I love the future, but sometimes, it is important to recognize the past. More than most, I pay attention to company history. I love our origin story and the twists and turns along the way. Understanding our past can help us make sense of our present and realize our future. CHS is a 90-year-old company. That history is filled with a lot of mergers. The most significant merger happened in 1998 when Cenex and Harvest States joined to form CHS….
I’ve written previously on the importance of using the time off that your company gives you. It’s so easy to just let it accumulate and it takes real discipline to plan ahead and use it. If you do, you’ll find yourself sharper and more creative at work. If you haven’t read that article, read it now, then continue on. Using your time off is critical, but how? There are plenty of right answers to this question. I’ve experimented with several…
I’ve been leading infrastructure teams at CHS for nearly four years now. A little over two years ago I got the opportunity to lead our development teams too. Since then, we’ve been our on DevOps journey to align teams and invest in technologies that help us operate more effectively. We’ve made a number of slight adjustments along the way and have piloted a few different ways of working so we can learn what works best. You can read about some…
We all have those memorable moments that mark our careers. Some moments are so impactful that we know while we are experiencing them, that we will look back and remember them for decades to come. I just had one of those experiences. I was given the unique opportunity to participate in my company’s executive leadership development program, CHS Leading for Results. This program was very special in several ways. Academics The program was developed in partnership with and held on-campus…
Corporations like to make people jump through hoops to make changes. It may seem like a pain, but often a little process and bureaucracy is the very thing that makes an organization organized. Without it, we’d never be able to operate at the scale we do. For a decent part of my career, I fought bureaucracy. Every board approval I needed reminded me that I wasn’t empowered. That bothered me a lot. I’d drive home many evenings blasting Rage Against…
Today, April 26th, is Alien Day. How is that? Well, if you are a fan of the Alien movie franchise, you know that the xenomorphs were first discovered on LV-426. 426 works out nicely to April 26th. In 1986, Aliens was released. It was a sequel to the 1979 movie, Alien. Aliens is one of those rare cases where the sequel is better than the original. I don’t remember exactly how old I was when I first watched Aliens, but I know for sure that I…
I was having lunch with my family this past Sunday afternoon. Out of nowhere, my two oldest sons, Caleb, 13, and Nathan, 11, asked, “Dad, can we have 2FA?” You may be thinking that my kids are into IT and cybersecurity, but they aren’t. Because I was caught off guard and wanted to know if we were talking about what I thought we were talking about, I asked them, “What does 2FA stand for?” Caleb answered, “Two Factor Authorization.” “Close….
About a month ago, CHS opened a new office in Lowertown, St. Paul. It was a new kind of office for us. We did it for a variety of reasons. One of the more interesting drivers was our desire to experiment. You can read all about the overall vision in my previous article on the subject. If you missed it, give it a quick read first, then continue on here. I’d like to use this article to dive into an…
Sometimes, the truth is stranger than fiction. I picked up this week’s copy of Investor’s Business Daily and flipped to page A4. I saw myself quoted in a nationally-circulated newspaper for investment bankers and business leaders. The topic? How to dress for success. Those that know me well, know that I was tragically born without a sense of fashion, so how did this possibly come to be? Getting discovered I’ve been blogging weekly for nearly three years now. I’d by…
Today marks the 20th anniversary of the theatrical release of one of my all-time favorite movies, The Matrix. The post-apocalyptic cyberpunk style mixed with the philosophical depth and ground-breaking effects all add up to a monumental achievement. It’s influence on pop-culture remains ever-present today, which is shocking considering it was released 20 years ago. For a while after The Matrix’s release, it was popular to analogize just about anything and everything to it. So much, that what I’m about to do may be…