There are titles we accept to add a line to our business card. And there are titles we accept to subtract a little from our ego. For me, the role of Business Lead at the SST Đà Nẵng Office belongs to the second kind.
I am the founder of several companies in the Lĩnh Nam ecosystem. There, I am used to having the final say. And yet, in mid-2026, I took a staff position — a staff position in the truest sense — at a partner organization: the SPT Center for Technology and Digital Services (S.S.T), the unit developing the Scharge charging system that CD Restop is partnering with. Not an honorary advisory seat. Not a name added to dress up a profile. A business lead — with an assignment decision, procedures to follow, and superiors to report to.
Why I said yes — the honest answer
Because I believe no one understands a partner better than someone who works inside that partner. CD Restop chose to cooperate with the Scharge charging system — which means choosing to tie part of its own path to the products, processes, and people of another organization. Reading documents only gives you the shell. To touch the core — how a proposal gets approved, how a policy comes into being, how the engineers and the salespeople talk to each other — you have to stand inside and look. I call it learning the trade from within.
And because of trust — the kind that is kept, not spoken. When two organizations shake hands, they usually send official letters, send contracts, send representatives. I chose to send one more thing: myself. When the head of one side is willing to work as an employee of the other, the commitment no longer lives on paper — it lives in the work of every day.
Leading in one place, serving in another
To be honest: the hardest part is not the work. The hardest part is the ego.
I am relearning how to be an employee — drafting documents in the unit's exact template, leaving the reference number blank for the records clerk to assign, submitting them and waiting for approval. Things that, at my own companies, take nothing more than a nod from me.
I am relearning how to listen in meetings — hear everything out, ask until it is clear, and only then propose. In a staff position, your opinion is not automatically right just because you speak the loudest.
I am relearning how to be evaluated — by concrete business results, not by a founder's title carried over from somewhere else.
It turns out that being a good soldier is no less difficult than being a general.
So what do we do?
Four things I remind myself of while carrying two roles at once:
- In another's house, follow that house's rules. A partner's processes are not something to fix from day one — they are something to understand first. Only once you understand do your suggestions have roots.
- Keep the roles clearly apart. When I sit in the SST office, I work for SST. In the long run the two sides' interests are one, but in each specific task, you must know which hat you are wearing.
- Let results be the common language. Between two organizations, the finest promise is work already done. Trust is not declared — it is accumulated.
- Treat humility as a skill, not a heaven-sent virtue. A skill must be practiced. And the best place to practice is wherever you are not the one who decides.
A closing word
I still believe that no one goes far alone. But the longer I work, the more I understand a second half to it: to go truly far with someone, there are times you must accept walking a stretch behind them — to learn how they step, to understand why they turn. The role at SST Đà Nẵng gives me that chance: to stand inside a partner, to be a professional employee, and to bring back to my own ecosystem something more precious than any report — understanding.
The greatest title, sometimes, is apprentice.