Leading When the Old Playbook Stops Working

Introduction from Better Faster Further 

Since late 2023, the team at BFF has partnered with Brian Lomeli and the Customer & Support Services (CSS) organization at ServiceNow. While all of our transformation engagements are deeply meaningful, our work with CSS is marked as one of the most inspiring and ambitious transformation efforts we’ve had the pleasure to co-lead. Together, we worked to unlock trust across senior leaders, shift how teams collaborate cross-functionally, build up the next generation of leadership, and embed AI - not as a future concept - but as a daily operating reality. 

From legacy structures and the development of technical partnerships to the sheer velocity and pressure of change, the journey tested everyone involved. But what’s made this work different and rewarding, has been the steadfast commitment from CSS leaders at every level to evolve how they show up, how they lead, and how they build for what’s next. This article was sparked by our recent podcast conversation with Brian Lomeli, which captured the real-time lessons of this transformation. The reflections that follow are not theoretical, they’re lived, hard-earned insights from leaders reshaping the playbook in real time. 

Whether you’re leading transformation in a global organization or simply trying to navigate change within your own team, we believe there’s something here for you. We hope it sparks ideas, questions, and maybe even a few uncomfortable but necessary shifts. If this article resonates, we’d love to hear from you. Share your email with us on betterfasterfurther.com and we'll stay in touch.

Leading When the Old Playbook Stops Working 

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Five lessons in scaling leadership, rethinking support, and building durability at  speed 

By Brian Lomeli, SVP, Customer Support, ServiceNow 

When I stepped into this role, the operation was running well. 

We had smart, dedicated people, strong instincts, and a real sense of urgency. Yet we were still operating from a playbook built for an earlier stage of the business. One that rewarded speed and reaction over strategy and durability. 

Our model was designed to close cases, not solve problems at the source. We measured volume and velocity rather than outcomes or customer value. We spent more time firefighting than building systems. And when demand grew, our primary lever was hiring instead of becoming more efficient.

That approach powered us through years of rapid growth. It would not take us where we needed to go next. We were running, but we weren’t evolving. 

I’ve been with ServiceNow for 14 years. This is what I’ve learned about scaling with intention, systems thinking, building durability, and navigating transformation while you’re still in the  middle of it. This is not a polished case study. It’s an honest look at what it takes to lead differently when rules shift and expectations rise. The thoughts in this article are my own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer or organization. 

1. You Can’t Scale Transactional Leadership 

Support organizations are wired for speed. 

Respond quickly. Fix the issue. Move on. Repeat. 

That muscle matters. But left unchecked, it becomes a trap. 

When I stepped into this role, much of our leadership mindset was anchored in reactivity: SLAs,  escalations, throughput. We were getting a lot done, but we were not always scaling success.  Customers felt it. Too often, the experience was efficient but impersonal. Feedback told us the same story. Problems were being closed but not always resolved. 

Early on, while visiting one of our regional teams, I asked a simple question: What are we optimizing for? 

The answer came quickly. Speed. 

As I spent more time with the team, something stood out. Some of our highest-performing groups were staying on calls longer and seeing higher CSAT. They listened more deeply, understood the full context, and closed the loop with intention. That was a turning point for me. 

Transactional leadership can move fast. It does not move forward unless it is grounded in purpose. 

We began to shift the narrative. 

• From reactive to proactive. 
• From escalations to root cause. 
• From problem-solving to system-shaping. 

Along the way, we learned something counterintuitive: the fastest way to move an organization forward for good is to slow down long enough to train a new process, invest in a frontline leader, or re-architect a workflow. Those moments compound. Durable transformation isn’t  built on heroic effort. It’s built on intentional leadership.

Speed still matters, but it should be a byproduct of alignment rather than adrenaline. When teams understand not just what to do but why it matters, they move with a different level of ownership and confidence. 

That shift continues to shape how I lead. 

2. Employee Experience Is the Strategy 

Here’s a lesson I learned the hard way: Support organizations talk a lot about customer experience. As they should. But you cannot scale a great customer experience on top of a neglected employee one. 

I try to stay close to the work, both virtually and in person. During a recent rollout of new technology, I asked a frontline employee how it was going. Her response stopped me. 

“The technology is good, Brian, but it doesn’t reflect the complexity of our work. It would mean a lot if someone took the time to understand how we actually do our jobs.” 

That comment revealed a gap no dashboard, metric, or roadmap will ever show. 

We invest heavily in tools, process, and now AI. None of it works if the people doing the work feel unseen, misunderstood, or overwhelmed. That is why we’ve been deliberate about reshaping how we think about employee experience. AI, in particular, is not just about serving customers faster. It is about reducing friction and cognitive load for our technical support engineers. 

That means automating repetitive work. 

Surfacing the right information at the right moment. 

Giving managers real-time insight into team health, not just output. 

I cannot over-emphasize the importance of giving people career clarity. What does the path from engineer to leader look like? What skills matter at each stage? When those answers are vague, people disengage. When they are clear, people invest. 

People stay when they see a future. They perform when they feel supported. And they lead when they’re trusted with both responsibility and context. 

Employee experience is not an HR initiative. It is a leadership responsibility. And just like with our customers, clarity rather than speed is what ultimately drives trust, performance, and scale. 

3. You Can’t Set Vision Without Knowing Where You Are

One of the hardest shifts we’ve made is moving from survival mode to intentional vision. We also had to move from transactional execution to hospitality. 

When I first joined, I asked leaders across the organization to describe our vision. The answers were not wrong. They were not unified either. That lack of clarity showed up in how we operated and in how we showed up for customers. Without a shared vision, teams optimize for efficiency rather than experience. 

So, we paused. Not to slow execution, but to understand our current state, operationally and emotionally. 

We asked hard questions. 

• Where are our biggest pain points today? 
• Where are we over-engineered or under-resourced? 
• Where are leaders spending too much time in the weeds and not enough time shaping culture? 
• Where have transactions replaced hospitality? 

That diagnostic work mattered. People want to build the future, but only if they believe you understand their present. 

From there, we clarified a focused set of priorities. 

• Prevent and Self-serve. 
• Protect and Drive Revenue. 
• Increase Efficiency. 
• Elevate the Employee Experience. 

Just as important, we aligned on how we deliver. Technical excellence is table stakes. How we make customers feel when we interact with them matters just as much. Hospitality isn’t about being soft, it’s about being intentional in the moments that matter. 

4. AI Isn’t a Bolt-On. 

One of the biggest temptations in enterprise tech today is to bolt AI onto existing processes and call it innovation. We chose a different path. 

Before deploying AI, we asked ourselves what, exactly, we are trying to change. Not which use cases we could launch, but which outcomes truly matter for our customers, our employees, and  the business. 

That meant rethinking how work gets done.

• We mapped workflows end to end. 
• We identified where friction lives. 
• We asked employees what they wished they had more of or less of in their day-to-day work. Only then did AI start to make sense. 

We are deploying it in ways tightly connected to outcomes. AI-generated summaries reduce cognitive load. Leaders receive early signals on at-risk accounts. Customers are guided to smarter self-serve options before a ticket is ever submitted. 

The goal is not automation for its own sake. It’s better decisions, better experiences, and better use of human time. When you start with outcomes instead of use cases, AI stops being a novelty. 

Technology is only half the story. The other half is trust. 

AI is not about replacing people. It’s about augmenting them. Some roles will change. Some work will go away. Our responsibility as leaders is to reskill, redeploy, and elevate people toward more complex and creative problems. That requires transparency, not hype. 

Our AI journey is still in its early stages, and we haven’t realized all the outcomes we are shooting for. We are embarking on a reinvention of how we work. That process takes time and will involve a lot of learnings along the way.  

5. Durability Over Balance 

Support is intense. It’s always on, always customer-facing, and always absorbing urgency. Without intention, leadership becomes unsustainable. 

The traditional idea of work-life balance does not fully hold up in this environment. What we have embraced instead is durability. Sustainable rhythms that allow leaders and teams to perform over time. 

This is not about rigid boundaries. It’s about recovery being built into the system rather than treated as a reward. 

We have reinforced habits that support durability. Taking real PTO without guilt. Naming burnout early. Creating space not just for tasks, but for thinking and leadership. I believe high performance isn’t heroic effort. It’s consistency over time. 

This is something I have worked on personally. Exercise, diet, meditation, and journaling have helped me lead with more clarity and steadiness. One talk that stayed with me was Angela Duckworth’s TED talk on grit. It reframed success not as intensity in the moment, but consistency over time.

We want leaders who can go the distance. When leaders model sustainability, it gives teams permission to do the same. 

Final Word (For Now) 

We’re still in it. Still learning. Still evolving. 

The old playbook served its purpose. Real transformation requires writing new pages while the game is still being played. Leadership at this stage is not about having all the answers. It’s about being clear on what matters and staying intentional as conditions change. 

My role is not just to steer. It is to create the conditions for other leaders to emerge. Leaders who think systemically, lead with hospitality, reinvent with AI, and sustain themselves and their teams over time. 

These ideas are not checkboxes. They are commitments.