To overcome the challenges, technology leaders must work on creating the right culture to adopt the changes, it all depends on people and organization’s culture, and it all starts by setting the right tone from the organization’s top management
When asked how he planned his career path to be a successful technology leader, Ahmad ElGhazouly, Information Systems & Technology/Information Security Manager at PGESCo, in an exclusive interview with CIO News, said, “I think the role of a tech lead is hard to define and differs between people”. For me, it is mainly about becoming the Technology Advocate to the business, by aligning with the business strategy and transforming these strategies to technical programs, projects with defined goals and objectives, always be prepared two steps ahead of the business requirements. In addition, be the mentor to your team by helping them to improve, enjoy what they do, and recognize the value they provide to their organization.
Almost more than 20 years ago, when I started my professional career, I worked as a project automation lead, at that time, I had the privilege of working in an environment that supports growth, by providing technical knowledge, hands-on experience, and our slogan was: “the sky is the limit”.
The golden rule was to provide an IT professional service and to do your best to avoid any downtime to the business, which increased the sense of responsibility to the business sustainability.
I covered different technical and executive roles in Information and Technology areas including but not limited to Systems Administration and engineering, IT operations, CAD and engineering applications management, business applications and information management, Information Security and risk management, IT program and project management, and IT governance.
When asked about challenges he faced in his career path and how he overcame them, he said, it is always about sensing the business priorities, knowing what is considered vital and important. As a technology leader, we provide technical solutions either to increase the efficiency of the business execution or to minimize risks. Ensuring that you can achieve both and always have the trust of the business to rely on you is always the biggest challenge. To overcome this challenge, always be attentive to the business strategies and changes, always be aware of the technological trends and be up to date in the vertical segment solutions, always have a prepared and capable team to achieve the goals, and finally, maintain the team spirit to enjoy working under these pressures.
When asked how his organisation geared up in terms of technology in the COVID times, he said, I always, like to look at the bright side, the COVID and Post COVID new norm, has proven that our strategy was on the right track, the investments that we made on preparing the working platform, training the company team and ensuring the business that no downtime will affect the projects execution and company production, all that was paid back after the senior management and the crisis management teams took a decision to switch to working from home.
We were prepared, and the impact of the COVID was only on accelerating the execution of the projects.
When asked about technology solutions and innovations he plans to implement in the post COVID era, he said, digital transformation for Energy and Industrial sector is gaining a big momentum especially with the increase of the requirements and demand on sustainability. In PGESCo, we see this as an opportunity to leverage our legacy digital engineering platform and build more capabilities using technology and innovation solutions for example digital twin, Robotic process automation, business intelligence, and data analytics, in the meantime, we also focus on Information Security and the protection of our information assets.
When asked about challenges faced by technology leaders today in a similar industry while implementing digital technologies, he said, speed and agility are the main challenges for every technology leader, everything is moving and changing fast, and the business has to adapt to the new changes and move with the same velocity, in my opinion, “Technology is the main pillar for any organization to sustain”, you cannot do today’s business with yesterday’s technology and stay in business tomorrow.
When asked how technology leaders can overcome the challenges faced, he said, to overcome the challenges, technology leaders must work on creating the right culture to adopt the changes, it all depends on people and organization’s culture, and it all starts by setting the right tone from the organization’s top management.
When asked about best practices/industry trends/advice he would like to suggest to fellow technology leaders for their successful professional journeys, he said, my recommendation is always to set a benchmark and continuous measurement against it, don’t reinvent the wheel, always see what is the best practice that fits your company objectives and seeks for efficiency and effectiveness in all the solutions you provide, start with the business pain points that have the highest impact and always seek alignment with the business.
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