Zach on Leadership

In many ways I’ve thrived in my career through meritocracy. Competition is one of my top five StrengthsFinder themes. I compete for promotions and new job opportunities. I compete with other companies to get top talent onto my team. I’m intrinsically motivated to be the best performer among my peer group. Sometimes I achieve that and sometimes I don’t, but no one needs to tell me to do it. I naturally pursue high-performance. There are many companies that confidently call…

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I built my career on IT infrastructure. About a year ago, I was given the opportunity to lead software development too. I love infrastructure. I love code. I really love Infrastructure as Code (IaC). IaC is this end-state nirvana where all of your infrastructure can be provisioned, configured, and maintained programmatically, rather than manually through interactive consoles. It’s only been a recent phenomenon that this is even possible. Infrastructure administrators and engineers all learned how to do their jobs via management consoles,…

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Coaching means a lot of things to a lot of people. Of course, there are sports coaches. In my personal life, I’m a Lego robotics coach. There are also business coaches and life coaches. I’m not a professional coach, at least not as my primary job function. I’m a technology leader. However, to do that effectively, I often need to play the role of a coach. I’ll get into what that looks like shortly, but first, I’d like to take…

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I recently read the latest autobiography of Richard Branson, Finding My Virginity. For those of you that don’t recognize his name, Richard is best known as the founder of the Virgin Group, a conglomerate of Virgin brands such as Virgin Records, Virgin Atlantic, Virgin Mobile, Virgin Galactic, and 400 other companies. Sir Richard Branson is also a knight of the United Kingdom. In addition to being a billionaire entrepreneur, he’s an adventurer, philanthropist, and all-around troublemaker. I’m not as capable…

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Enterprise technology groups have a lot of responsibilities, but their primary mission is incident resolution. Incident resolution typically happens through the forward escalation process, but sometimes it is invoked in the reverse order. In this article, I will explore the pitfalls of this predicament, and offer some solutions. Forward Escalation This is the normal mode of incident resolution. The best-case scenario is a user who can achieve incident resolution via a self-service portal or a good knowledge base. If not,…

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I’m a numbers guy. I like measuring my performance, tracking progress, and holding myself and my team accountable to metric-driven goals… until I don’t. I’m also a people-person. I don’t want my contribution to be defined by a figure. I hate it when metrics drive bad behavior. I care about culture and the health of my team a lot more than next quarter’s target. In one breath, I champion the need for data-driven decision-making, and in the next, I criticize…

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This fall, I had the opportunity to coach a Lego robotics team in the FIRST Lego League. There are over 32,000 teams in the First Lego League in 88 countries, and over 600 teams in Minnesota alone. Each season, every team in the league receives the same tournament board. Teams design, build, and program their robots to score points on the tournament board. The robots must be designed to operate autonomously. You can read more about it here. Our team…

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I had a great opportunity to be a guest on the 12MinuteConvos Podcast with Engel Jones.  We talked about my passion around leadership development. We discussed how I benefited early in my career from some great leaders, and how I am driven to pay it forward and pass it on. We also discussed the habits of a good leader including consistent reading and continuous learning. Listen to this episode here: https://twelveminuteconvos.com/zach-hughes/

There are two kinds of IT departments. The first kind is the cost center. IT is an expense to be managed, like the utility bill. IT focuses on unit cost reduction and efficiency. IT is a means to an end, and a necessary evil to participate in the modern economy. The business needs IT, but doesn’t love it. This is a race to the bottom. The goal is to make the IT widgets that the business needs as cheap as…

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Geeks love to cover their laptops with stickers. It’s a form a self-expression. It tells those around us about what kind of technology we are into and what brands represent us best. You’re a tech, and you are going places. You are working on your leadership skills to influence those around you. You are an avid reader of this super-cool blog that speaks to the challenges you face. Now, you want to show it. That’s why I made the Zach…

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