Thoughts on technology, leadership, security, infrastructure, automation, and the systems between them.
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Infrastructure
“Broadband is not the differentiator. The absence of broadband is the differentiator.” That statement has stuck with me. As technology leaders in North Carolina, particularly in our rural communities, we need to change the way we think about connectivity. There was a time when broadband access could be marketed as an...
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
This month continued to challenge how I think about technology leadership. One idea in particular stuck with me: technology should not be the starting point of the conversation. The mission should be. As IT leaders, it is easy to talk about infrastructure, cybersecurity, cloud platforms, applications, integrations, and...
Cybersecurity
I heard this phrase today, and my cybersecurity brain immediately went somewhere else with it. In cybersecurity, the diggers are almost always ahead of the fillers. Someone discovers a vulnerability before there is a patch. Someone develops a new attack technique before there is a detection rule. Someone finds a way...
Technology
One lesson from my CGCIO journey has made me rethink what it means to call a technology project “complete.” Installed is not the same as implemented. I've seen this cycle more than once in IT. A request comes in for a new system, service, or integration. IT gets to work. We build the infrastructure, configure...
Leadership
The higher you climb in IT, the more human the job becomes. That's one of the concepts I've been reflecting on since beginning the CGCIO program. Early in an IT career, we tend to measure ourselves by technical ability. Can I fix it? Can I build it? Can I secure it? Can I keep it running? Those skills don't become less...
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
First CGCIO class is officially in the books. I went into the UNC School of Government’s Certified Government Chief Information Officer program expecting to learn. What I did not fully appreciate was how valuable the conversations outside of the material would be. Over the first two days, we explored leadership, the...
Technology
Any parent probably knows this phenomenon. Mom has told the kids three times to settle down. “Stop.” “Leave your brother alone.” “Guys, I mean it.” Then Dad walks into the room. “Enough.” Suddenly, everybody discovers the ability to hear. It isn’t necessarily that the kids respect Dad more or that Mom was wrong. Dad’s...
Leadership
You do not always get the hand you want. You get the hand you are dealt, and then you figure out how to make it work. The more I think about it, the more that feels like working in higher education. The difference is that we are not all holding the same cards. IT may be looking at cybersecurity, aging infrastructure...
Leadership
There’s an old military style saying I’ve always liked: “The effective range of an excuse is zero.” In military terms, effective range is the distance at which a weapon or system can reliably accomplish its intended purpose. An excuse has none. I think the same principle applies surprisingly well to IT leadership. The...
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...
Leadership
Spend enough time in technology and you start to notice something interesting. The people who make the biggest impact in IT are not always the ones who know the most commands, the most programming languages, or the deepest architecture diagrams. Technical skill matters, but it is not the skill that ultimately defines...
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...
Leadership
One of the most common myths I still see in IT, especially in higher education and K 12 environments, is the belief that leadership only starts once you reach the top of the org chart. It sounds logical on the surface, but in practice, it quietly limits growth, influence, and trust long before anyone realizes it...
Leadership
As IT leaders, we are used to working within constraints. We identify needs, set goals, build plans, and then do the hard work of aligning priorities, approvals, and budgets to turn ideas into reality. That process forces discipline. It sharpens focus. It demands that we justify value at every step. Then, sometimes...
