Zach on Leadership

Early in my career, I was a desktop support tech. I wore a pager, took dispatches from the help desk, and wandered around corporate cube farms solving computer issues. I had a tech lead over me. He was responsible for handling the escalations from the techs for anything they couldn’t solve. There was some significant variation on when team members would escalate. Some techs, like me, would work problems hard and thoroughly before escalating. Others really didn’t seem to have…

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I’ve observed over the years that we are often our own worst enemies when it comes to our own career growth. We initially succeed through mastery, but it is mastery that holds us back from moving forward. Being the best in the company on a particular subject matter is great. It makes you the go-to person, gives you purpose, and earns you respect. This is a really strong motivator. It is so strong, that we hold fast to it, even…

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Technologists have a keen ability to push the limits of technology to maximize the difference it can make. We aren’t born this way. However, we all develop the curiosity to tinker with technology long before we make a career out of it. This journey started for many when they got their first computer. My brother was this way. He learned to program our Atari ST computer and push it to the limits. Surprisingly, this was not my start. I saw…

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So, I’m a bit odd, I know. For many years, I’ve conspicuously come to work on Halloween dressed as a science fiction character. In the last couple of years, I’ve taken it even further by assembling my entire team for a meeting, giving it a theme, and conducting it in character. Why on Earth would I do that? On the surface, it appears that I like to have fun, and that’s true. It also appears that I have a general…

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I recently read Satya Nadella’s new book Hit Refresh, and I also heard him speak at Microsoft Ignite and Envision last month. As a technology leader, and as a Microsoft fan, there’s a lot to like about Satya’s approach to leadership, so I thought I’d write a blog article summarizing my learnings. I am biased I’ve been a long-time fan of Microsoft. Frankly, I owe my career to the company. Starting nearly 20 years ago, I built my skills on…

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I love the cloud. I’ve had the opportunity to run mission critical cloud services and applications at several large enterprises. I migrate workloads to the cloud. Sometimes, I migrate workloads out of the public cloud into a private one. In enterprise technology, we have an odd relationship with the cloud. We often get it right, but sometimes, we get it wrong. I’m writing this blog to level-set the discussion. The cloud isn’t a Visio shape Once upon a time the…

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I live in Brooklyn Park and work in Inver Grove Heights. For those of you that aren’t familiar with Twin Cities geography, that’s a 30-mile one-way commute straight through the middle of Minneapolis and St. Paul. It’s funny. When I talk with people about my job, this is the first thing we always discuss. We don’t talk about work satisfaction, career growth, company culture, employee benefits, or company profitability. We talk about my commute. I’m sure that I drive past…

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As a leader looking to advance, you have to manage effectively in a number of directions. You need to lead your function well (managing down). You need to have a good comradery and collaboration with your peers (managing sideways). You also need to be a courageous follower of your leader (managing up). This, however, is not enough. At one point in my career at a previous company, I thought I was doing really well. I was leading a high performing…

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Isn’t it funny that we are so secretive about interviewing for jobs while currently employed? When we do it, we go into full stealth mode, so no one could possibly catch onto the fact that we are interviewing for jobs outside the company. Because, if they found out, the world would end, right? Probably not. Interview for jobs. Go ahead. It’s okay. I won’t be offended. I won’t think you are disloyal to the company. I do something pretty weird….

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I learned from the classic Disney movie Bug’s Life, that the first rule of leadership is “everything is your fault.” There’s a bit more to it than that, but it’s not a bad place to start. It’s all about accountability. I love working with people that accept responsibility and embrace accountability. Simply put, it’s really hard to work with the opposite. We’ve all had co-workers that are defensive by nature. It’s almost a knee-jerk reaction to accountability. When they are called…

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