Leading a High-Performing Org & Cross-Functional Acumen with Omar Halabieh (Amazon Tech Director)

Chat with Omar Halabieh (Amazon Tech Director)

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Dec 10, 2024

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Omar Halabieh — is a global technology executive with over 20 years of experience. He is currently the Director of Software Engineering at Amazon, leading the Technology function for Payments across the Middle East and Africa. In this role, his aim is to make the payment experience of merchants (Amazon Payment Services) and customers (Stores) the most simple, affordable, and trusted.

Omar has been recognized as a LinkedIn Top Voice and is ranked the #1 LinkedIn Arab World Creator in Management and Leadership.

In our fireside chat, Omar and Jason Yoong (my Operating Partner) discuss:

High-performing organizations.
Navigating cross-functional challenges.
Balancing leadership and staying in the details.
Driving personal development, maintaining energy, and addressing burnout.

Watch on YouTube.

Takeaways

Disagreements are a good thing. Normalize it! As a leader, your job is to lead by example, raise the bar, and set the expectation that you want healthy disagreements and debates. Create mechanisms such as a document section that asks “What debates are you having within the team?” followed by encouragement to dive deep in an objective way. In meetings, you want your team focused on truth seeking, not “manager-playing” (e.g. “Let’s all align that this is what X manager wants to hear”).
How do Omar’s direct reports build trust with him? “Say what you do, do what you say, and minimize surprises.” Set clear expectations and use judgement on what is impactful / important enough to inform of. Early and often communication when something changes (be proactive). No leader likes “nasty surprises.”
You create a proactive culture with a clear strategy, ruthlessly driving focus and execution on the right things, and root causing operational problems. Ensure your strategy (and the why behind it) is well understood by all via various forms of communication with high consistent repetition. Eliminate distractions (including shiny new objects), this also helps prevent burnout from spreading yourself too thin. Actively reduce your operational reactive load by investing in fully solving issues in a sustainable way. And pay attention to “execution smells” such as a missed milestone or rework as signals to when to dive deep as a leader—as Warren Buffett said: “There’s rarely just one cockroach in the kitchen.”
The foundations of cross-functional influence are understanding the lingo (includes key objectives and goals) of the other function and be a value additive long-term team partner. For example, when working with your Finance Business Partner—go in understanding the objectives, financials, and key metrics such as the Contribution Target, Contribution Profit Target, Operational Profit Target, etc so they understand (and appreciate) your message—this builds trust and rapport. The other element is to view your job in terms of educating others about the opportunities and challenges that you see—this helps pull people to your ideas (as opposed to you pushing your ideas).
Three strengths Senior Managers must focus on to get promoted to Director at a big company:
1. How are you learning, understanding, and shaping where the business is going and relating that to your specific function. For example, if you lead the Technology function, what technology investments do we need to start making now to propel and ready the business growth 2-3 years from now.
2. Strong cross-functional acumen and point of views. You must wear two hats: (1) the functional leader of your domain and (2) a member of the Board of Directors for your organization.
3. Be the steward of the culture of your organization. Set the standards, remove organizational friction, and design the organization to be at it’s best.
Five signs of a high-performing organization:
1. Your team operates autonomously (they don’t need you to function).
2. Your team drives proactive (not reactive) work.
3. Strong qualitative outputs (e.g. stakeholder and customer feedback).
4. Employee horizontal and vertical growth, talent in-flow vs outflow.
5. Does your team frequently surface disagreements and healthy debates (vs just upward escalations)?
Omar’s most gifted personal development books:
1. How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie — on how to build true meaningful relationships.
2. What Got You Here Won't Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith — the career almanack on how to think about career growth.
3. Influence by Robert Cialdini — the building blocks of how to develop influence (critical for leadership).

Note: In the video recording, at 25:06 Jason dropped off Zoom due to a power outage caused by Hurricane Helene. Jason would later call back in via mobile while Omar did an excellent job continuing the conversation with Level Up community members via an impromptu Q&A. A real example of how to handle unexpected situations and pivot as needed—thank you Omar!

Connect with Omar on LinkedIn (share your perspectives on his LinkedIn posts) and check out his resources and mentorship services.

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