment it has to grow in. That means asking the hard questions: What’s already in place? What’s thriving? What’s eroding trust, slowing progress, or masking performance gaps?

Sometimes it’s a light check-in—like repotting a plant when the roots outgrow the container. Other times, it’s more like tilling compacted ground: uncovering legacy processes that are misaligned, redundant, or no longer scalable. Either way, tending starts with testing the soil.

That might include:

• Process mapping to uncover friction points or shadow work

• KPI reviews to distinguish activity from meaningful outcomes

• Leadership interviews to surface misalignments in ownership or decision rights

• Workflow audits to evaluate role clarity and automation potential

• Feedback loops to gather real user experience from frontline teams

And just as important as the front-end diagnostic is the back-end health check—a way to track whether the system is actually working. Post-implementation, I build in:

• Baseline comparisons to understand before-and-after impact

• Cycle time improvements to measure efficiency gains across key workflows

• Team-level adoption rates to assess uptake and identify coaching needs

• Coaching and feedback loops to evaluate how well leaders are reinforcing the new system

• Exception trend analysis to uncover recurring breakdowns or deviations

• Throughput and capacity tracking to ensure teams aren’t overloaded as demand shifts

• Time-to-competency for new hires to verify onboarding effectiveness

• Quality assurance patterns to detect drift or blind spots in execution

• Cross-functional handoff audits to reduce delays, confusion, and rework

• Tool utilization metrics to validate whether automation is adding value

• Process adherence vs. adaptability to assess whether your system can flex with context

Great systems don’t just function at launch—they adapt and hold under pressure. And that only happens when you keep testing the soil. And when the soil is right, performance isn’t forced. It takes root.

Pruning for Strength and Sustainability

Even the best-built systems need shaping over time. In gardening, pruning isn’t about removing growth—it’s about refining it. Cutting back what’s overgrown. Redirecting energy toward what’s thriving. In leadership, pruning shows up in how we evolve our systems to stay aligned with shifting needs.

As teams grow and environments change, even the strongest models can become cluttered—like a plant with too many leaves competing for sunlight. What once was clean and efficient can get crowded with added steps, new exceptions, or well-meaning adjustments. That’s why I regularly reassess: to identify where complexity has crept in and to clear space for what matters most.

In one case, we streamlined a quality review process that had expanded beyond its original scope. Another time, we handed off oversight to the delivery teams themselves—enabling real-time course correction instead of layered escalation. These weren’t signs the systems failed. They were signs the systems worked—and matured to the point they could evolve.

That’s the discipline: trusting what you planted, but not clinging to it—because growth demands space to evolve. Pruning ensures your system doesn’t just survive change—it adapts and grows stronger because of it.

Sunlight and Strategy: Illuminating What Matters

In any thriving garden, sunlight determines what grows. It brings focus, clarity, and direction—just like strategy does in transformation. Sunlight doesn’t do the growing, but without it, even the best soil and strongest roots falter. That’s how I think about the connection between systems and outcomes: strategy is the light that guides what we build, how we scale it, and why it matters.

For me, transformation isn’t just about designing elegant systems—it’s about ensuring they produce meaningful, measurable results.

That means anchoring every framework, process, and cadence to something tangible: adoption rates, efficiency gains, stakeholder alignment, ROI, and sustainability milestones. It means building systems that give leaders visibility—from the 1000-foot view to the individual contributor level—so they can coach in context, adjust with purpose, and lead more effectively. 

The reporting and workflow suite we developed last year did exactly that. We reduced manual reporting hours by over 70%, eliminated redundant trackers, and gave leaders a unified view of global operations—high-level performance patterns and on-the-ground metrics, all in one place. The system didn’t just track output. It changed behavior. It sharpened coaching. It accelerated decisions and enabled faster pivots when conditions shifted.

And for our European client navigating a complex regulatory requirement, the strategy wasn’t just about building a solution—it was about transferring capability. After weeks on-site mapping systems, identifying risks, and designing a fit-for-purpose model, we left them with more than a process. We left them with ownership. A system they understood, could operate independently, and knew how to grow. That’s sunlight in action: a clear strategic intent that turns complexity into clarity—and clarity into progress.

The Leadership Lens

Gardeners don’t grow the plants. They create the conditions. And as leaders, that’s our work too.

Our job is to prepare the soil—our systems. To water with care—our cadence. And to anchor roots—our culture.

This isn’t passive leadership. It’s disciplined, intentional, infrastructure-driven leadership. It’s building ecosystems others can grow in—long after you’re gone.

Your Turn 

Where in your leadership are you still focused on the leaves—when the soil needs attention?

What cadence needs reinforcement to keep the work growing?

And what root systems—cultural or operational—need to be protected or replanted?

Because the most transformative leaders don’t just lead people.

They shape the environments where growth becomes inevitable.

When you lead like a gardener, your legacy isn’t what you built—it’s what others continue to grow.