Unlocking Digital Growth: The DNA of Agile Leadership and Product Innovation

Ascending Together: The Pathway to Success

Our articles started with an analogy of Tower Running and Career Agility, focusing on how curiosity combined with strategy is redefining talent in global business. That’s part of an equation where people, processes, and technology combined are taking individuals to a new era, where the companies they work for are on a constant ascent, a climb where the ability to adapt is overtaking tenure and redefining what the key indicators are to measure success.

Leaders are under constant pressure, not only to adapt but to have cross-cultural fluency and local insight. They need to have narrative intelligence and embed a sense of purpose in every call to action. At the same time, Agentic AI is coming with a promise to change the foundations of everything we do, but not without reclaiming human agency and designing human-centric solutions.

As the landscape evolves, we see strategy, communication, and the mindset being constantly challenged in order to get the best synergies with people and the processes that they design, execute, and maintain. Strategic stillness means slowing down the pace to focus on what’s important in volatile times. Marketing in the age of noise means authenticity as a way to influence with intention, and a renewed sense of entrepreneurship, which is reshaping the way we think and reshaping business.

New Roles in Digital Transformation

People manage processes, and when a digital solution enhances those processes, it doesn’t always require Artificial Intelligence. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) still plays a critical role in connecting systems and automating workflows for those processes, often in combination with Machine Learning. However, as enterprise architectures evolve, traditional roles like solution architects, project managers, developers, and business process analysts are increasingly joined by new roles, for example, AI Product Managers, a new role that connects the dots with people, processes, data, control, infrastructure, and business intelligence to create impact.

Just to illustrate how those elements connect, people start every transformation with mindset, talent, and identity. They follow processes, which generates data. Understandingdata sets direction, and through well defined risk and compliance controls are enabled so things like governance and trust don’t become just words. All that is converging and scaling up through infrastructure, and through intelligence we come to the point of convergence where finally automation and AI meets human brains that can adapt, to find solutions and think of next steps. That’s when sustainable impact, meaning and contribution converge to products that really align with user needs. Business goals are also part of the equation, but to drive clarity, agility, and innovation at every product lifecycle development stage, end users really matter.

Over the last decade, my professional career was impacted by a convergence of business models that are also following a vertical ascent. I came from a typical outsourced role, which required less expertise to analyse, describe, predict, and recommend things based on data. There were Lean Six Sigma Black Belts doing that; now there’s predictive analytics doing most of that, except for bulletproof recommendations, which still require someone who can understand the nuances of the findings and the impact on contract terms, for example. Over time, my roles evolved from a data expert to someone managing infrastructure and technology integration. I got involved with software development, and at a certain point became an AI Product Manager.

That’s a new role, and some people are not familiar with it. People like me are asked to turn strategic vision into real outcomes. The whole thing starts with data, and how we understand things like engagement, retention, and revenue, to create solutions that can scale up on a global level, boost growth, and be replicated across markets and teams in every region.

Crafting Software Solutions Amid Complexity

Let’s talk a bit about software development and what software is. When I helped to create pages on a website for MTV Brazil in the 90s, we were developing a single digital product that was complex. Using that example, there was a team of ten people that worked hard to ensure integration with the prehistoric technology we used. Things like Flash animations or video streamings looked beautiful on screen, but had limitations with the infrastructure. We used to think of end users connecting via dial-up, and everything we designed was with their experience. We had to think of other aspects, like compliance and stakeholder alignment, by designing secure tools that would adapt to deliver measurable business impact. That’s all the kind of things that an AI Product Manager does, nearly three decades later.

Building a digital product for a customer in Switzerland, when I worked for DXC Technology, showed the need for customer insight, cloud architecture, Machine Learning features to be integrated, and how much we had to meet expectations and restrictions in the contract. We leveraged Microsoft Cloud Azure tools to lead agile, scalable product development cycles, and the pressure with budget and timelines was very demanding, both on the technical and human-centric aspect. As a product manager, I had to master tech fluency, data tools, communication, and stakeholder alignment. Then COVID-19 lockdowns started, sometimes developers were sick and could not work, or the internet in a small village in India was not having the same speed for an employee forced to work from home.

There was a balancing act with the scope, time, and budget to deliver lasting value to our customers. From innovation to cross-team leadership, I had to learn that to have decent product management, there should be a combination of empathy, strategic clarity, and technical acumen, turning challenges into opportunities for meaningful impact.

Embracing Growth: Mindset as the Foundation of Progress

Setting individuals and enterprises for success is not the job of a Product Manager only. Strategic thinking demands a long-term vision using market research, competitive analysis, and strategic frameworks like SWOT, PESTLE, and roadmap alignment for product impact. User research is perfect to understand the end user needs and pain points, rather than concentrating on what sponsors are asking. I used to engage directly with users to uncover the end-to-end process and their experience: what they feel, think, speak, and do, what their pain points are. That’s usually done through surveys, A/B tests, and behavioral data, showing empathy and insight can guide impactful product design.

Communication and collaboration build bridges and foster alignment; those are the connecting pieces that unify teams scattered across functions and countries, ensuring shared goals and translating vision into action through transparency and trust. Navigating challenges together and finding solutions with an entrepreneurial mindset is key; that’s when leading enterprises can apply critical thinking and data-driven decision-making to tackle bugs, technical issues, or stakeholder misalignment with structured, adaptive problem-solving.

I have worked for other companies, when Ginni Rometty became IBM’s first woman CEO and an inspiring leader, inviting me and other employees to rethink common assumptions about AI: "The future is about man and machine working together — it’s not man versus machine. We call it ‘Augmented Intelligence’ because it’s designed to amplify human intelligence, not replace it.” She invited employees to be flexible and curious, embodying the very DNA of digital growth that drives transformation.

As the discovery of the DNA spiral revealed how life itself evolves through continuous, dynamic patterns, so too did her vision emphasize growth as a spiral of learning and adaptation. She was and is still an inspiration, an advocate for positive change stating that even people without a diploma can develop skills in tech, business, and communication to navigate evolving environments. IBMers were invited to treat learning as a continuing journey, staying curious, teaching and learning along the way. That meant growth was all that, plus the adaptability to learn new tools, trends, and challenges with a mindset set for growth, a key component for sustainable success in product roles.

Continuing the Journey: Conversations on Change and Innovation

Of course, designing better digital products that make the most of people, processes, and people became the holy grail, but that’s an ongoing conversation. We will dive deeper into topics that have shaped my own understanding of business transformation and career growth. For example, exploring nonlinear career paths, showing how shape-shifters are stepping outside traditional trajectories, is an attempt to show different perspectives and more innovative thinking. I’ll speak more about trust and engagement in global teams, especially in cross-cultural environments where shared goals require empathy, intentional communication, and respect for different business models where we are constantly pushed to do more with less. We’ll examine the future of work and what it means to build careers in a world where job descriptions evolve faster than traditional job titles, because we are already in a place where people are hired for their potential to adapt rather than for a static, monolithic expertise. You can expect stories and insights around leadership at the intersection of people, processes, and technology, where servant leadership plays a key role. That, I can assure, is not about control but about enabling autonomy and shared ownership.

As we move forward, I’ll be constantly using analogies as a way to simplify complex concepts and ideas. Tower running remains my favorite. I am not inviting you to practice it, but it is a good example of how modern careers evolve in a DNA-shaped kind of shape. Skyscrapers around you keep growing, spiraling upward with loops, intersections, and recurring patterns that reflect continuous growth, reinvention, and learning. That’s the places where Tower running competitions are taking place, requiring bursts of energy, moments of strategic pacing, and continuous recalibration. We’ll explore human agency as a foundation for navigating ambiguity and how to keep relevance through transferable skills, adaptability, and continuous learning. I’ll be sharing examples of how leaders and teams can foster cultures where experimentation is rewarded, risk is reframed as opportunity, and the ability to pivot becomes a defining advantage.

These aren’t just abstract concepts; they are tangible capabilities that anyone can build, regardless of background or current role. Stay with me as we keep exploring what it really takes to climb in today’s ever-shifting environment, step by step, floor by floor. To gain more excellent insights from our SSO Network, please join us for our upcoming AP Automation Virtual Summit.