Thoughts on technology, leadership, security, infrastructure, automation, and the systems between them.
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Leadership
One of the most important skills in IT leadership has nothing to do with technology. It’s learning how to talk about technology to people who don’t live in our world. Think about a box of cereal. When you walk down the grocery aisle, the front of the box doesn’t lead with a paragraph explaining every ingredient, how...
Leadership
One of the themes that continues to stand out to me through the NC CGCIO program is how much the role of technology leadership has changed. Being an IT leader today isn’t just about keeping the network up, protecting systems, replacing hardware, or implementing the next piece of technology. Those things still matter...
Leadership
There is a big difference between digitization and transformation. Sometimes an organization takes a process that has existed for years, moves the form online, adds an electronic approval workflow, sends some automated notifications, and calls it digital transformation. But did we actually make the process better? Or...
Leadership
“We are out of money. Now we need to think.” I keep coming back to that phrase because there is a surprisingly good IT leadership lesson buried inside it. When money is available, it is easy for purchasing to become the answer to every technology problem. Need a capability? Buy another platform. Need more capacity? Buy...
Leadership
One of the most interesting things about leadership is that most of us can describe the kind of leader we think we are. The harder question is whether the people around us would describe us the same way. In IT leadership, I’ve found most leadership styles tend to fall into a few common categories. Autocratic leadership...
Infrastructure
One of the easiest traps for leaders, especially in IT, is confusing activity with progress. A day can disappear quickly. Emails need responses. Meetings fill the calendar. Phones ring. Teams messages arrive every few minutes. Unexpected issues demand immediate attention. By the end of the day, you may feel exhausted...
Leadership
Early in our careers, most of us are rewarded for being responsible. We build the system. We fix the outage. We make it work. That competence gets noticed and often becomes the reason we are promoted. At some point, though, responsibility turns into accountability, and that transition is rarely discussed out loud...
