When I join an organization in a technology leadership role, I bring a certain set of perspectives that help me ramp up while also getting a sense of the landscape from a longer-term strategic standpoint. These filters underpin my attention and priorities as I fully embrace my role and settle into day-to-day sense-and-respond patterns. As I reflected on them, they coalesced into six lenses that I’m now calling my Six Ps for High-Impact Technology Leadership. These six Ps serve as guiding principles that I use to shape team dynamics, optimize workflows, and ensure technology initiatives are aligned with strategic goals. Each P helps me unlock the potential of people and systems and, in doing so, create a lasting impact. I expect they will continue to morph over time, but here they are, in a little bit of a particular order:
1. People
The first thing I do is meet and have 1:1 conversations with all the people I can in the domain I’m leading (usually IT, engineering, product, or some combination of those things) and in other domains across the organization. For people in my reporting chain, it is important for me to not only learn their titles and what their roles encompass but also whether they enjoy what they do or feel like they have more or different skills and capabilities to offer and want to exercise. I prioritize listening for signs of misalignment between a person’s skills and their current responsibilities, as well as whether they feel valued in their roles. This allows me to understand not just who they are on paper but how they could contribute in a more meaningful and fulfilling way.
At one workplace where I served at Chief Product and Technology Officer, I designed and facilitated a ‘Data Summit’ where we mapped current roles and responsibilities against the skills and ambitions of the team. The exercise revealed several mismatches between people’s titles and their true strengths. By the end of the summit, we had co-created a new team structure, with people choosing the roles where they felt most capable or eager to grow.
Making sure people are serving in areas where they are most poised for growth and impact is one initial input to how I think about organizing teams and departments. Ideally, I want people to gravitate toward where they most want to be. I also informally assess levels of engagement and burnout and try to gauge whether workstyles and/or manager pressures and expectations are hindering people or supporting them in having a healthy and rewarding relationship with work.
I’m a firm believer in creating rolling development plans that go beyond traditional professional goals. These plans encourage people to set personal development goals as well, whether it’s improving communication skills or overcoming limiting beliefs. In organizations with hierarchical structures, I urge managers to guide these plans, but in more self-managed settings, I encourage peer-to-peer sharing, fostering a collective responsibility for growth. I have templates I have used in the past that I often pull out once I’ve gotten to know people a bit, and I never force anyone to go beyond professional development goals. Still, those who do put personal development goals into their plans and share them with their peers are often the most engaged and productive people on the team.
Ultimately, I believe that when people are empowered to bring their full selves to work—not just their technical skills but their personal growth aspirations—they perform at their highest potential. This is the first and perhaps most crucial lens I apply as a leader: creating environments where people can grow, thrive, and make a meaningful impact.
2. Purpose
Purpose is the compass that keeps both individuals and teams aligned with their potential for growth and impact. Without a shared sense of purpose, even the most talented people can feel adrift, lacking direction in their work and in their growth. Ensuring a clear sense of purpose, ideally one that aligns with the organization’s mission and values, is one of the most important leadership actions I take.
Purpose is expressed in several ways in an organization, and I usually initially find it in the guiding goals the company has set for its teams. In some cases, I’ve joined organizations that lacked a cohesive set of goals, relying instead on vague mission or vision statements. When I encounter this, my first task is to gather leadership and help them define a set of tangible goals that align with the organization’s purpose. By involving teams in this process, I ensure that purpose becomes a shared ownership, not just a top-down directive.
In one case, I educated the executive team on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and ran them through an exercise to identify sets of those for each of their domains. Then I was able to guide the rest of the organization in exercises to plan work and activities that would help drive the KPIs. It was a small organization, so the process only took a couple of weeks, after which, as Chief Information Officer, I found myself overseeing half the organization, but everybody in my teams felt grounded in their purpose.
In another case, I joined a company overseeing IT, Engineering, and Product at a critical time—the business was hemorrhaging money, and the team was drowning in reactive work, moving from one loud request to the next with no clear priorities. It became obvious that a lack of shared goals was preventing the teams from finding purpose in their work. By introducing Objectives and Key Results (OKRs), I aimed to help the organization reconnect with its purpose. OKRs gave people a framework to prioritize their efforts, tie them to the bigger picture, and re-engage with the company’s mission on a deeper level.
It took a couple of months, but at the end, we had five overarching OKRs, which was pretty good. I then spent time with each of the teams, coaching and guiding them to create their own OKRs under the company-level ones. As the teams developed their OKRs, I saw a shift in how they engaged with their work. The process of aligning their daily activities to a bigger organizational purpose brought a renewed sense of ownership and energy to even the most routine tasks. I also set the expectation that what was being planned for a year’s worth of activity would be reviewed and adjusted quarterly. This provided regular opportunities to recognize performance, tune the next quarter’s OKRs, and refresh peoples’ sense of purpose.
By co-developing goal structures that everyone can connect with, I ensure that purpose flows through the entire organization, giving every team member a reason to care about their work and how it contributes to the bigger picture. Purpose is the fuel that drives people, and it naturally leads into the next P—Process, where we channel that sense of purpose into effective workflows.
3. Process
As a long-time Agile practitioner with certifications as a ScrumMaster, Product Owner, Agile Facilitator, and Coach, I’ve learned that no matter how well you plan, things will inevitably change. That’s where process comes in. A good process provides structure but also remains flexible and adaptive—especially in the face of shifting priorities.
When I talk about ‘process,’ I’m referring to the set of agreements and practices that teams use to organize their work, plan and deliver value to stakeholders, and continuously adjust and improve along the way. Agile, with its focus on iterative work and frequent reflection, is at the core of how I streamline workflows and keep teams adaptable. By breaking work into manageable chunks, Agile teams gain clarity, share knowledge, and refine their process at every iteration, which leads to better outcomes. To this end, I always have teaching and coaching materials in my back pocket to bring Agile in wherever it makes sense, which is all product and engineering teams, and any other team that wants to use it.
One of Agile’s key strengths is its focus on cross-functional teams. These teams, particularly in product development, are built to break down silos, creating opportunities for learning, growth, and innovation. Cross-functional collaboration allows for rapid iteration, with each iteration delivering just enough of each function to keep the project moving forward. This not only speeds up delivery but ensures maximum value at every stage.
Functional teams with more predictable workflows can still benefit from Agile’s iterative approach by using a method like Kanban, ensuring work gets done without overburdening the team. This adaptability, whether for cross-functional or specialized teams, is what makes Agile so powerful.”
One common misconception I’ve encountered is that process and tools are the same thing. They’re not. Process is the framework—the workflows, shared agreements, and collaboration methods that define how teams work together and make decisions. Tools, on the other hand, are what teams use to support those processes. The right tool will depend on the moment, the context, and the team’s needs, and it doesn’t always need to be defined upfront.
While I have tools for everything from strategy development to QA testing and decision-making, they’re not what define a process. Instead, tools are applied within a process—selected based on the needs of the team at that time. The process is the foundation that guides how tools are used. Once that foundation is solid, teams can choose whichever tools best serve their specific roles, projects, and workflows.
In the end, process is what brings purpose to life, enabling teams to work in a structured but adaptable way. But no matter how strong the process, it’s only as secure as the foundation it rests on. That’s why the next P, Protection, is crucial. From physical safety to cybersecurity and compliance, protecting the people, data, and infrastructure is a non-negotiable priority for any technology leader.
4. Protection
In today’s world, the Protection domain has grown in both urgency and complexity for technology leaders. This includes not only physical security but also cybersecurity, device management (desktops, laptops, tablets, mobile phones), compliance, risk management, and data protection. These aren’t just operational concerns; they are foundational elements that safeguard the organization’s ability to function and thrive.
When meeting with those responsible for security, my aim is to understand how they perceive the current state of protections. I ask questions to identify any gaps and assess the level of urgency around those gaps. This helps me prioritize the highest-risk areas and align resources accordingly.
I assess both physical and digital security. This includes reviewing facilities’ alarm systems, badge/keypad entry, and cameras, to ensure the environment is safe. On the data side, I map out where data is stored, how it flows, how it gets transformed and shared, and the use cases data serves. Understanding this helps me ask the right questions and ensure that both physical and data security measures are in place, along with a clear incident response plan for breaches.
Many organizations use a combination of cloud-based and in-house server infrastructure, which adds complexity to the security requirements. When considering all of the online productivity tools (email, messaging platforms, project management, wikis, etc…) an organization typically uses today, those requirements get even broader. The shift to remote work has introduced new layers of complexity as well. It’s no longer just about securing office networks, but also ensuring home workspaces are protected to prevent breaches. This requires a thoughtful approach to managing device security, data access, and employee awareness.
As a technology leader, getting a clear sense of the protection landscape is always one of my first priorities. Whether it’s shoring up gaps to meet compliance regulations, testing organizational security awareness, or educating teams on industry standards like OWASP, protection is an ongoing effort. From phishing tests to incident response plans and device management protocols, there’s always a long list of critical tasks requiring immediate attention to ensure security is never compromised.
Protection isn’t just about safeguarding data and facilities—it’s about creating an environment where both people and processes can perform at their best, free from distractions and vulnerabilities. With strong protections in place and efficient processes guiding the work, teams are empowered to focus on delivering high-impact results. This brings me to the next P: Performance, where we shift our focus to how we measure and sustain the success that both protection and process enable.
5. Performance
Performance is often viewed as pressure to deliver and meet goals, but I believe it should be about enabling people to succeed and thrive in their roles. Instead of focusing on punitive measures like performance improvement plans (PIPs) for so-called ‘underperformers,’ I focus on creating clear expectations and supporting people to achieve meaningful outcomes. If someone is struggling to meet expectations, I don’t see it as a personal failure. Instead, I look to the manager and the environment they’ve created, asking whether the individual was given the support, clarity, and tools they needed to succeed.
My approach to performance is simply to make sure that people’s roles are clearly defined, and within those role definitions are the responsibilities and accountabilities they are expected to meet. Rather than just relying on static job descriptions, I advocate for formal agreements between managers and employees. These agreements go beyond duties to focus on clear outcomes, making it explicit what success looks like in that role. In progressive organizations, I often suggest creating what I call a Personal Impact Plan—an individualized, purpose-centered roadmap with specific, measurable goals that helps align personal and organizational growth. This doesn’t even have to wait until someone is struggling, it can be done as early as when someone onboards to a team.
Performance isn’t something that happens to people—it’s something that’s co-created. Employees and their managers, or even their peers in self-managed environments, should collaborate to define SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timebound) goals that cover both professional responsibilities and personal growth. In this way, performance becomes a shared commitment, not a top-down directive.
True impact isn’t just measured by profits or project milestones. It’s also about how much people grow in their roles. When employees develop new skills and capacities, they don’t just elevate themselves—they elevate the entire organization’s ability to deliver value. A strong performance framework supports this kind of growth, ensuring that personal development is seen as just as important as hitting business metrics.
Performance isn’t something to assess only in hindsight. It should be built into an ongoing feedback loop, where expectations are clear, support is continuous, and success is celebrated. Instead of punishing missed targets, the focus should be on helping people achieve their goals and recognizing their efforts along the way.
When people are empowered to grow, supported to succeed, and their achievements are celebrated, performance naturally follows. But there’s another ingredient that takes performance from good to great, and that’s Play. Engaging people’s creativity, curiosity, and enjoyment in their work can unlock even greater potential. Let’s dive into that next.
6. Play
My last P is Play, because without it, work risks becoming a grind. By ‘play,’ I don’t just mean games or lighthearted fun—although I do believe that playful elements like games can be powerful tools for learning and bonding. What I mean by play is creating a culture where people can bring their authentic selves to work, feel included, take risks, and make mistakes without fear of punishment.
Play isn’t just for fun—it’s a critical driver of engagement and innovation. People do their best work when they feel free to experiment, explore, and sometimes fail without fear of retribution. A perfect example of play at work is safe-to-fail experiments—small, time-bound trials where teams can test new processes or techniques with minimal risk. The only requirement is to measure results and share them. This kind of exploratory play doesn’t just boost engagement; it can lead to significant innovations.
When I managed the Discovery team at Wikimedia Foundation, I encouraged the team to use 20 percent of their time at work for safe-to-fail experiments. One engineer decided to apply machine learning to search results—a project not even on the team’s backlog. The experiment was so successful it led to a machine learning pipeline being integrated into Wikipedia’s search mechanism, improving search relevance significantly. Even more valuable was the learning it sparked across the team, leading to a wave of new experiments and innovations.
Later in my tenure, the organization launched a program that funded personal projects with a small budget and a simple set of guidelines: the project had to cost under $200, take no longer than a quarter, and be presented at an all-staff meeting. The program sparked creativity and ‘play,’ with projects ranging from an herb spiral to a homemade electronic instrument for a deaf child. These initiatives weren’t directly work-related, but they contributed to a culture of curiosity and innovation that benefited the team overall. As a manager there, I was more than happy to give people time to engage in such play.
By embracing play, organizations not only foster creativity and innovation but also create a more engaged, curious, and fulfilled workforce. Play isn’t a distraction from work—it’s the secret sauce that leads to breakthrough thinking, personal growth, and, ultimately, greater impact.
These six Ps—People, Purpose, Process, Protection, Performance, and Play—offer a glimpse into my approach as a leader and provide a continuous learning framework for me. Together, they guide my planning, strategy, and, most importantly, the way I create impact by putting people at the center. By addressing each of these dimensions thoughtfully, I ensure that teams are set up to succeed, with a clear sense of purpose, strong engagement, and room to experiment and grow. This is what leads to maximum impact—for both the organization and the people who drive it.