Leading With Energy, Not Just Process – Why the 5E Framework Became My North Star
Stephen H. Whitehead, Ed.D., is the founder of 5th Hammer Innovation and a higher education and business leader with 20+ years of experience. He helps organizations unlock clarity, creativity, and sustainable growth through design thinking, human-centered leadership, and strategic transformation.
In my early leadership years, I thought my job was to manage. To set rules, monitor compliance, and ensure we hit KPIs. I believed leadership was mostly about control. But somewhere between reams of process documents and countless meetings, something changed. I started to see that what I was really managing was energy, not tasks.
That shift didn’t come in a lightning bolt. It came in moments, small moments of friction, humor, failure, and conversation. Over time, those moments shaped what I now call the 5E Service Culture Framework. And in this post, I want to walk you through how I lived each E in the trenches, not just as theory, but as daily leadership practice.
The moment that changed everything
Early in one role, we’d just rolled out a new internal approval process. It was designed to standardize, to reduce errors, to “control variance.” Weeks in, I was getting buried in escalation emails, “Why is this document taking three days to get signed?” “Who’s blocking my project?” “Do I need to fill out another form to talk to someone?” The whole team felt thwarted.
One afternoon, I walked into the break room and saw someone staring at the printer, shaking their head. I grabbed a coffee, leaned over, and asked, “Printer giving you grief again?” They launched into a five-minute rant about red tape, about approvals, about how some sign-off was held up by someone out of town. I listened (yes, without trying to solve). When they paused, I said, “Okay, I’ll fix that. Let me take down that roadblock.” And I did.
That’s when it clicked. Part of leadership is being the one who removes the speed bumps. That’s the first E. Eliminate friction. And the others followed, shaped in real time.
The 5Es as leadership lived
1. Eliminate friction
I made it my personal mission to hunt for the red tape, to find what was slowing people down, and knock it down. Sometimes it was a useless form, sometimes an unclear approval chain, sometimes a legacy policy nobody questioned. Whenever a team member said, “I can’t do X because of Y,” I leaned in. I asked, “Okay, who’s blocking this? Let me talk to them.” I believed that if people weren’t stuck, they’d move with speed and clarity.
2. Entertain always
Yes, “entertain” and I don’t mean circus acts in the office (though I’d never rule them out). When morale dipped, because it always does, I tried to inject levity. Random jokes in meetings. Midweek memes in Slack. Quick “fun breaks” (bad pun competitions, mini dance breaks, you name it). Laughter isn’t a distraction from work, it’s the social glue that helps teams lean in. If people aren’t smiling somewhere in the day, something’s wrong.
3. Empower action
I wanted people to act, not always to wait for someone else to decide. When someone proposed an idea, I’d ask, “What do you need to try it?” Then I’d give them resources, encouragement, runway. And if it failed, I stood in front of them, not behind them. “You tried. It didn’t work. Let’s learn.” Over time, people took more ownership. They didn’t wait for me to approve every little thing, they knew I had their back.
4. Engage deeply
Culture doesn’t live in all-hands slides. It lives in hallways, over coffee, in the “How’s life?” conversations. I scheduled lunches, 1:1s, office walks, and random check-ins. I asked about kids, hobbies, and weekend plans. I learned what drives each person, what drains them, and what scares them. And I showed up. (Yes, I made mistakes.) But people knew they were known, not just numbers on a chart.
5. Experiment constantly
If I wanted my team to innovate, I had to model curiosity and risk. So, I tried things, new meeting formats, pilot projects, and flipped processes. I didn’t wait for perfect data. I started small, measured, and iterated. Sometimes it bombed. Sometimes it sparked something new. But the message was clear, safe-to-fail experimentation is part of the job.
When it all clicked
A few years later, I read Jesse Cole’s Fans First, his playbook for how the Savannah Bananas built a baseball circus that people can’t stop talking about. As I turned the pages, it hit me that these were the same five principles I’d been living by for years. Eliminate friction. Entertain always. Empower action. Engage deeply. Experiment constantly. Jesse had simply taken them to a stadium scale.
That book didn’t just validate the framework, it confirmed the power of leading through energy, not process. The Bananas perform with the same intent I tried to lead with. Make work feel like play, and people will give their best.
From my leadership to the 5E framework
Over time, those lived lessons crystallized into a pattern. I saw how each E fed the others:
When you eliminate friction, people feel freer to engage deeply and experiment.
When you entertain always, you build psychological safety, which encourages empowering action.
When you empower action and engage deeply, small ideas flow.
And when you experiment constantly, you surface what works and drop what doesn’t.
At 5th Hammer Innovation, we took those lessons and codified them into the 5E Service Culture Framework, a system that helps organizations serve like Chick-fil-A and play like the Savannah Bananas. Because culture isn’t built by process. It’s built by energy.
Why the 5E matters (especially now):
In chaos, process collapses. Energy holds.
In growth, culture dilutes. The 5E anchors it.
In hybrid work, friction multiplies. Intentional energy becomes your differentiator.
Your leadership reflection (homework if you dare)
Pick one of the 5Es that feels under-lived in your world. Ask yourself, "What’s one thing I can do tomorrow to bring that E alive?"
Try it. Observe. Iterate.
Because culture doesn’t evolve through mandates, it evolves through micro-experiments, laughter, and leaders who care enough to remove the barriers and add the spark.
What would your workplace look like if you led with energy instead of process? Do that. Tell me what happens. And if you want help building your own 5E Service Culture, well, that’s literally what we do.
Read more from Stephen Whitehead
Stephen Whitehead, Founder of 5th Hammer Innovation
Stephen H. Whitehead, Ed.D., is the founder of 5th Hammer Innovation, where he guides organizations to embrace creativity, clarity, and lasting impact through design thinking and human-centered leadership. With more than 20 years of experience in higher education and organizational transformation, he has helped leaders across industries reimagine culture, strategy, and innovation. A former associate provost and national practice leader, he is also a keynote speaker and facilitator recognized for building environments where people and ideas thrive. His mission is to help leaders cut through the noise, unlock hidden talent, and design sustainable solutions that matter.
