The Part of Leadership Work I Used to Find Boring

Dear reader, 

It is a pleasure to introduce Mélanie Huser, who has recently joined SUM. Mélanie brings an unusual background to our work: she started her professional life as a physician in emergency medicine before moving into facilitation, coaching, conflict mediation and organizational transformation. 

Perhaps that is part of what makes her perspective distinctive: she combines calm under pressure with a sharp sense for people, patterns and systems. 

In the reflection below, Mélanie writes about her journey towards SUM and her discovery of the IT dimension in our IT–WE–I framework. I am slightly embarrassed by how generously she writes about me — but much more pleased by how clearly her story belongs in the SUM space. 

Enjoy reading, 
Ekki 

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The Part of Leadership Work I Used to Find Boring 
And what joining SUM taught me about the “IT” in transformation 

For 1.5 years, I’ve been flying solo. 

Officially, I was - and still am - a solopreneur. And in the first year, very much a person who wanted to prove something. Mostly to myself. 

Could I build my own practice? Would clients come? And would they come back? Could I create work that felt meaningful, deep, and impactful without the brand and safety of an organization around me? 

And to my deep relief, the answer was yes. 

I found wonderful clients. I was trusted with meaningful work. I got to design things I cared about. I had freedom, responsibility, and enough moments where I thought: So this is what independence can feel like. 
 
I am genuinely grateful for that year. It gave me more trust in myself, and in the ecosystem around me: in clients who take a chance, relationships that open doors, and shared spaces where good work can grow. Because there is no such thing as a purely individual success story. Whatever we become is shaped by the systems we are part of, the people who support and challenge us, and the opportunities that allow us to grow. 
 
But the year also showed me something else: I missed being in it with others. Shared ownership. Shared excitement. Shared doubt. Not just clients to serve, but people to build with. 
 
I had learned that I could fly solo. 
But somewhere underneath the confidence, a quieter question started to appear: 
Do I actually want to build this alone? 

And then, as the universe sometimes does, it waved a fence post in my direction. 

More concretely: Ekki Kuppel. 

A heavyweight in the Swiss consulting scene — the kind people describe, slightly annoyingly, as: “probably the best in Switzerland.” 

We were working with the same client. He at board level, me with the management team. Then came the opportunity: a vision workshop with both the board and the management team in the room. 

Ekki asked whether I would co-facilitate with him. 

I was thrilled. And slightly suspicious. 

Because, as far as I knew, big names often like big stages. And not necessarily the “co-” part of co-facilitation. 

My suspicion was not entirely wrong. And yet, neither was my excitement. 

What I witnessed was one of the most skilled facilitators I had ever met. Sharp, precise, uncomfortably fast in seeing what mattered. As an ex-McKinsey partner and CEO of 10 years, he had a kind of strategic brain I do not encounter every day. His questions landed. His inputs cut through noise. 

He also knew exactly what he wanted. And one of the things he wanted, apparently, was me on his team. 

Which was inconvenient. Because I had only just learned to fly solo. 

So our collaboration started loosely. A workshop here, a conversation there. I joined him in beautiful places, often in the Swiss mountains, watching him create space for the conversations that actually matter. 

And I was impressed. 

Especially by the IT. The business logic. The strategic clarity. The content. The ability to look at a complex system and ask exactly the question that makes everyone sit up a little straighter. 

I was less impressed by the WE and the I. Which is not as arrogant as it sounds. Or maybe it is, a little.  

But WE and I were my home terrain. Culture. Conflict. Trust. Leadership. Self-awareness. The human side of transformation. The ability to read a room, sense what is not being said, create depth without losing lightness, and help people discover something about themselves, each other, and the system they are part of. 

This was not just what I liked. It was where I knew I could create real value. 

 In fact, for years, that is how I defined my work: I help organizations with the WE and the I — and I trust that the client knows the IT. 

After all, they know their business better than I do. 

At SUM, however, this neat division started to crumble. 

Because the more I watched the work, the more I began to see: 

The IT is often where the avoidance hides. 

The frame we use at SUM is beautifully simple: 

IT – WE – I 

IT is about the business: strategy, purpose, value creation — the work we are here to do. 

WE is about collaboration: how we work together, serve employees, clients, stakeholders. The way we disagree, decide, trust, challenge and repair. 

I is about self-leadership: how each person shows up, takes responsibility, regulates themselves, speaks truth, avoids, performs, withdraws or leads. 

For a while, I liked the triangle. 

But mostly the WE and I angles. 

The IT angle? I understood it intellectually. I could see why it mattered. I just found it less… enchanting. 

Less alive. Less mine. Also, dare I say it: slightly less fun. 

Ekki did his best to convert me. His absolute love for the triangle, and his persistent enthusiasm for the importance of all three dimensions, did have some impact. 

But what really made it click came from another place: Peter Hawkins. 

In Leadership Team Coaching in Practice, Hawkins makes a point that landed strongly with me: work with individuals or teams is not an end in itself. It should help them contribute more effectively to their organization, their stakeholders and the wider world. 

That sentence stayed with me. 

Because of course the WE and the I matter. Of course trust matters. Of course psychological safety, self-awareness, conflict capacity and leadership culture matter. 

But not as beautiful ends in themselves. 

I am not trying to turn leadership teams into self-aware gurus. 

I am not trying to make them best friends. 

I am not even trying to make them “feel better” in the room, although that sometimes happens. 

What I am really trying to do is help them have more impact. 

On the people they lead. 
On the customers they serve. 
On the ecosystem they are part of. 
And yes — also on the business results they are accountable for. 

Which led to a slightly uncomfortable thought: 

Had I spent eight years slightly misunderstanding my own job description? 

Wonderful. Very humbling. 

Because suddenly, integrating the IT did not feel like an optional add-on. It felt logical. Necessary. Even ethical. 

And also somewhat scary. I do not have a business degree. I have never worked as a strategy consultant. I am not ex-McKinsey. I come from emergency medicine, coaching, conflict mediation and culture work. 

So my self-esteem moved from “flying high solo” to “welcome back to middle ground, please fasten your seatbelt.” 

But maybe that is the point. 

Maybe growth often feels like discovering that your strength is real — and still has room to expand.

Maybe my work was never “the human side of transformation”. Maybe that phrase was always too small. 

Because the human side is not separate from the business side. Culture is not separate from strategy. The conversation is not separate from the decision. The inner stance of a leader is not separate from the impact of the organization. 

The real work begins when IT, WE and I are held together. 

If we work only on the IT, transformation becomes mechanical. 

If we work only on the WE, it can become warm, harmonious — and vague. 

If we work only on the I, it can become deep, reflective — and disconnected from the system. 

But when all three come into the room, something changes. 

That is when the triangle stops being a model. 

It becomes a discipline. 

Because the IT is where reality enters the room. 
It is where trade-offs become visible, where vague intentions meet hard choices, and where the truth of a system starts to reveal itself. 

And, annoyingly, the IT becomes interesting. Maybe even beautiful. 

Over time, the collaboration with SUM intensified. Moving closer to SUM began to feel less like giving up my independence, and more like expanding the work. 

Yes, because of the triangle. Because IT–WE–I gives language to something I had sensed but not fully held. 

But even more because of the people. 

People who are excited about the work itself. Who care about the quality of a question, the elegance of a workshop design, the courage in a room, the beauty of a place, and the impact on a client system. 

People with whom I can think sharper, laugh harder, design better — and build something I could not build alone. 

Maybe this, too, is part of the work: noticing that good work does not emerge from individual brilliance alone. It emerges from the conditions around us: the relationships that stretch us, the structures that orient us, the tensions that sharpen us, and the shared purpose that pulls us beyond ourselves. 

So maybe the story is not that I stopped flying solo. 

Maybe the story is that I learned I can fly — and chose to fly in formation. 

And with that, I’d like to leave you with a few questions: 

1. In which relationships or spaces do you think sharper, act braver, or create better work? 
2. What are you able to do alone, but no longer want to do alone?
3. What tension in your work is currently being treated as a collaboration issue (WE), when it may actually be an unresolved question of strategy, priorities or decision-making (IT)?

Warmly, 

Mélanie Huser