Episode 6
Leadership Is Service. Management Is Execution.
with Haseeb Rana
In this episode of Making Cents with Charlie, host Charlie Liu sits down with Haseeb Rana, Professional Services Manager at MCC and a practitioner of both EPM delivery and community leadership. Haseeb has spent years inside finance transformation projects and volunteers as an advisor to Seeds of Leadership, a program developing the next generation of community leaders in Hamilton.
The conversation covers what it actually means to lead versus manage, why empathy is a business skill and not just a soft one, how clean data is the real foundation of every successful implementation, and what community service taught Haseeb about intention, purpose, and getting out of your own way.
Monday, April 6, 2026
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Making Cents with Charlie
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Leadership Is Service. Management Is Execution.
The "Two-Cent" Advice
"Empathy is the glue that holds relationships together. It doesn't matter whether you're talking about a team, a client, a family, or a community. The leaders who last are the ones who can actually see what someone else is carrying and still hold the team accountable. That's not soft. That's the job."
— Haseeb Rana
Episode Key Takeaways
1. Leadership is the why. Management is the how.
Leadership is about inspiring people toward a shared purpose. Management is about ensuring the execution actually happens. Both matter, and confusing the two is where most new managers get stuck. The goal is to pull people forward while also pushing the work forward.
2. Empathy is a muscle, not a mood.
Understanding where each person on your team is strong, what they need to grow, and how to create space for both is not a feel-good exercise. It's how you blend skills effectively, hit objectives, and build a team that doesn't fall apart when things get hard.
3. Stop being the hero. Start coaching the team.
High performers naturally jump in and solve things themselves. The shift into management means pausing that instinct, getting the right people involved, and asking what they need to unblock the problem. That's how you scale. Heroics create dependency. Coaching creates teams.
4. A successful implementation is decided at the start, not the finish.
Data integrity upfront, a clear understanding of why the client is making the investment, and milestone-based delivery are the three ingredients that separate transformative projects from expensive disappointments. Delivering every line item in the contract is not the same as solving the problem.
Charlie Liu
Hi everyone, I'm Charlie Liu. Welcome to the MCC show, Making Cents with Charlie. We have a very special guest with us today. Joining us is Haseeb Rana, our Professional Services Manager at MCC and a true powerhouse of all things EPM. Data-driven strategies, change management, when he isn't leading organizational changes, he's championing youth leadership in his community. Everyone, let's give it up for Haseeb. My friend, it is a pleasure to have you with us.
Haseeb Rana
Thanks for having me today, Charlie. Looking forward to some of the future episodes and everything we've recorded so far. Growing up in Hamilton, I've always felt close to this community and wanted to give back. The way I'm doing that is through volunteering, food banks, conversations with youth, and an organization I'm closest to called Seeds of Leadership. They're on a mission to develop youth to be the leaders of tomorrow through free programs, retreats, and impact projects.
Charlie Liu
Seeds of Leadership. Love the name. How did you find them?
Haseeb Rana
It started about five years ago during Ramadan. I was volunteering at a food distribution event at our local mosque, Meals on Wheels, distributing warm meals to the less fortunate. The founder noticed how I was managing the floor and told me about this program he was starting. The name stuck with me. Seeds of Leadership. The youth from that first cohort have now gone through high school, undergrad, and are championing their own projects in the community.
Charlie Liu
I've historically not done this well, giving back in that way. But I truly believe the purpose of life is to serve others. What does your involvement actually look like? Are you involved with every cohort?
Haseeb Rana
The founder shared something that stuck with me: leadership is service. Or put the other way around, being of service is leadership. My involvement is just that, food drives, retreats, coaching sessions. We'd share models like the Healthy Team Model with these high school students: set your intention, build a cohesive team, define the purpose, establish a productive cadence, and engage others. These are the same models the founder was sharing with Fortune 500 companies.
Charlie Liu
I love this. I can't believe you're teaching high school kids frameworks from Fortune 500 leadership coaching. Let's talk about the leadership side more broadly. I've watched you step up from individual contributor to manager. How do you see the difference between a manager and a leader?
Haseeb Rana
Something that comes to mind immediately is empathy. I've really built that muscle here at MCC, partly from conversations with senior leaders like yourself. Management to me is understanding the scorecard: KPIs, projects in flight, how we deliver value. Leadership is understanding every person you work with, their strengths, their expertise, and using that to create an environment where everyone feels they're contributing. Empathy is what bridges the two. Being kind rather than just nice.
Charlie Liu
I keep hearing that line. Being kind versus being nice. There's something to it. To me, leadership is the why and management is the how. Leadership pulls people forward. Management pushes the work forward. Sometimes it's the same person doing both, but they're different muscles.
Haseeb Rana
That summarizes it well. Management is execution. Leadership is inspiration. And inspiring people is genuinely hard. You can't inspire someone if you're not inspired yourself. You can't help someone move in a direction if you're not already moving in that direction.
Charlie Liu
What was the biggest learning moving from individual contributor to leading a team? You haven't been a people manager for that long, but you're incredible at it.
Haseeb Rana
Learning to trust the team and stepping away from being heroic. In this space I had a strong background on how the tools work, and I'd find myself just jumping in, course correcting, fixing things myself. The learning was pausing, getting the right team involved, and asking: what are your next steps, and how can I support you? Coaching others instead of doing it for them. That's the shift. Heroics create dependency. Coaching creates teams.
Charlie Liu
EOS uses the word heroics too. High performers have a get-things-done instinct that's actually a liability at scale. You owe it to yourself, you spent your whole career becoming great at something. Now you have to make a conscious decision to hand that over so you can grow into something new.
Haseeb Rana
And that's how you scale. You build the right tools, the right process and systems, so the team levels up as a whole and you get time back.
Charlie Liu
Let's talk about the project side. You're exceptional at pushing implementations forward. What is the magic equation for a successful project? Because in this space it's almost always either transformative or a disaster. What separates them?
Haseeb Rana
Three things. First, the psychological shift, understanding why the client started this journey. Not just what's in the contract, but why they paused their day-to-day and decided to invest. Second, data integrity. A lot of the investment has to happen upfront. Clean data leads to better business requirements conversations, better planning, better reporting. We measure a successful project by how it started. Third, maintaining momentum through milestones. A strong kickoff means nothing if the client doesn't feel value throughout the journey. Milestone-based delivery is how you show them the investment is working in real time.
Charlie Liu
The first and third are connected. It all comes back to intention, what was this client's intention when they signed on? We've all seen projects where every contract item was delivered and the client still wasn't happy, because what they got wasn't what they actually needed. Functional milestones force that conversation early. And data, I'd argue this is largely a data and metadata project. Understanding the financial data infrastructure, the metadata, the allocation rules. One of the biggest values we provide is helping clients understand their own data better.
Charlie Liu
We're coming up on time. The show always ends with Two-Cent Advice. What's your secret to staying positive during tough times?
Haseeb Rana
The concept of time. Time is limited. Everyone has a finite amount of it. Understanding that every moment, whether it's happiness, grief, or excitement, is temporary helps me stay grounded. If something hard happened, it's okay. Let's move forward. If something great happened, hold on to it and figure out how to create more of those moments. Time passing is actually freeing. And my two cents for the episode: empathy is the glue that holds relationships together.
Charlie Liu
All relationships. Not just work, romantic, family, everything. I completely align. Thank you so much, Haseeb. This was a pleasure.
Haseeb Rana
Thank you for having me, Charlie.