Leadership skills for digital-first organizations

The interview with Roxana Talef, Product Enablement Director FintechOS

With a career spanning B2B product education across various industries, Roxana Talef is scaling online learning services and driving organizational growth in digital-first environments with a leadership mindset that prioritizes personal development and continuous learning.

In this interview, Roxana shares her perspective on critical leadership qualities, addressing challenges in high-growth companies, and the central role of leadership learning and development. Join us as we delve into strategies for empowering teams, making collaborative decisions, and aligning product development with both customer needs and company goals in the dynamic world of fintech.

Headquartered in New York and London, FintechOS is a technology startup and a leader in fintech enablement, with a mission to make fintech innovation available to every company. The FintechOS platform simplifies and accelerates the launch and servicing of financial products, helping businesses recognize value up to 5 to 10 times sooner than with other approaches.

Can you tell us a bit about your journey in the tech industry and what led you to your current role?

Roxana: My career path has centered on B2B customer education. This domain has evolved dramatically in the pandemic and post-pandemic years, as more digital products found their way to consumers who required fast onboarding and needed scalable support in shortening their time-to-value.

Initially starting as an analyst, I progressively transitioned into roles that involved scaling online learning services across global markets. This progression took me from a learning technology solutions architect role into increasingly strategic positions.

One of the key aspects of my journey has been navigating the different maturity levels of tech businesses, and understanding the value points for both B2B tech customers and vendor companies. Currently, I serve as the Product Enablement Director at FintechOS, where I am responsible for overseeing the extended enterprise educational strategy in the financial services market.

In your opinion, what leadership qualities do you think are most critical to driving innovation within a digital-first organization?

Roxana: Innovation requires bold moves. However, many leaders are inclined to only take the risks that seem controllable and offer immediate rewards, which often leads to chasing market trends endlessly.

Critical thinking is the number one leadership quality needed these days. No strategic move can be executed without a comprehensive assessment and a solid understanding of the decision’s far-reaching implications. It’s about remaining intentional, goal-oriented, and solution-centric.

Moreover, agility and adaptability are essential to comprehending, navigating, and orchestrating the added value of volatility and complexity in both the business and the market. A leader should continuously reassess their approach to serving the business—as innovation can manifest subtly yet effectively through continuous process improvement or personal development, benefiting both themselves and company employees.

What are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced in your role, and how have you addressed them?

Roxana: Too often, high-growth companies overlook the need for a comprehensive assessment of their operational capacities, and that makes for the biggest challenge I have been confronted with throughout my career and across several domains. It’s akin to a David and Goliath scenario in the business world, where an ambitious vision outpaces the company’s actual capabilities.

In addressing this, I prioritize earning consensus and cross-departmental alignment before tackling any initiative.

What core values guide your decision-making process as a tech leader?

Roxana: Decisions made in silos are more prone to bias. I value collaborative decision making as not only does it secure the support that may be needed further, but often reframes the problem more inclusively.

Looking at the tech landscape today, what trends do you believe are most important for tech leaders to pay attention to?

Roxana: As a tech leader, I’m paying close attention to how AI can optimize product development—because your competitors surely will. What initially seemed like a gold rush in AI is finally evolving into accessible processing capabilities that span across the entire product lifecycle. From product discovery and design to prototyping and iterating, I expect AI to become increasingly integral to every stage of the development process.

How do you balance quick wins with long-term innovation in product development?

Roxana: What if you could pursue both simultaneously? One way is to sequence your long-term plans, using incremental improvements as steppingstones to innovation.

Think of it as adopting a phased-gate approach to your end game: each step along the way presents an opportunity to re-engage with your teams, boost morale, and demonstrate the value and progress achieved. This way, you maintain momentum while also laying the groundwork for sustainable innovation and growth.

What key factors do you consider when planning to scale your tech team to match company growth?

Roxana: Before diving into recruitment plans, let’s get one thing straight: growth is rarely linear. To effectively scale a tech team, I start by gaining a clear understanding of the capabilities the business needs to address as it expands. This understanding informs the core and functional competencies to look for in new hires, which may extend beyond the profiles currently available in the team.

I’m also sensitive to a hard-earned lesson, which is the fact that the expertise that propelled a company to its current point may not necessarily be the same as what’s needed to drive future growth. As the company evolves, so too does the skillset and the capabilities of a tech team.

How do you design products and features that align with customer needs and advance company goals?

Roxana: When it comes to feature selection and product development, customer insights and market research are undoubtedly crucial. However, it’s the mission statement that should ultimately guide the evolution of your product. Make it your beacon, as it encapsulates core values, long-term vision, and the impact you aim to make.

Note for professionals in early-stage companies: clarity around the mission statement may be lacking at this point. And if that’s the case, defaulting to principles of coherence and consistency across your product portfolios and services ecosystem will help steer you away from creating a Frankenstein-like product that tries to do everything but achieves all too little.