In the early hours of February 24, 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Missiles and artillery struck cities from Kyiv to Kharkiv and beyond; troops crossed from the north, east and south. In the days and weeks that followed, fighting pressed toward the capital and other major cities, and millions of people began to flee west.

At GlobalLogic, roughly a third of our talented team was in Ukraine. Colleagues I knew — engineers, friends, people whose kids I'd heard about on calls — had to move west overnight as bombs fell and fighting erupted. Some headed toward safer regions inside the country. Others crossed borders when they could. I was on the phone and in messages day and night, checking who was safe, who was still on the road, who needed help. It was extremely stressful, chiefly because I was afraid for my team members and my friends.

Looking back, that season built character in me in a way nothing else in my career has. Plans were secondary. People were not.

People first, then promises

My job in that moment was simple to say and hard to do: keep people safe and keep our promises to clients.

We did both. The order mattered. People first. When our colleagues had to relocate, the immediate work was about their safety and their families' stability. No client deliverable was more important.

But the second half mattered too: keep your promises. Clients had trusted us with real work. Walking away from those commitments would have hurt them, and ultimately it would have hurt the team too, because their work and their reputation were on the line. The answer wasn't choosing one over the other. It was doing the hard work to honor both.

Not every client made that easy. I had to make a hard decision with a client who showed little empathy and did not seem to care about the plight of the individuals involved. I won't name them. What I will say is that when someone treats your people as interchangeable capacity in the middle of a war, you learn quickly what your own values actually are.

The part I'm most proud of

Some of our Ukraine team members I was able to sponsor and help bring to safety in the United States. I'm most proud of helping them, and of having been in a position where I could. They were great talents. They were also great friends. I won't name them here — their stories belong to them — but I carry that chapter with a kind of quiet gratitude I don't feel about any deal or title.

A crisis tests character more than strategy. Plans are easy to write when things are calm. What a team really learns about its leaders comes when the plan falls apart.

Leadership is stewardship

I see leadership as stewardship. The people, clients and capital in front of me were entrusted to someone, and for a season that someone is me. I'm a follower of Christ, and that faith shapes how I lead and the decisions I make. In practice, it means integrity, service, and treating people, clients and resources as things entrusted to me rather than things I own.

That framing matters most when things get hard. If you think of your team as resources, a crisis becomes a resourcing problem. If you think of them as people entrusted to you, the first question becomes: are they safe? Everything else comes after that.

Tell the truth early

One of the most practical lessons from any crisis is this: tell the truth early. Clients can handle bad news. What they can't handle is surprise. When something is at risk, I'd rather pick up the phone today and say "here's what's happening and here's our plan" than wait until it's obvious to everyone.

That same habit shows up in my everyday work. Honest scoping, being clear about what's ready and what isn't, and not committing to something before you've checked you can deliver it. It's all the same muscle.

Calm is contagious

Teams take their cue from their leaders. If the leader is panicking, the team panics. If the leader is steady, the team finds its footing. People sometimes describe me as steady and direct, and I take that as a responsibility. Being steady doesn't mean pretending everything is fine. It means being honest about the situation and clear about the next step — even when the next step is another long night of calls, checking that someone made it west.

I'm happy to be a calm second voice for leaders going through their own hard seasons. Sometimes the most useful thing someone can hear is that others have walked a similar road and come through it.

Trust is the foundation

If you spend five minutes with me, I hope you leave knowing I'm someone you can trust. Everything else, the ideas, the plans, the work, is built on that.

I've been part of enough deals and transitions to know what keeps its value and what quietly wears it down. It's almost always people and client trust. You can rebuild a system. Rebuilding trust takes much longer.

Why this matters in the AI era

You might wonder what any of this has to do with AI-led engineering and transformation. Quite a lot, actually.

AI is creating its own kind of uncertainty. Teams wonder what it means for their jobs. Clients wonder whether promises about AI will hold up. Leaders feel pressure to move fast. In that environment, the same principles apply:

  • Put people first. Use AI to amplify what your people do well, and keep people checking the work.
  • Keep your promises. Don't let a slick demo turn into a commitment you can't deliver.
  • Tell the truth early. Be clear about what AI can do today and what it can't.
  • Stay steady. Make decisions based on the business outcome, not the hype cycle.

The tools keep changing, now faster with AI. What makes them work hasn't. Every technology shift I've been part of, from PC to cloud to AI, has rewarded the leaders who took care of their people and kept their word.

What I try to leave behind

My goal is simple: leave teams stronger than I found them. That's true whether it's a startup, a global center of excellence, or a team going through the hardest season of their working lives.

Good people, honest partnerships, and the patience to build something that lasts. In a crisis, that's not a slogan. It's the whole plan.

I write about leading people well through every technology shift. More at simon-chan.com.