Zach on Leadership

It started as an idea. Then it picked up momentum. Finally, it happened. Just yesterday, CHS held its first-ever internal technology conference. We called it CHS TechKnowledge 2018 and it was awesome. While the term, Digital Transformation, is over-used, it is a relevant impetus for this event. As an IT organization, we realized that simply being great technologists isn’t going to do it. As much as we need to continuously improve as a department, that still won’t cut it. For…

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Corporate IT is a tough place to work. The hours are notoriously long. The blame is thick and the gratitude is seldom. Business people don’t talk to you when they are happy. They only come around when they are upset. And that’s just life within the four walls of your office building. Every once and a while, you get to go out and network, talk to a vendor, or attend a conference. Then you come to realize that your processes…

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I recently took a three-week break from work and this blog to tour the east coast with my family. Now that I’m back, I thought I’d start with an article inspired by one of the stops on our journey: Boston. Boston is known for many things, but at the top of the list is what happened on December 16, 1773: The Boston Tea Party. The Sons of Liberty protested taxation without representation by destroying an entire shipment of tea from…

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I love Star Trek, especially The Next Generation. This was the series that was televised during my childhood, and I was hooked. Captain Picard is such a model leader. Some of you may have wondered why I never wrote “Leadership Lessons from Jean-Luc Picard.” The reason I haven’t is because someone already did. It’s a great work, and I felt no need to duplicate or improve upon it. Check it out here. Across the various Star Trek series, the crew…

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I’ve made it to 100. I’ve been at this for two years now, writing weekly musings on technology leadership issues. On this milestone article, I believe it’s worth reflecting on why I am doing this and how it’s going. Why I like to write. My normal day-job requires a lot of in-person interaction, which I enjoy, but it taps my energy. Writing this blog forces me to draw inward periodically to focus my thinking and form ideas. It’s restorative for…

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I love the world of the X-Men. There are two groups of people on the planet: normal humans, and mutants. Mutants have superpowers. The fact that they have superpowers means they are treated like freaks and are therefore outcast from society. Most withdraw completely, or find creative ways to hide their differences and blend in. Technology geeks have some similarities. It’s usually quite obvious that they don’t quite fit in with the business crowd. They also have technical superpowers. Of…

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Happy Star Wars Day. May the 4th be with you! Boba Fett is one of the coolest characters in Star Wars. He’s mysterious. He’s independent. He has his own unique style. Best of all, he’s a bounty hunter. That profession may give you the impression that Boba Fett is a not very nice, but to the contrary, he is actually a very caring individual. Case-in-point, Darth Vader wanted to test his carbonite freezer to make sure it was safe for…

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Geeks are the smart ones. It’s the one thing we have. All other strengths we may lack. We may not be good looking, athletic, or sociable, but we have really huge brains. Our intellect is our asset. We develop it, use it, show it off, and work miracles with it every day. Yes, our minds make us a bit awkward and weird, but that’s okay. Being normal is boring. There is, however, a down side to having a big noggin….

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In 1987, Mel Brooks released Spaceballs as a parody of Star Wars and other science fiction of that era. As much as I consider myself a Star Wars geek, I’ve probably watched Spaceballs more than the movies it parodies. It’s so quotable, and somehow, it never gets old. I was recently considering a common IT problem and for some reason, Spaceballs scenes kept coming to mind. IT is all about speed. More CPU, more bandwidth, faster project execution, tightened SLAs, on-demand provisioning,…

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A while back, my boss advised me to think of my job in thirds. Here’s how he broke it down: One third of your job is to run your function. One third of your job is to influence the company. One third of your job is to influence the industry. This is both very cool, and very challenging. I totally agree with all three categories. They are all very important. The radical part is the proportion. Many would break this…

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