Tech Leadership Unplugged #1: A New Beginning

Long time no read

Thoughts

I don’t know if you missed me or not, but here I am :)

It’s my first newsletter in a year or so. Starting out new things is an experience full of anxiety and feelings of imposter syndrome.

Re-starting is even worse. So bear with me on this one.

Now comes the part where I find excuses for not sending a newsletter since May 2022.

First things first, my job as CTO at Deloitte was and is very demanding, in addition, I spent almost all my free time trying to grow a following on Twitter.

And after almost a year of struggling with a few hundred followers, I managed to get a viral post in December which got me to more than 10K followers.

This one:

https://twitter.com/theleoalexandru/status/1601227466571292672

(It should have been embedded but some strange things are happening at Twitter right now).

After that, I got a few thousand more followers and it was nice. The dopamine hit was quite extraordinary. And I learned how to engage and write good posts and met some good friends.

But I decided I want to focus more on this Newsletter.

Why? Because

• I want to build more meaningful connections with people who are interested in what I’m saying

• Through my newsletter, I can be more personal in the stories I share

• The longer format makes it easier for me to state my opinions and the way I feel about something.

So, I will be sharing my thoughts with you weekly. There are a lot of unknowns:

Will I stick to Substack?

What will I write about?

What day will I ship this?

I don’t know the answer to all these questions. But my experience in Agile software management has taught me to start doing, learn from this experience, and adapt as I go along.

What will change?

My last year on Twitter made me rethink my brand and what I want to write about. When I started out writing online on my blog and here, I was focused on Productivity, because that’s a passion of mine.

In the last few months, I figured out I am also passionate about Leadership and Career Growth. Also, my experience in these fields will give me the chance to help more people.

I won’t ditch the Productivity angle, I will still write about any apps or systems I find worthy of mentioning, but the focus will be on the other two.

Another thing that is new is that I will include a section of Tweets that got my attention in the last week. This is because I spend a lot of time on Twitter. (More than I would want to).

So, if this is not OK with you, we can part ways, no hard feelings.

But I would stick around for one edition or two, you might be surprised.

Recommendations

Since we haven’t talked in a while, I won’t recommend anything specific this week.

But I will recommend a technology trend. Or two.

From my perspective, both coders and non-coders (maybe especially them), should start learning 2 things:

1. AI

2. Low-code/No-code

My first recommendation is pretty obvious in today’s context. AI is getting more and more ground and my personal opinion is that if you don’t keep up with this trend it will be very hard to adapt afterward.

I’m not going to say that you’ll lose your job, though that is a possibility also, but for sure you will get a lot more opportunities if you ride the AI wave.

Learning no-code or low-code applications (this can be Notion, Bubble, or Microsoft Power Platform) will make it easier for you to build something without being a programmer.

There are a lot of options now to have an online business, for example, without writing one line of code. This is opening a new world of possibilities for creators around the world to share their stories and sell their craft.

But I will write in-depth about this in a future edition.

Reading/Listening to

I am reading one book at the moment: “Dotcom Secrets” by Russell Brunson. Even though the title is pretty clickbaity for my style, the book is very good if you want to build an online business with funnels.

What does that mean? In short, you have a sequence like this:

1. You direct people to your website via organic or inorganic traffic (that means ads)

2. You promise them something if they get on your newsletter

3. Once they get on your newsletter you have an automated sequence of emails to get them to buy your product or service

Of course, this is only the high-level picture, but 90% of online businesses work like this.

So, I will probably implement my own funnel after I finish the book :)

I am also listening to a book, on Audible, “Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard” by Chip and Dan Heath.

The book explores the psychology of change and offers practical strategies for creating lasting change in your personal and professional life. The authors argue that change is difficult because our minds are divided into two parts: the rational, analytical side, and the emotional, intuitive side.

I will wait to finish it these days and will probably write a Twitter thread about it as well as in the Newsletter. Who knows.

And this is all for this week. I hope you’ll like the revamped version of my newsletter and you’ll expect it next week as well.

Let me know your thoughts on this edition and if you want me to explore any other, connected, topics.

Until next time,

Leo

If you would like to read my content on a daily basis, follow me on Twitter and Linkedin.

P.S.: I want to wish Happy Holidays to everyone who is celebrating Easter or Passover this weekend.

Photo by Євгенія Височина on Unsplash