Zach on Leadership

The only thing constant in enterprise technology is change itself. If you boil it down, that’s the essence of our jobs. We change things: applications, web services, networks, desktops, databases, architectures, you name it. That’s the bulk of the work. Keeping systems humming without any change isn’t really that hard. It’s all of the new business requirements, refactoring, security patches, technology upgrades, organic growth, and audit remediation that makes life exciting, isn’t it? With all of this change, you’d think…

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Life in modern corporations is often marked with frequent reorganization. This can be frustrating for individual team members, who are struggling day-to-day to get their work done. Breaking-in new management is an extra distraction. It can sometimes feel like management is full of busybodies that get bored, so they decide to reshuffle the deck and watch everyone squirm. With 18 years in enterprise technology, I’ve been reorged more times than I can remember. As a leader in enterprise technology, I’ve…

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We like to be competent. As experienced professionals, and especially as leaders, there’s a built-in expectation that we know what we’re doing. If you’ve advanced in your career and had some success, changes are good that you have the confidence to take on challenges, make them your own, and make stuff happen. I’m lucky because I have leaders that report to me that exhibit these great qualities every day. I have no worries about the level of dedication, commitment, and…

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The big bad car rental company I recently rented a car from one of the major car rental companies. During the trip, I had a flat tire. After changing it out for the spare, I called the roadside assistance number on my contract to let the rental company know what happened. They promptly answered and directed me to get the tire replaced at a local tire shop. They even made an appointment for me. They did tell me that I needed…

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In enterprise technology, we love cloud computing. While for some it may be threatening, for most of us, we see it as an opportunity to change the way we consume, broker, integrate, and secure technology. It’s not about moving application workloads from one building to another, it’s about creating a better technology experience for the business. This can be done regardless of where the server racks are located. Cloud computing started out with a few basic service models such as…

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I take security incident management very seriously. For most of my career, I’ve been a part of a team that is responsible for protecting the enterprise from cyber threats. I jump into action to understand what is going on and contain the threat as soon as possible. Today, I will share with you one of those fateful events from several years ago. The day started out like any other day. I read emails and attended meetings. Things were off to…

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I recently read the biography of Elon Musk by Ashlee Vance. For those of you that don’t recognize his name, Elon is best known as a founder of PayPal, SpaceX, and Tesla Motors. He has successfully disrupted the banking, aerospace, energy, and automobile industries, and he’s only 45 years old. He is a fascinating individual and an icon of entrepreneurship and innovation. He’s also the real-life inspiration for Robert Downey Jr.’s portrayal of Tony Stark/Iron Man, my favorite super hero. One…

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In 1986, Aliens was released. It was a sequel to the 1979 movie, Alien. Aliens is one of those rare cases where the sequel is better than the original. I don’t remember exactly how old I was when I first watched Aliens, but I know for sure that I was too young. It terrified me. I think I had nightmares for a week straight. I didn’t see it again until I was an adult, at which point it became one…

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Congratulations. You are the new person on the team. We’ve all been that person from time to time. You get to hold that title until someone newer comes along. Presumably, you got onto this new team because you have lots of talent and plenty of great ideas. Perhaps it’s a new company, or just a new position within your company. When you look at your team, you see rich opportunity to implement all of your new ideas. This blog article…

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Today marks the one year anniversary of Zach on Leadership. I’d like to thank all of my readers for engaging with me, encouraging me, and spreading the word. This started off as a wild experiment, and has now become an important part of how I communicate my ideas and influence the greater IT community. I’d like to briefly revisit the mission for this blog. My tag line in my logo says it all: “Better Leaders in Enterprise Technology.” Enterprise Technology…

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