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Key Takeaways
- Through discussions with over 45 leaders, we uncovered seven leadership principles that fueled our journey from startup to market leader.
- These principles can be applied by leaders in any industry who are seeking both business and personal growth.
At first, a startup often lacks resources but has a handful of driven people who know and trust each other to take ownership. As the company grows, they become the main driving force — leaders who build teams and departments. As growth accelerates and more people join, it becomes harder to ensure that the same leadership ethos keeps the company agile and goal-oriented across departments.
Last year, Oxylabs celebrated its 10th birthday and the journey that made us one of the market leaders in public web data scraping. We brought together over 45 leaders across departments and experience levels to understand which leadership traits mattered most throughout this journey.
The learnings from these consultations were distilled into seven leadership principles. While coming from the fast-paced data industry, they should also prove valuable to all leaders seeking business and personal growth across industries.
Principle 1: Push business forward
In tech, there can be a temptation to build exquisitely architected solutions without considering if they are the best way to solve real customer problems. We are still in the AI washing boom, when companies add a thin layer of AI on legacy solutions just to stick the AI label on them.
Companies don’t help clients this way. And they don’t push business forward beyond short-term sales. Instead, leaders should think strategically about long-term success. It’s okay if your technology is not as cutting-edge as AI if it still does the job effectively. And calling AI what is essentially just a different interface for ChatGPT hurts long-term reputation.
Another issue is when managers are too attached to reaching their department’s goals. Having goals and planning for them is important. But so is knowing when not reaching them is not a failure. Great leaders think like owners. They see the bigger picture and understand how daily activities contribute to achieving the company’s goals.
Principle 2: Act with urgency
Effective leaders make decisions with the information they have rather than waiting for perfect clarity that may never come. Followers wait for clarity on what to do next. Leaders provide it.
Importantly, don’t wait for this resolution before informing others about the roadblocks. A failure to get results is often justifiable. A failure to communicate is often not.
If you have ever tried building a startup from the ground up, this might sound obvious to you. It is not obvious to everyone in a 400 or 500-person company. Make sure it is made clear during onboarding and often publicly reiterated.
Principle 3: Be accountable
Great leaders approach tasks with the attitude: “If I take something on, I must see it through.” They set realistic expectations and escalate early when capacity is exceeded.
Crucially, they are willing to voice disagreement immediately and directly. However, once a decision is made, they give their full support. This is akin to Jeff Bezos’ famous approach, captured in the phrase “I disagree and commit.”
We have had heated debates about product direction, go-to-market strategy and technical architecture. But once we decide, everyone moves forward together, and everyone takes accountability for execution.
Principle 4: Show resilience
Fast growth means constant change. What worked last quarter might not work the next one as priorities shift and markets evolve. Resilient leaders adapt quickly when business needs change, staying focused on what matters most. They help their teams recover after setbacks and push toward solutions rather than dwell on what went wrong.
Resilience also means recognizing when you need to delegate and understanding how to sustain performance under pressure without pushing people past their limits.
Principle 5: Build networks
In a 10-person startup, everyone knows everyone. The entire business is part of your network. It’s part of what makes startups agile and resilient in dynamic circumstances. Mid-managers who build similar networks retain that agility and resilience of a startup even in large companies.
For tech leaders today, who have to juggle everything from owned infrastructure to AI and cloud, this is especially important. No one knows everything about such a large tech stack. But what you really need to know is who to ask and who has to be in the room for certain discussions. Leaders who maintain strong relationships with key people across departments break down silos when the stakes are high.
Principle 6: Share knowledge
Great leaders give their teams both the resources to continue growing professionally and the autonomy to act on what they have learned.
Furthermore, individual expertise can be turned into a collective value multiplier. Recent research shows that organizations fostering knowledge sharing across teams and departments are more likely to turn it into specific innovations, including products, process updates and improved work methods.
Principle 7: Build winning teams
Building winning teams is about investing in people to empower them to also be leaders. Not become one day, when they are ready to step into managerial roles. But be leaders when the situation calls for someone with their skills and traits to take the lead, regardless of their formal rank.
Shared leadership theory emphasizes that who takes the lead in real-life interactions is constantly changing. When team members lead one another dynamically, leveraging diverse strengths and skills, the whole team moves toward the goal with greater security and individual buy-in.
Thus, when teams grow into departments, and you need more leaders, it’s not necessarily about finding who else can be a manager. It’s about enabling, through example, training and honest conversations, people — even specialists who don’t seek a managerial role — to exhibit leadership when the situation calls for it.
Leadership principles should not be imposed from the top down without clear reasoning. You are welcome to use the provided list, but talk with the main stakeholders to determine the best way to adapt it to your organization. You might already have a solid foundation for the principles that matter most in your case. They simply need to be made explicit.
Key Takeaways
- Through discussions with over 45 leaders, we uncovered seven leadership principles that fueled our journey from startup to market leader.
- These principles can be applied by leaders in any industry who are seeking both business and personal growth.
At first, a startup often lacks resources but has a handful of driven people who know and trust each other to take ownership. As the company grows, they become the main driving force — leaders who build teams and departments. As growth accelerates and more people join, it becomes harder to ensure that the same leadership ethos keeps the company agile and goal-oriented across departments.
Last year, Oxylabs celebrated its 10th birthday and the journey that made us one of the market leaders in public web data scraping. We brought together over 45 leaders across departments and experience levels to understand which leadership traits mattered most throughout this journey.
The learnings from these consultations were distilled into seven leadership principles. While coming from the fast-paced data industry, they should also prove valuable to all leaders seeking business and personal growth across industries.
