The 4 Levers Every Leader Can Pull Right Now
Forget the things you can't control. Every leader has exactly four levers that determine team performance. Pull the right ones.
2026-08-05
Early in my leadership career, I spent a lot of energy on things I couldn't control: organizational politics, budget decisions, executive priorities that shifted without warning. I was frustrated constantly, convinced that the results I wanted were being blocked by forces outside my influence.
Then I stopped. I asked a different question: what can I actually control?
The answer turned out to be exactly four things.
The 4 Levers
People. Process. Platform. Performance.
Every result a team produces flows through one of these four channels. Every problem a team has can be traced back to a weakness in one of them. And — this is the key insight — every single one of them is within the leader's direct influence.
Lever 1: People
The people on your team are the highest-leverage variable you have. Hiring well is the most important decision a leader makes. But hiring well isn't just about credentials — it's about character.
My standard: hire for heart over talent every time. Find someone good enough who is hungry and motivated to grow, and you'll outperform the brilliant person who stopped caring.
Beyond hiring, people management means developing the individuals already on your team. Creating SMEs. Identifying who's ready for a stretch assignment. Recognizing who needs a different kind of support. People management is active, not passive.
Lever 2: Process
Process is the architecture of how work gets done. Bad process doesn't just slow things down — it demoralizes people. It makes them feel like the organization is working against them.
When I inherited a team of 65 AEM developers coordinating across 20 product teams, the process was broken. Jira filters were useless. No one knew who was working on what. Publishing conflicts were constant.
I rebuilt the process. Advanced Jira filters. Clear ownership models. Explicit coordination protocols. The team didn't get more talented overnight — but the output quality increased measurably, and the stress level dropped.
Process is a lever. Pull it deliberately.
Lever 3: Platform
Your team needs the right tools. A great developer using the wrong platform is still producing less than they should. An excellent content team fighting their CMS is burning energy they should be putting into their work.
As a leader, your job is to advocate for the right platforms, configure them correctly, and train your team to use them at full capacity. When I attended Adobe Summit in 2023, I came back with an implementation that prevented publishing conflicts for 5,000 live pages. That was a platform lever — pulled correctly.
Lever 4: Performance
Performance isn't just output metrics — it's the quality of how work gets done. Did the team maintain their standards? Did they act with integrity? Did they honor the work environment they're trying to build?
I track performance not just numerically but behaviorally. Are people growing? Are they using what they've learned? Are they operating at a level that reflects their potential?
Four levers. They're all yours. The leaders who produce consistent, excellent results are the ones who pull all four — deliberately, regularly, and without waiting for permission.
You don't need more authority to lead. You need to use the leverage you already have.
Gray Hodge is a Fractional Chief AI Officer and full-stack engineer. He builds AI-powered platforms for small businesses and government contractors. Work with Gray →