Success This Year Had Very Little To Do With Technical Skills

When people look back on a strong year in tech, the conversation usually centres on outcomes: projects delivered, cloud architecture optimised, or metrics moved.

For me, this year has prompted a different reflection.

What stands out isn't just what was achieved, but the specific behavioural engine that drove it. Having built and grown a business from scratch to a £15m turnover, I've earned my stripes in the "hard" side of leadership: cash flow pressure, imperfect decisions, and the absolute accountability of a founder.

Today, my work sits at the intersection of complex service operations, cloud engineering, and applied AI. While the systems have grown more sophisticated, the fundamentals of progress have only become more refined. This year reminded me that sustained, high-leverage success isn't about the latest framework, it's about a handful of core traits practiced with master-level consistency.

Here are the seven behaviours that quietly shaped my 2025.

1. Curiosity: Refusing the Legacy Mindset

In complex environments, it's easy to stop asking 'why'. Curiosity is the discipline of refusing to accept "that's just how it is" as a valid justification.

This year, curiosity was a strategic tool. It meant questioning whether a constraint was a real physical limit or just an inherited habit. Whether I was deconstructing a legacy ITSM workflow or exploring the potential of Vibe Coding, focusing on what problem we were trying to solve prevented us from building elegant solutions to the wrong problems.

2. Courage: Choosing Progress Over Comfort

Progress in tech is rarely a path of least resistance; it almost always introduces friction.

This year required a steady, professional courage: the willingness to raise uncomfortable truths early, challenge long-standing assumptions, and back ideas that weren't yet fully "proven." This isn't about being a disruptor for the sake of it, it's about a willingness to prioritise the health of the project and the long-term reliability of the system over the comfort of the status quo.

3. Resilience: The Art of Recalibration

Not every deployment is perfect; not every AI pattern lands exactly as intended. Resilience isn't about grinding harder; it's about staying present and engaged when things don't land cleanly.

This year, success came from the ability to stay in the pocket and adjust the sails without losing momentum. This quiet resilience, the ability to keep refining when results weren't immediate, is what separates a finished, production-ready system from a discarded experiment.

4. Low Ego: Maximising Clarity

In high-level technical leadership, ego is a bottleneck. I've leant on my built-in ability to know that a low-ego approach is the fastest way to get to the truth.

By being the first to say, "I might be wrong," and inviting genuine challenge, I created space for the best ideas to win. In high-stakes environments, ego adds no value; clarity does. When you stop caring who gets the credit, the speed of delivery increases exponentially.

5. Focus: The Strategic No

Experience brings a flood of ideas, but focus decides which ones actually scale. This year required a ruthless, deliberate prioritisation:

• Letting "good" ideas wait so "great" ones could thrive.
• Saying no to distractions that looked like opportunities.
• Committing fully to the few things that genuinely moved the needle for service quality and customer outcomes.

6. Integrity: The Trust Dividend

Integrity is often discussed as a moral abstract, but in consultancy and operational leadership, it is a functional asset. It shows up in being honest about what isn't working and grounding decisions in reality rather than politics.

Over time, this builds a "credibility bank." This year, that trust acted as a conduit for decision-making. When your partners and teams trust your judgment, the friction of leadership disappears and the weight of your voice increases.

7. Persistence: The Compounding Advantage

There was no single "eureka" moment this year. Success was the result of steady follow-through and continuous refinement.

In software, we understand compounding interest in technical debt; the same applies to behaviour. Small, consistent improvements in how we work stack on top of each other until progress becomes visible in hindsight. Persistence is what turns a series of small wins into a landmark year.

The Strategic Alignment

What made this year successful wasn't a new title or a sudden change in direction. It was the alignment of hard-won experience and these seven behaviours finally operating in an environment where they could reinforce each other.

As the stakes get higher and the systems broader, these traits don't become less important, they become the ultimate competitive advantage. The work now is to protect these fundamentals: curiosity in the face of familiarity, courage under pressure, and integrity when the stakes rise. That is the energy I'm carrying into my next chapter.