In a world where leadership roles demand both technical acuity and emotional intelligence, the shift from managing tasks to holding a system together can be daunting. Leadership, as Carlos Schultz, CEO of Catalysis, emphasizes, is not about being the expert or the motivator. It is about practice – everyday intentional actions that create conditions for people to thrive and systems to improve.
In this transformative conversation with Carlos Schultz, we explore his journey from an industrial engineer to a transformational leader in healthcare, and eventually to the CEO of a mission-driven organization. His reflections offer a profound understanding of how to lead change, build systems that sustain improvement, and navigate the inherent challenges of leadership growth.
The Shift in Responsibility: From Doing to Leading the System
Moving Beyond the "Hero Leader" Myth
One of the most striking lessons Carlos shares is the necessity of moving away from the traditional view of leadership as heroism. In many organizations, leaders are celebrated for being problem-solvers who step in and "fix things." However, as responsibility grows, leaders need to shift their focus from solving problems to creating the conditions for others to solve problems.
Leadership, in Carlos’s view, is about stimulating, grounding, and modeling change through consistent practice. This requires humility and a willingness to admit what you don’t yet know – a mindset Carlos embraced as he transitioned into roles requiring broader influence over entire systems.
"Leadership is not about having all the answers. It’s about creating the conditions for learning, experimenting, and growth."
Understanding the Whole System
Transformation at scale is not achieved by focusing solely on results but by holding the entire system together. This includes aligning people, priorities, and consequences. Carlos highlights the importance of assessing an organization’s starting point before diving into improvement initiatives. Without a clear understanding of the current state – how processes, behaviors, and rewards are interconnected – efforts to transform culture or operations often falter.
Carlos’s early experiences in healthcare underscored this point. Leading change across 11 hospitals, each with its own "micro-culture", required balancing strategic direction with the flexibility to adapt to local needs. Leaders in complex systems, he explains, must find ways to align overarching goals while respecting the unique dynamics of individual teams or sites.
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Leading Through Coaching, Not Commanding
Repositioning Continuous Improvement Teams
One of the pivotal decisions Carlos made as a leader was redefining the role of his organization’s continuous improvement (CI) team. Rather than technical doers, these teams were repositioned as coaches and facilitators. Their mission was not to execute improvement themselves but to help leaders build the capability to own and sustain their work.
This pivot required significant investment in developing the CI team’s coaching and relational skills. Carlos describes a deliberate effort to train team members in the principles of respect, humility, and systemic thinking, as well as practical coaching techniques. By practicing internally and creating standard work for coaching cycles, the CI team became trusted partners to operational leaders.
"We shifted from being technical experts to being the coaches who enable leaders to practice new skills, experiment, and grow."
Cultivating Psychological Safety for Leaders
One of the keys to success in building transformational change, Carlos notes, is creating psychological safety for leaders. Transitioning from a directive leadership style to one grounded in coaching can be deeply unsettling for leaders accustomed to being the expert. It often challenges their sense of identity and value.
Carlos and his team tackled this challenge by fostering an environment where failure was permitted and expected. Leaders were encouraged to experiment, learn from mistakes, and share their experiences openly. This openness, coupled with consistent support from coaches, helped build trust and a willingness to embrace vulnerability.
The Operational Perspective: Lessons from the Frontlines
When Carlos stepped into an operational leadership role, he gained a new appreciation for the challenges faced by those managing day-to-day operations. This experience highlighted two critical areas for transformational leaders to consider:
1. Start With Empathy: Understand the Realities of Operations
As an influence leader, it’s easy to assume you understand operational challenges, especially if you’ve facilitated process mapping or improvement events. However, Carlos learned the value of walking the gemba – observing work firsthand and listening to both staff and patients.
This not only revealed inefficiencies in processes but also uncovered the emotional and practical realities of the work. For example, understanding staff and patient expectations often surfaced gaps in what leadership assumed was respectful or effective communication.
2. Balance Resources and Creativity
A common refrain in healthcare operations is the need for more resources. Yet, Carlos discovered that many resource challenges stemmed from inefficiencies that could be addressed through better systems and processes. By involving staff in problem-solving and making these inefficiencies visible, teams often found creative solutions without requiring additional resources.
Transformation as a Growth Practice
Simplifying Transformation
As CEO of Catalysis, Carlos now works to help healthcare organizations achieve sustainable change. His approach emphasizes simplicity. Leaders often view transformation as a large, intimidating endeavor, but Carlos reframes it as a series of small, intentional steps that build momentum and maturity.
"Leadership is about what you decide to do every single day. Behavior precedes culture."
Transformation, he explains, doesn’t require massive investments in technology or sweeping overnight changes. Instead, it starts with defining simple, repeatable leadership practices – such as structured daily huddles or standard processes for surfacing problems. The key is to create systems that hardwire these behaviors, making progress sustainable even during leadership transitions.
Avoiding the Pitfalls of Skipped Maturity
A major risk in transformation is skipping maturity. Carlos cautions against rushing to outcomes without first building the foundational leadership behaviors and systems needed to sustain them. For leaders, this means being intentional about creating and nurturing the environment for change – not just demanding results.
Key Takeaways
- Leadership is a Daily Practice: Transformation is not about being the expert but consistently practicing behaviors that create the conditions for improvement.
- Start With Where You Are: Assess your organization’s current state – behaviors, systems, and culture – before defining where you want to go.
- Reposition CI Teams as Coaches: Shift continuous improvement teams from technical doers to coaches who empower leaders to own and sustain their work.
- Build Psychological Safety: Create an environment where leaders feel safe to experiment, fail, and learn.
- Understand the System: Spend time observing work, listening to staff and patients, and understanding the whole system.
- Simplify Transformation: Focus on small, intentional steps that build leadership maturity and sustainable systems.
- Avoid Skipping Maturity: Transformation fails when leaders rush to outcomes without first building the foundational systems and behaviors needed for sustainability.
Closing Thoughts
Carlos Schultz’s leadership journey underscores a profound truth: Transformation is not a destination but a practice. It requires humility, curiosity, and a relentless commitment to learning. Whether you’re a CEO, a continuous improvement professional, or an operational leader, the challenge – and opportunity – is to make leadership personal. Start with small, deliberate steps, and let them ripple outward to create lasting change.
By embracing leadership as practice, we not only strengthen the systems around us but also grow the people within them – ourselves included.
Source: "Leadership Is Practice: Lead Transformation as Responsibility Grows with Carlos Scholz" – Katie Anderson – Leadership Consultant & Speaker, YouTube, Feb 18, 2026 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kEwyIxOAm0