Who's behind this

Hi, I'm Sebastian aka Pedro.

For over 30 years I have built technology organisations in Central and Eastern Europe. I spent nearly six years at Allegro as engineering director and chief architect, served as CTO and technical advisor at G2A, and co-founded merXu, a B2B marketplace backed by Accel and Point Nine, where I was CTO. I have led with formal authority, with budgets, teams and the right to decide. But the work that shaped me most came from roles without it. As an architect, I could not order anyone to adopt a standard or rethink a design. I had to earn it through clarity, trust and persistence. Over time I saw that the same was true one level up: the most important changes rarely came from the org chart. They came from people who could read the terrain, build coalitions and keep momentum without anyone reporting to them. I started Leadership Without Authority because that skill decides careers and transformations, yet almost nobody teaches it deliberately. I believe the AI era makes it more important, not less. AI can now take over much of the managerial work a leader without authority never had support for: tracking commitments, preparing decisions, keeping context, even holding up an honest mirror. What remains human is the part that matters most: being someone people choose to follow without having to.

You don't need a title to lead. You need a way of working that other people can't replicate — including AI.

Over the years I have worked with engineers, architects, product managers and leaders across marketplaces, e-commerce and fintech, from fast-growing startups to some of the largest technology companies in the region. Today I work mostly with senior individual contributors, such as staff and principal engineers, architects and tech leads, and with managers who have to move initiatives across teams they do not control. They usually come to me when an important initiative has stalled because nobody formally owns it, when they cannot read the stakeholder landscape, when they need to prepare for a difficult conversation with a sponsor or a sceptical executive, or when they feel their influence quietly eroding. More and more, they also come to learn how to use AI as a long-term thinking partner for strategy, communication and self-reflection, not just a tool for quick answers.