What Volatile Markets Reveal About the Technology Leaders Who Thrive

If you’ve been doing this long enough, you’ve seen both sides of it.

You’ve seen when everything’s growing and it almost feels like you can’t mess it up. Budgets are there, hiring’s happening, projects are getting approved. You make a few mistakes, it doesn’t really hurt you. The market is moving, and you’re moving with it.

And then you’ve seen the other side.

Things slow down. Money gets tighter. Priorities shift. Now every decision matters. The margin for error shrinks, and all of a sudden, not everybody looks as good as they did six months ago.

That’s not an accident.

That’s just the market showing you who can actually operate and who was benefiting from the environment.

When Growth Makes Everyone Look Good

When a company is in high-growth mode, a lot of people look like strong performers.

That’s just how it works. There are more opportunities, more roles opening up, more chances to move up. Rising tides raise all boats.

So people get promoted. Titles get bigger. Responsibility increases. On paper, it looks like a lot of success happening all at once.

And to be fair, some of those people are really good.

But not all of them.

Some are strong operators who understand what they’re doing and why it’s working. Others are just in the right place at the right time, in a company that’s growing fast enough to create opportunities for almost everyone.

The tricky part is that those two groups can look exactly the same while things are going well.

You don’t always know the difference at the moment.

You find out when things change.

What Happens When the Market Tightens

When growth slows down or becomes unpredictable, everything sharpens.

There are fewer opportunities. Fewer promotions. Less room to make mistakes. Decisions that used to be easy now have real consequences.

That’s when you start to see the separation.

The people who really understand how to operate adjust. They figure out what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, and how to navigate what’s in front of them.

Others struggle.

Not because they aren’t smart or capable, but because the environment is no longer doing the work for them. The system isn’t carrying them the way it was before.

This is why context matters so much.

If someone’s had a great run, you have to ask what kind of environment they were in. Were they operating in a company growing fast, where opportunities were everywhere? Or were they in a more measured environment where performance had to stand on its own?

Because those are two very different situations, even if the outcome looks the same on paper.

The Leaders Who Last Think About the Downside

Most people know how to operate when things are going well.

That’s not the hard part.

The difference shows up in how leaders think about what happens when things stop going well.

The ones who last don’t just plan for growth. They plan for what happens around that growth. They think about how to temper it, how to structure it, and how to make sure it doesn’t get ahead of them.

There’s a simple way to say it. Protect against the downside. The upside will take care of itself.

That mindset changes how decisions get made.

You’re not just chasing growth because it’s there. You’re thinking about what happens if things slow down, if funding changes, if priorities shift. You’re building in a way that can handle that.

Because at some point, it will happen.

And when it does, you don’t want to be figuring it out for the first time.

Calm Wins When Things Start Breaking

When things get tough, you want the calm leader.

You want the person who can get everybody out single file when the walls are on fire. Not the one running around reacting to everything, and not the one who freezes because things aren’t clear.

You want someone who understands what’s happening and can move people through it.

Because in those moments, you’re not going to control everything.

There are too many variables. Too many things happening around you that you don’t have a say in.

What you can control is how you react to it.

And the people who understand that, they’ve got a real advantage. They don’t get pulled in ten different directions. They stay focused on what matters and keep the organization moving.

It sounds simple, but very few people actually do it.

You Can’t Control Everything, But You Can Control How You Respond

A lot of leaders struggle with this more than they realize.

There’s a belief that if you just push harder, plan better, or stay closer to everything, you can control outcomes. That you can manage every variable if you work at it long enough.

That’s not how it works.

There are too many moving parts. Some of them are outside the company. Some of them are inside but still not fully in your control.

The leaders who figure this out earlier tend to operate better.

They stop trying to control everything and focus on what they actually can control. How they respond, how they communicate, how they guide their teams.

That shift makes them more effective, especially when things are uncertain.

Because instead of fighting the situation, they’re navigating it.

The Role Has Changed, Whether You Like It or Not

If you look back 20 or 25 years, the role of a technology leader was different.

A lot of it was about keeping the lights on. Infrastructure, systems, reliability. Make sure everything runs, and you’re doing your job.

That’s still important, but it’s not enough anymore.

Now, technology is expected to be part of the business. Not just supporting it, but helping drive it. That means understanding what the business is trying to do, where it’s going, and how technology fits into that.

It also means being able to sit with business leaders and have real conversations about strategy, not just systems.

That shift has been happening for a while, but in a volatile market, it becomes more obvious.

Because when things change, the leaders who understand both sides can adjust faster. They can connect what’s happening in the business to what needs to happen in technology.

If you’re only operating on one side of that, it gets harder to keep up.

How to Tell If Someone Is Actually Good

This is where a lot of people get tripped up, especially when hiring.

It’s easy to look at someone’s resume and see a strong run. Promotions, bigger roles, time at a company that’s doing well.

But you have to look deeper than that.

You have to ask what environment they were in and what they were actually doing inside that environment.

Were they planning for what came next, or just moving along with the growth? Were they making decisions that would hold up if things changed, or were they operating in a system that didn’t require that?

Because those are very different things.

A high-growth company gives you a bigger menu of opportunities. More chances to move up, more ways to succeed. That doesn’t make the success invalid, but it does mean you need to understand it in context.

The real question is whether that person can operate when the menu gets smaller.

Alignment Is Work, Not a Meeting

Alignment is another place where things break down in volatile markets.

In stable environments, it’s easy to think alignment is done once you’ve had the meeting. You put the plan together, everyone agrees, and you move forward.

But when things are changing, that doesn’t hold.

You have to keep coming back to where you are and where you’re going. You have to make sure people actually understand the situation, not just the version of it from a few weeks ago.

That takes more conversation. More clarity. Sometimes more direct conversations than people are comfortable having.

But without that, you get drift.

And when the environment is already uncertain, drift turns into problems quickly.

The leaders who do this well treat alignment as something ongoing. Not a one-time event, but something that needs attention as things evolve.

When Things Get Tight, You See What Holds Up

When the market tightens, a lot of the things people rely on don’t carry the same weight.

Titles don’t matter as much. Past momentum doesn’t help as much. Even tools and resources don’t solve the problem on their own.

What matters is how people operate.

How they make decisions when things aren’t clear. How they handle trade-offs. How they respond when the situation changes.

That’s what holds up.

And that’s what becomes visible when the environment stops helping.

Because when things get tough, you find out pretty quickly who can actually do the job and who was benefiting from everything around them.

The Real Test

At the end of the day, the real test of a leader isn’t what they do when everything’s working.

It’s what they do when it’s not.

When growth slows. When priorities shift. When there isn’t a clear answer and you still have to move forward.

That’s where judgment matters. That’s where adaptability matters. That’s where how you think and how you react actually shows up.

Those are the things that carry through.

And those are the things volatile markets reveal.

 

About The Author:

Steve Swan works with technology leaders across biotech and pharma, helping companies build the right teams and helping individuals make informed career decisions in complex, shifting markets. With decades of experience placing and advising senior technology talent, he has a front-row seat to how leaders perform across both high-growth environments and more challenging conditions. His perspective is grounded in real-world outcomes, focusing on how leaders actually operate, how organizations function under pressure, and what truly holds up when the market changes.

 

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