I spent the last week having a marathon of tea, calls, and the odd power-walk with CTOs, CPOs, and product brains from PE/VC-backed tech firms. I’ve attempted to bottle the energy and ideas. Here are some of the themes that have surfaced.
- Tech and Commercial. The standout leaders are the ones who can turn clever tech into commercial wins—ARR/subscription models, product-market fit, all that good stuff investors want to see fast.
- AI and data. There’s real excitement about AI and analytics - How do we use this to make smarter, quicker decisions and open up new revenue?
- Customer-obsessed. The top teams are moving at pace, experimenting, and putting the customer at the centre.
- People-people. No matter how technical things get, you just can’t beat the human touch. Warmth, humour, trust—leaders who bring that vibe are in serious demand. (Bonus points if you’re fun to work with.)
- Resilience. Change isn’t slowing down. The leaders everyone wants. They’re the ones who don’t just survive ambiguity—they dance with it, keep teams upbeat, and spot opportunity in the chaos.
- Critical thinking: In the age of AI, critical thinking, problem solving and ensuring you have diverse views at a leadership level is more essential now than ever before.
- Innovation: Enabling your teams to challenge leadership respectively and agree how to disagree whilst still moving forward will help combat the echo chambers.The right leaders are commercially sharp, know how to scale, and make people want to come along for the ride, is that you?
Follow Smithfield Search for more content like this about tech and leadership.
A special thanks to Tiffany St James for the key points you made around critical thinking and innovation – to hear more from Tiffany she has an excellent and excellently named newsletter. https://lnkd.in/e2vJGmSt,
