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….
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,…
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…
Recently, I jumped into a debate on LinkedIn about the use of personal technology in meetings. Here’s the exact post that grabbed my attention: I agree with most of this, and I’m actually a huge fan of Simon Sinek (the originator of the post). I recently wrote a positive blog about his teaching. My hang up is #2: “Encourage notetaking on paper instead of computers.” Here was my response: “Why pencil and paper and not stone tablets and chisels? Leading…
My real title is Director of IT Development & Operations. That sounds pretty cool, right? Well, I have another job too. It’s pretty unofficial, but it’s real. I’m the company’s A/V (Audio/Video) guy. Here’s what happens nearly every single day: I show up to a meeting as an attendee. The presenter starts getting setup. The presenter starts struggling with WiFi, the display, Skype, WebEx, the speakerphone, cables, adapters, or something. The presenter starts to sweat. Other attendees start casually gazing…
Companies that accumulate too much financial debt suffer significant consequences. They are often unable to respond to market opportunities because they are over-leveraged. They are also at-risk for making significant structural changes just to stay afloat. Most large companies manage their finances appropriately to avoid these consequences. However, these same companies are often prone to accumulating large amounts of technical debt. What is technical debt? Technical debt is what happens when we focus on features and functionality, and ignore non-functional…
Have you ever noticed my tag line? It reads “Better Leaders in Enterprise Technology.” It doesn’t read “Better Leaders in Information Technology.” Why did I do that? There are two primary reasons: scale and scope. Enterprise scale Most companies midsize and up have some sort of IT department. While there’s nothing wrong with working in a small shop, all of my experience has been in large corporations with more than a few billion dollars in revenue. Since I don’t have…
Two managers talk about training their employees. The first asks, “What if we train them, and they leave?” The second responds, “What if we don’t train them, and they stay?” This is true of every profession, but it cannot be more true for technology professionals. Technology changes so fast and we have an extra burden to stay on top of it. Yet somehow, every place I’ve worked, I’ve seen large groups of engineers that haven’t taken any training in years,…
I had a great opportunity to be a guest on the Got Friends show with Tony Huang. We talked in-depth about leadership development within IT. Check it out.
The purpose of this blog is to create better leaders in enterprise technology. The assertion that we need better leaders presupposes that there are plenty of bad leaders out there. What do you do if you work for one? Good vs. Bad I probably watched too much He-Man as a kid, because my initial gut reaction is to judge leaders in a binary way: good or bad. You are one or the other. Of course, I think of myself as…
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