Technical brilliance does not guarantee leadership effectiveness. Deep tech founders and executives who can engineer breakthrough innovations often struggle with strategic delegation, team alignment, and decision clarity. The gap between expert and executive becomes a bottleneck that slows product development, frustrates teams, and limits scale.
Tem Lawal, Ph.D., Founding Partner and CEO at Ellum Leadership Advisors, has spent 15 years advising business leaders on the people and leadership decisions that drive success in complex, high-growth environments. With a PhD in industrial-organizational psychology and experience working with global brands like Gartner and FedEx, as well as deep tech innovators like Mesa Quantum, he understands that leading in deep tech requires more than generic leadership advice.
“You’re not just managing smart people. You’re leading experts who are pushing the boundaries of science and engineering,” Tem explains. “Technical mastery doesn’t automatically translate to leadership effectiveness and business success.”
Deep Tech Demands Deep Leadership
Leading in deep tech is unlike any other space. Founders and technical leaders who have spent years mastering their craft suddenly face challenges that have nothing to do with their domain expertise. They need to delegate strategically, create alignment across cross-functional teams, and make decisions with incomplete information while maintaining team confidence. Too often, brilliant founders struggle not because they lack intelligence but because they never had to lead in this way before. At Ellum, Tem calls this gap the leap from expert to executive. Closing it requires more than standard leadership training. It takes targeted coaching, real-time feedback, and leadership frameworks tailored for technical leaders. “The leap from expert to executive is where many deep tech leaders get stuck,” Tem says. “Closing that gap requires frameworks built specifically for technical environments, not generic corporate playbooks.”
Clarity Over Complexity
In deep tech, ambiguity is part of the game. Research timelines are uncertain. Technical feasibility evolves as experiments progress. Market validation takes longer than in traditional software. But when ambiguity creeps into leadership, team dynamics, or decision-making, it becomes a performance problem. Product development slows when teams are unclear on priorities. Team members get frustrated when accountability is undefined. Retention suffers when people cannot see how their work connects to larger goals. Dr. Lawal’s approach is grounded in behavioral science and supported by AI-powered tools that create clarity on roles, trust, accountability, and decision rights. “Whether we’re running a 360 leadership assessment, facilitating a team offsite, or implementing a performance management process, our goal is always the same: create clarity,” Tem explains. “When leaders are clear, teams move faster, communicate better, and execute with more confidence.”
Build Teams That Scale With You
As companies grow, leadership challenges evolve rapidly. What worked at 10 people rarely works at 50, let alone 200. The key is building scalable leadership, and people practices early: delegation systems, feedback loops, decision rights, and cultural norms that grow with the organization. Lawal helps founders and their teams implement just-right solutions. No heavy playbooks, just what is needed now with an eye to what is coming next. This prevents the trial and error that costs time, energy, and momentum as organizations scale. “The key is building scalable practices early,” Tem says. “Delegation systems, feedback loops, decision rights, and cultural norms that grow with you. It’s about getting unstuck and staying ahead without the trial and error that costs momentum.”
Leadership as Strategic Advantage
Leadership is not a soft skill. It is a strategic advantage. “Leadership is the edge that determines whether your innovation scales or stalls,” Dr. Lawal concludes. “Build leadership capabilities that match the complexity and ambition of your vision. That’s how deep tech teams turn technical brilliance into business success.”
Connect with Tem Lawal on LinkedIn for insights on building leadership capabilities in deep tech teams.
