Zach on Leadership

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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I am a technology leader. I break the job down into three parts: Ones and Zeros: This is the technical aspect of the job. Dollars and Cents: This is the managerial aspect of the job. Flesh and Blood: This is the people part. Of those three, the Flesh and Blood is by far the hardest. The humans are always more difficult than the machines and spreadsheets. As I was making my way through my career, I really wanted to learn…

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This week marks 20 years since I started my career in technology. I thought I’d take this moment to tell the story on how I got my start. Like so many of us, I didn’t initially intend to go into the IT field, but somewhat fell into it. My origin story Growing up, I didn’t see myself as technically inclined. My older brother was the computer wizard. He programmed our Atari ST computer and went onto computer engineering school. To…

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We’ve all been there. You are in a social situation. You meet someone new. This person thinks highly of themself. This person wants you to think highly of them too, so they casually mention their association with someone of high social status. This is the classic name-drop. It’s used so that I can be impressed with the name-dropper, because the name-dropper is associated with someone that I am already impressed with. It’s superficial, egotistical, and downright annoying. It’s one thing…

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Last week, CHS held our Annual Meeting at the Minneapolis Convention Center. I always enjoy the opportunity to meet with our farmer owners and discuss the issues facing our industry. There’s something else that is very special about this event for me. It reminds me of the intrinsic values of the agricultural cooperative system. CHS is the largest cooperative, and with that position comes the responsibility to lead. If you aren’t familiar with the cooperative business model, here are the basic concepts:…

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When I was growing up, General Mills marketed Kix cereal as “Kid-Tested. Mother-Approved.” This catchy product marketing approach took into consideration the needs of two different but equally important stakeholders for their product. If it’s been a while, you can watch the commercial here: Kid-Tested Cereal Kids are the end-user of cereal. They want something tasty, with a pleasant texture, in a colorful box. I picture General Mills scientists feeding Kix to kids in a lab and measuring their responses….

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I spent seven years in middle management spanning two different companies. That gave me a good flavor of what the job entails and what it takes to do it successfully. Before I get into that, I’d like to spend some time explaining what middle management is not: Middle management isn’t anything like front-line management Front-line managers oversee individual contributors. When you are a front-line manager, you are directly accountable for the execution and delivery of services within your functional area….

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