Leading Amid Uncertainty and Change: Tech Leader Summit

Stop Chasing Answers! Leading Amid Uncertainty and Change

Pete opens with a confession: a kindergarten note sent home to his mother describing five-year-old Peter as "quite a discipline problem lately—challenging authority by doing what he wants."

Some might call that insubordination. Pete prefers "early experiments in leadership."

He struggled with subjective subjects—English, spelling, too many exceptions. Then he discovered math. Beautiful, clean, predictable. Rules and logic with answers that were clearly right or wrong. Half the answers printed right there in the back of the textbook.

Math led to science. Science led to programming. More rules, more logic, more problems with solutions. He could lose himself for months working on complex system design challenges. When it finally clicked, when all the pieces came together—pure magic.

But entering the workforce brought problems that didn't have answers in the back of the book. Problems that couldn't be solved with logic alone. Just opinions, differences, endless shades of gray.



He calls this feeling the Fog.

The Outcome Is People

Pete shares the story of Mark—a new engineer fresh out of college who Pete was assigned to mentor. Pete didn't ask for Mark. Didn't need Mark. And if he's being honest, didn't want Mark.

So he did what many first-time leaders do: assigned Mark a safe, isolated side project. Something non-critical that wouldn't interfere with Pete's work.

When it came time to merge Mark's code, it was a mess. Sloppy, poorly designed. Pete threw it out and reworked it himself, with Mark sitting beside him in the passenger seat.

At the time, Pete believed Mark had failed. Today he knows: Mark wasn't the problem. Pete was.



"Mark wasn't in the way of my work. Mark WAS my work. Leadership doesn't use people to achieve outcomes—it understands that people are the true outcome."

Managing Tension, Not Solving Problems

To demonstrate what leadership actually feels like, Pete brings volunteers on stage with an exercise band. Two people pulling in opposite directions—expertise opposing the openness needed to develop others, authority opposing the respect that must be earned.

Both sides matter. Both are essential. Pull too hard on one side and the other strains. You can't let go or everything falls apart.

"This is what leadership feels like. Uncomfortable. Tiring. That's leadership."

Then he adds two more volunteers, all four pulling the band in different directions. Competing priorities. Multiple stakeholders. Different directions. All pulling at the same time.

"This might look like chaos. But it's not. This is leadership. This is what we signed up for."



The lesson: leadership isn't about picking the right side. It's about learning to live in the tension between sides—to hold it, to manage it, without letting it tear you apart.

Changing the Game: From Ping Pong to Poker

Pete introduces Amy, an IT leader who felt like "I'm in a game of ping pong, only I'm not playing the game—I'm the ball."

Every stakeholder had their pet project. Every project was labeled top priority. Amy was getting whacked back and forth between them.

Pete asked: "If you could change the game, what would it look like?"

Amy's answer: "I wish the stakeholders would play each other, not me."

So Amy created what she privately called Battlezoid. She invited all stakeholders to one table, laid out her team's limited capacity for everyone to see, and gave each stakeholder poker chips.

The rules: if you want your work prioritized, show up and play. Make your case to your peers, not to Amy one-on-one. Get them to invest in your priority. Don't show up? Your chips go into the pot for others to use.

The tension didn't disappear. But it got shared. Amy made it visible so everyone could see it, feel it, and manage it together.

What Amy discovered: "In leadership, HOW a decision gets made is often as, or more, important than WHAT that decision is."

(To learn more about Amy's story, read an excerpt from Pete's book Into the Fog.)

The Organizational EKG

Pete closes with his own health scare—an irregular heartbeat discovered during a routine checkup. From the outside, he looked fine. Felt fit. But inside, his heart wasn't keeping rhythm.

He draws the parallel to organizational health. At a leadership retreat, he shows them their organization's EKG based on survey data. Between control and create, they're out of sync. Between compete and collaborate, leaders and employees are feeling completely different things.

The typical response: align on a strategy, shape the message, roll it out.

Pete challenges this: "What if the answer isn't a new strategy, but a new approach to developing a strategy?"

For him, getting back in rhythm meant surgery. Nine months of recovery. A step back to enable more steps forward.

For them, it meant taking their foot off the gas. Bringing the problem to their people instead of bringing another solution.

Eighteen months later, another scan. The lines weren't perfect, but the spikes and valleys that used to clash were starting to sync.



"In the Fog, speed compounds errors. Clarity is what matters most. Sometimes the boldest choice is pausing to pivot."

Three Questions

Pete leaves the audience with three questions—not to solve, but to name:

1. What's one door you need to open? Find the "Mark" in your life who could be more centered in your work.
2. What's one tension you need to ease? Name the Fog you're absorbing that could be shared with others.
3. What's one step back you need to take? Identify the part of your life that would benefit from pausing to pivot.

His final confession: "I still struggle with all of this. Every single day. I haven't mastered leadership—but I have learned how to do it better. The difference now? I notice it faster. I recover quicker. I ask for help sooner."