Kim Leite

Background

About Kim Leite

I remember learning about the 5Ws back in grade school, when the teacher organized our class into groups, assigned each group a W and then instructed us to shout out each time our W was represented in the story she read aloud. At the time, I wouldn't have recognized what it was about this exercise that resonated with me, but I mean…organization? fun? loud noises? Oh my! Fast forward to my first big girl job and I learned how the 5Ws were used to professionally plan. Whether it was customer on-boarding, a large conference call, strategic off-sites, I was beginning to see how a good plan was organized. Using the 5Ws, you could group your questions; What are we trying to do? Why is this important? When are we doing it and how? Who is involved? Where will this take us? Now there were fancier words being used like "strategic" and fancier methods, but I recognized my old friends. I may have developed my planning chops under the influence of the greatest leaders I’ve ever worked for, but the truth is planning and I were always destined to meet. Obsessive organization, insatiable curiosity, results oriented, the will to win and a team-first player, I had innate characteristics that lent themselves well to the planning mindset. Thankfully, my mentors recognized this long before I did and put me in situations where I could learn how to apply these skills when formulating, executing and learning strategy. I failed more often than I succeeded in my early years - continuously getting caught in operational traps, dipping so low that I lost sight of the big picture and asking the wrong questions at the wrong time, but my leaders never gave up and neither did I. I honed the necessary skills to attain line of sight into strategic initiatives, learned how to assess operations without getting pulled in, so that I could uncover advanced knowledge of potential conflicts and gained the confidence to make recommendations on what was needed to achieve a strategy-supportive operation. I've been exposed to planning in a variety of environments; unprecedented growth, massive restructuring, hostile acquisitions, matrix structures, global operations, new ventures and most recently the public sector. Each environment introduces unique challenges, considerations and stakeholders that require leaders to adapt planning approaches but this I know for sure. If you strip it down to it's bare minimum, you are always trying to answer these questions…What are we trying to do? Why is this important? When are we doing it and how? Who is involved? Where will this take us?