Here’s a question for you: where do you add value as a leader?
I often find myself thinking about leadership. It’s not a fixed idea — it keeps evolving with the work I happen to be doing at the time and what’s going on in my life.
For example, I see new professionals coming into the business who are smarter and quicker than I was at their stage. Then I see AI tools improving, sometimes overtaking tasks that used to keep whole teams busy.
So I ask myself: where do I add value?
It starts with the work
Part of the answer is in the work itself. Over the past few years, I’ve been fortunate to help develop our Dynamic Due Diligence platform (D3) and to run training like the Berlin workshop, where project leads from Manchester, Germany and Hong Kong came together for the first time to develop their common approach. Those experiences remind me that systems and shared methods matter as much as tools. Because a process that works in one hub only really adds maximum value when it spreads across the organisation.
It’s also how you think
Another part of the answer is less about doing and more about thinking. For example, I’ve learned that leadership is not the same as management. It sounds so much of a cliché, but I truly believe management is about getting tasks done while leadership is about enabling others. People focus rather than task focus. I still remember the moment in Berlin when colleagues I’d trained began running conversations better than I could myself. That wasn’t a failure, I realise — it was success for the organisation.
That prompts me to think about how some people describe organisations as families. I’m not sure about that. But I do know we learn leadership from our families as well. I’ve seen it as a parent: you can’t direct everything, but you can create the conditions for your children to grow. One thing is just sharing time with them when you can.
Which reminds me of sitting with my son watching Monsters University for the 92nd time. One line that hit me differently that day. Dean Hardscrabble it was (Helen Mirren, I think) who says something like ‘It’s not my job to make okay monsters mediocre. It’s my job to push good monsters to greatness.’ It was meant as a joke in the film, but I’ve come to see it as a serious principle. And I believe leadership, for me, really is about pushing the good to great — by creating systems and feedback loops where capable people can perform even better.
Do what’s necessary
And that triggers a memory of a conversation with one of my early mentors. She taught me that sometimes the best approach is simply: ‘do whatever’s necessary until someone says you can’t’.
So for me leadership has become a craft — a double strand of DNA running through my career. One strand is the work, the ‘doing’: due diligence, AI adoption, process improvement. The other is reflection, the ‘thinking’. What does this work mean for how I lead, how I enable others, and how the organisation evolves? The two are always intertwined.
Looking ahead, AI will continue to change the profession. New tools will emerge and new colleagues will arrive. The work itself will keep shifting. What won’t change is the need for me – and for all leaders – to continue to connect people, processes, and technology so that firms can take advantage of the change that’s ripping through the landscape instead of being frightened of it or held back by it.
Leading change, I’ve learned, is where real value lies.
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