Zach on Leadership

Yesterday marked the 40th anniversary of the Three Mile Island partial nuclear meltdown. This was the most significant nuclear accident in US history. Fun Fact: I lived only 17 miles downwind from there. I was five months old. In case you were wondering where I got my superpowers, now you know. I was too young to remember what happened, but growing up, I heard about it all the time. For south-central Pennsylvania, Three Mile Island put us on the map….

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In the Star Wars universe, Jedi can use the Force to influence the weak-minded to comply with their will. The Jedi have a lot of cool Force powers, but this one tops the list as the coolest and most useful. It even has a name: the Jedi Mind Trick. The most well-known use of this power is in Star Wars: A New Hope when Obi-Wan Kenobi uses the Jedi Mind Trick on some imperial troopers at a checkpoint. If it’s…

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Last week, I shared with all of you that I was leaving behind the traditional world of offices and cubicles to try something new. I am excited to share the story of how a simple question turned into an idea, and then quickly became a reality. Necessity is the mother of invention CHS is in the process of remodeling our corporate office building. That’s an exciting change in itself. To accommodate that, most our IT team is simply relocating to…

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Yesterday was my last day in my private office. I packed up my things and took my painting of Darth Vader off the wall. My floor in the office building is getting remodeled, so I needed to vacate before the demolition crew comes through. I’m moving into a new workspace that does not have offices at all. There’s a lot to be excited for in that new space, but that’s a subject for a future blog article. Today, I look…

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I’ve been working in companies that practice Agile development for about a decade now. I’ve always enjoyed delivering customer value as fast as possible. It fits with my personality. I like structure that helps me go fast, and abhor bureaucracy that slows me down. Even though I’ve worked in an Agile environment and attended numerous workshops on the subject, I never took the time to get myself formally trained and certified in Scrum, until this week. For some of you,…

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I’m really busy at work. Most days I have a hard time squeezing in everything I want to accomplish. However, that hasn’t always been the case. Back in my early career, I had seasons of downtime. Looking back, what I did with that downtime was critical for developing me into the leader I am today. If you have nothing to do, read up. This article is for you. Before I started my professional career I worked a few teenage jobs….

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30 years ago this week, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure was released in theaters. For the subsequent 10 years or so, every kid in America adopted the language, saying whoa, dude, excellent, bodacious, bogus, triumphant, and other variants. While this classic movie is mostly just silly nostalgia, I thought I’d take this opportunity to draw some important leadership lessons from it. Caesar is a salad dressing dude Bill & Ted started off the film in a dire situation. The only…

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Throughout my career, at various companies, I’ve always worked closely with the Information Security team. It’s always been a close and strategic partnership for me. Often, they are the ones that analyze the risks and set the priorities and it is up to my team to implement the actions and serve as the first line of defense for the company’s information assets. A number of years ago at a previous company, I worked with an Information Security team whose members…

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I’ve been playing guitar for about 25 years now. It was my primary creative outlet when I was a young adult. I loved writing songs and performing for anyone who would listen. Originally, I had it in my mind that my tech career would be a nice fall back until I made it big as a rock star. Without elaborating at all, I’m sure you can guess exactly how that turned out. Nowadays, I still play, but not as often…

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In the late 90’s and early 2000’s I worked as a desktop support technician. I’d take dispatches from the help desk on my pager and fix computer issues. Ghost was a ubiquitous tool in those days for re-imaging a computer back to the standard gold image. Ghost wasn’t just a product. It became a verb. I distinctly recall that there were two types of desktop support technicians: The Troublehooter: This person would work extensively to figure out the root cause…

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