Zach on Leadership

There is something about my upbringing in public education that made me feel like I needed to be well-rounded. Some skills came easy. Others took more concerted effort. Rather than spend time developing my strengths, I often felt like I need to spend all of my spare energy shoring up my weaknesses. A well-leveled report card was always the goal. If something was falling, that’s where my focus went. This, of course, was the explicit intention of public education. The…

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Every leader is at the core an agent of change. If you are just maintaining or running your group, you are a manager. Leadership implies change. Changing people isn’t easy, especially if you want to do it without coercion or authoritative power. How do you go about initiating change? Well, let’s look at how Obi-Wan Kenobi did it in Star Wars, A New Hope. Some background information Luke is a rural farm boy, who is being raised by his Uncle Owen….

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It’s no secret that many in the technology field grew up reading comic books and carried their superhero fascination well into adulthood. What once was exclusively the realm of geeks has slowly made its way into the mainstream in the form of a constant stream of blockbuster movies. I love many of the superhero stories, and their resonance with real life in the trenches of enterprise technology work. In this blog article, I will derive the technology leadership lessons from…

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What were you doing this week back in 2003? I don’t even have to think about it. I’ll never forget that I was doing exactly two things: Executing a major enterprise Data Center migration and fighting off the worst cyber-attack the world had ever seen: SQL Slammer. Why have one crisis, when you can have two simultaneously, right? The Data Center Migration My company needed a new Data Center. After all, I single-handedly blew up the old one eight months prior….

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Working in the corporate jungle can be a grind. The sea of cubicles, the clueless bosses, the meaningless busywork: it’s the stuff of Office Space, The Office, Dilbert, and countless other workplace satires. They’re funny because they’re true. If you haven’t figured it out by now, the entire purpose of this blog is to create an antidote for that. Today, I’m going to zero-in on the mindset of an entrepreneur. I’ve spent the majority of my career interacting and networking…

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Jimmy is an IT infrastructure engineer. Jimmy gets an odd request from a customer to do something against his better judgement. Jimmy pushes back. The customer pushes harder, and escalates. Jimmy’s manager gets involved. Jimmy gets told to do it this time, and perhaps next time we’ll take a stand. This one is too urgent, too high profile, or too political. It’s not worth the fight. Let it go. Jimmy gets another odd request from a different customer. Jimmy doesn’t…

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“We live in a cynical world. A cynical world. And we work in a business of tough competitors.” – Jerry Maguire. The world of the corporate enterprise can be a cynical place. Week after week, I preach leadership. I do it for all of you, but I also do it for me. By writing, I remind myself of the truth. Why do you and I need these constant reminders? Our world is cynical, and frankly, sometimes so are we. Cynicism…

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Carrie Fisher’s iconic Star Wars role as Princess Leia has made such a tremendous impact on so many. I think the core reason is that she defied and redefined what it means to be a Princess. While many identify her as an icon for empowering women as leaders, these lessons are for every aspiring leader, male and female. Transcend Your Entitlement Leia was born a Princess, but I don’t think she thought of herself that way. When she introduces herself…

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DevOps is a big buzzword in the world of enterprise technology nowadays. I won’t get into the history and methodology, so you are unfamiliar with DevOps, you can read all about it here. As with all subjects I discuss on this blog, I will be looking specifically at the leadership aspects of DevOps. Why do we need DevOps? Well, DevOps is basically about Development and Operations working well together. Who wouldn’t be in favor of that? Why is that such…

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I’ve read a lot of leadership books. I’ve read each of them exactly once, except for one. There is one book that has challenged my thinking and shaped what I believe about the nature of work more than any other book I’ve read. I’ve read it, re-read it, and re-read it again because there is wisdom there that I still need to fully grasp and integrate into my work life. The book I’m talking about is Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?…

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