My Leadership Foundations for Tech Teams

Here's my playbook summarised:

1. Master Change (Chaos Is a Feature) Tech changes every 18-24 months. If you can't ride change, you can't lead in tech. Change management is core, not a side skill.

2. Be Great at Crisis Tech is critical infrastructure. You will have outages. Your career is defined by your worst 48 hours, not your best 48 months.

3. Build Real Strategy (Purpose + Profit) We don't build tech for tech. Strategy starts with: Why are we here? Who do we serve? How do we make money sustainably? AI, cloud, 5G are enablers, not goals.

4. Be the Leader Your Team Is Proud Of Your team should say "I'm proud to be led by this person"—not because you're perfect, but because you show up in crises, take responsibility, protect when needed, challenge when needed, and stay consistent.

5. Build the Right Culture Culture beats strategy slides. Make it purpose-driven, data-literate, curious, brave enough to call out nonsense. If you want people to own outcomes, stop rewarding only tasks.

6. Take Risks Before You're Forced If you wait for the market to force your hand, you'll be late to everything. Best leaders transform quietly, early, continuously—not in noisy panic.

7. Connect to Bigger Vision No one wakes up excited to hit a KPI. People wake up to change lives, build something that matters, be part of a story. Connect daily work to something above the quarterly report.

Get these foundations right, and tools and trends become details.

Amir Abdelazim