I have witnessed the impact that a fully embedded, values-driven culture has on company performance. After two years of advancing performance and building culture at Valimail, the metrics were clear: By aggressively and systematically addressing the factors limiting our employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS), we achieved unprecedented gains in company growth and diversity, with significant reductions in employee turnover. 

While the KPIs were impressive, these outcome metrics actually masked the most important takeaway for any company embarking on a similar journey—the change in our leadership. I am not referring to changing roles, but the deeply personal change that must take place within executives to move beyond the incremental and build something truly new.  

What changed?

When asked to identify the most pivotal inflection points that made this level of transformation possible, a consistent theme emerged among the executive team: the importance of personal development in accelerating organizational change—effectively putting the “I” in change. 

The takeaways from this exercise were distilled down to four essential principles that can help any leader speed up a company transformation: 

• Start by reframing the question. When faced with an operational challenge, a common instinct is to take a process-oriented approach to determine what needs to change. Evaluating what may be broken or revising a problematic process is a great first step. According to this leader group, however, the real magic in organizational change happened when the conversation shifted from what needs to change, to how I need to change. Similar to team sports, playing to win requires individuals to constantly evaluate their own actions and style against the team’s needs. 

• Know when being right is not enough. In the tech and engineering world, being right is part of the job. Building solutions for customers ultimately requires accuracy and precision. Being right as an individual, however, is not enough to build market-changing solutions on a larger scale. To lead an organization to meet tomorrow’s needs, being right is just a starting point. Rather than beginning with the answer and a set of directives, these executives found power in leading with a problem and a framework. Allowing their team to generate an answer, they guided and facilitated collaboration and built organizational muscle along the way.  

• Begin with data, but don’t end with it. The power of data is a well established key tool for managing through a long list of competing priorities with limited resources, especially for a high-growth organization. Focusing on a unified set of KPIs was an important part of this leadership team’s synchronization, but according to them, not the most impactful. The individual and collective work of going through the whole cycle—from data to insight to action—is what unleashed an entirely new level of performance. The data informed, but it took courage and leadership to get underneath the data, dispel misconceptions, identify true root causes, and make bold new choices. 

• Recognize the discomfort of growth. Much has been written about the necessary discomfort that comes with true growth, from fitness in the gym to leadership in the boardroom. Working at the speed of business, especially for a market innovator, will present multiple sources of periodic discomfort. Our leaders found breakthrough moments when they were able to distinguish between the discomfort that stalled them and discomfort that ignited them. Making this distinction requires introspection and humility levels that are not instinctual for most, but is precisely needed to elevate personal and organizational performance. 

The concept of transformational leadership isn’t new, but inspiring and building it in a rapidly evolving business climate is a significant challenge. Change initiatives fail when the leaders appointed to drive change only point outward, without participating in the process themselves. The “what” of change might serve as a North Star, but the “I” in change will always be the best compass. With both in place, new performance levels will take hold for individuals and for organizations.  

Elaine Mak is chief people and performance officer at Valimail.