How I Lead
I lead by ensuring everyone is working with complete and accurate information so that we’re all operating from the same assumptions. My goal as a leader is to empower individuals to make great decisions by marrying information with experience.
In digital transformation, great leaders take the time to understand the business context in which technology will live. Technology isn’t just about tools — it’s about enabling clarity, improving workflows, and building systems that tell the truth about performance. My approach combines strategic foresight with hands-on support, ensuring teams know where we’re going, how we’ll get there, and who can clear obstacles along the way.
When leading through change or uncertainty, I prioritize communication and alignment. I act as both a guide and a collector of insights, making sure the team stays connected to the goal while continuously adapting our approach.
Leadership in Practice
Leading Through Complexity
During the development of the construction module, the operations team grew frustrated with design choices made to accommodate downstream accounting workflows. They felt the system would create extra work for them, and enthusiasm for the project faded. I took the time to map out all workflows and visualize how data needed to flow across both functions. This exercise revealed how both teams could achieve efficiency without compromising on their needs. By redesigning the module around this shared understanding, we delivered a system that worked better for everyone — and, more importantly, regained full team buy-in.
Empowering Teams to Build Better Systems
When leading teams across functions, I focus on connecting business goals with technical reality. I begin by clarifying what success looks like at the executive level, then work with technical teams to design the best path to reach those outcomes. When misalignment arises, for instance, when executives prefer one technology that’s not the best fit, I bridge the communication gap. Rather than let either side misinterpret the other, I translate between business and technical perspectives to ensure the solution meets both strategic intent and practical feasibility.
Leading Through Integration and Change
I’ve learned that leadership in change management isn’t about control, it’s about empowerment. Early in my career, I believed the fastest path to success was having the right answer and explaining it. I’ve since learned that real leadership means helping others discover those answers themselves. Now, I focus on providing teams with the resources, access, and context they need to navigate uncertainty. By trusting people to take ownership and supporting them through problem-solving, I’ve seen teams grow stronger, more confident, and more innovative than before.
Strategic Philosophy
Systems Thinking as a Leadership Skill
To me, systems thinking is the ability to see the “why” behind every process, not just the “what.” It’s about understanding the full context in which decisions are made: the inputs, constraints, and ripple effects across teams.
When I co-led a NetSuite ERP implementation at Valtir, I oversaw the design of executive and operational reporting. Before I joined, the development team was rebuilding old reports one-for-one, without understanding what decisions those reports were meant to inform. Once we analyzed how each report was actually used, we retired redundant ones, consolidated overlapping metrics, and created new reports tailored to each team’s real decision flow. Some teams gained everything they needed from one report instead of three. The outcome of systems thinking is improving outcomes by redesigning how information moves through a company.
Why Context Is the Missing Piece in AI Strategy
Many organizations rush to implement AI without understanding what makes it valuable. The issue isn’t the technology, it’s the lack of structured data and context to make that technology useful.
I’ve seen companies introduce automation into workflows without aligning their data models or understanding the conditions under which automation succeeds. The result is usually frustration: teams must manually fix or prepare data just to get correct outputs. The real opportunity lies in designing frameworks that give AI meaningful input: clean, contextualized data that mirrors how the business operates. When systems are built this way, automation doesn’t just complete tasks faster, it becomes an intelligent extension of how the company thinks.
The Future of Strategy Is Cross-Functional
I believe the best strategies don’t exist in decks, they exist in decisions. A well-aligned organization is one where every person knows what the company is trying to achieve and how their work contributes to it.
In the next decade, strategy will evolve from static planning to dynamic system design. Leaders will be defined not by how much data they have, but by how effectively they structure and interpret it. Success will depend on synthesizing information into processes that reflect reality, not idealized models. The most effective leaders will be fluent across disciplines: they’ll understand finance, operations, engineering, and data, and connect them through shared systems that drive measurable results.