MEF Advisor Paul Ruppert welcomes Admiral Mike “Nasty” Manazir, Top Gun graduate, F14 and Super Hornet pilot, Carrier Strike Group commander, Pentagon strategist, Boeing executive, and author of Learn How to Lead to Win, to examine the essence of effective leadership in today’s hyperconnected and high variance environment. His insights empower telecoms, CPaaS providers, and digital enterprises to scale leadership, align traditional structures with agile startups, and sustain resilient adaptable teams amid disruption.
What You’ll Discover:
HeartFirst Leadership & The Manazir Maxims
Admiral Manazir cuts through jargon by advocating that real leadership isn’t about a title—it’s about connection. From the flight deck to the conference room, he leads from the heart, prioritizing listening, trust, and empathy over hierarchy. These foundational leadership maxims—like clarity under pressure, resilience in the face of failure, and empowered delegation—translate directly to modern IT environments where uncertainty is the only constant.
Real leadership isn’t about a title—it’s about connection.” — Admiral Mike Manazir”
Deploying Nimitz’s Resolve in Tech Command Centers
Paul draws parallels between WWII Admiral Chester Nimitz’s strategic calm after Pearl Harbor and the challenges IT leaders face today. Manazir echoes that legacy: “Don’t flinch, don’t grandstand”—find the steady center amid chaos. He emphasizes strategy grounded in fundamentals, modular approaches to complex systems, and unwavering confidence in your team’s capabilities.
Applying FleetScale Thinking to Network Architectures
Commanding a carrier strike group taught Manazir the art of orchestrating disparate assets under a unifying purpose. That maps neatly onto telecom: hardware, software, connectivity, and security only deliver when aligned. He underscores the importance of mission alignment, clear communication, and cross-functional synchronicity—lessons that help build robust, adaptable networks without sacrificing innovation.
Storytelling as a Leadership Tool
“In the chaos of carrier operations, the most critical staffer wasn’t the planner—it was the communicator,” Manazir says. He brings that human narrative to leadership: crafting stories that inspire vision, embed values, and unite distributed teams across codebases, continents, and hierarchy levels.
Why This Matters to You in Telecom:
- Scale with empathy: Lead cross-disciplinary teams by investing in human trust.
- Design with resilience: Build systems that breathe, adapt, and recover.
- Lead with narrative: Use storytelling to rally developers, engineers, and executives around shared purpose.
- Learn with purpose: Treat every outage, bug, or sprint as an opportunity to reflect and improve.
Join us as Paul Ruppert turns a strategic lens on military leadership’s modern applications—through the lens of IT and telecommunications. If you’re navigating RCS cloud migrations, carrier integrations, or scaling teams for 5G deployments, Admiral Manazir’s insights offer a flight plan for transformational leadership.
By responding decisively, collaboratively, and strategically, MEF members can navigate this uncertain landscape effectively, minimizing risks and positioning themselves for sustained success.
