Zach on Leadership

We did it. We dropped my oldest son, Caleb, off at college last weekend. This was a first for our family. Many friends and colleagues have gone before us. It’s a significant experience and something I wanted to write about. I had to think long and hard about what unique thought I could offer you, and of course, what leadership lesson could apply to many, regardless of their stage of life. One unique aspect of this experience, is that my... Read More Read More The post Leadership Lessons from Dropping My Oldest off at College appeared first on Zach on Leadership.

I noticed this quite a while ago, and once I saw it, I couldn’t unsee it. Many movies, dare I say most, are written with a hero and a mentor. We love to focus on the hero characters, but ever-present are the mentor characters. These are the ones who show up partway into the first act to help the hero get through their early challenges in the quest. Some mentor roles are short and static, others are dynamic and involved... Read More Read More The post Leadership Lessons from Mentors in Movies appeared first on Zach on Leadership.

Last week, I spoke about technology change leadership at Open Source North. It was a lot of fun. In case you missed it, I drew heavily from these past Zach on Leadership articles: Today’s article isn’t about the content of that presentation. It’s about the experience itself. I had an epiphany: I wasn’t nervous at all. I genuinely enjoyed the speaking opportunity. I was relaxed. It was fun. If I go back 15 years in time, the past version of... Read More Read More The post 10 Public Speaking Hacks for Geeks – Revisited appeared first on Zach on Leadership.

I remember the first time I set foot in a real data center. It was roughly 26 years ago. That’s where the magic happened. That’s where the serious IT engineering work was done. At the time, I was a desktop support technician. After a few years, I advanced my career to the point where I was qualified to work in the data center. I was elated. I loved every aspect of it. The ice-cold air conditioning, the blinking LED lights, the... Read More Read More The post The End of the Corporate Data Center appeared first on Zach on Leadership.

This week, the President of the United States stepped into a modern EV and remarked with exuberance, “Everything is computer!” I will set aside the political context for this, because that’s not the purpose of this blog. I will take a moment to reflect on this humorous comment because it provides me the opportunity to reflect on our relationship with technology in this modern era. The term “computer” I still use the term, “computer,” but I also recognize that it’s... Read More Read More The post Everything is Computer appeared first on Zach on Leadership.

I was asked a pretty insightful question this week. I was doing Q&A with Minnesota Technology Association’s ACE Leadership cohort. We were discussing a wide range of leadership topics when one of the participants asked this interesting question: How do you know what’s really going on in your team? Do you use dashboards or status reports? What’s your method? I sat back in my chair for a moment to gather my thoughts. It occurred to me that this is a... Read More Read More The post How Do You Know What’s Really Going on in Your Team? appeared first on Zach on Leadership.

I love to teach leadership lessons inspired by pop culture references. Last week I drew leadership lessons from Napoleon Dynamite. That lesson was targeted at people my age and younger. Some of my older readers may not have gotten much out of it. I’d like to balance that out with an article that will likely resonate with people my age and older. In 1976, Boston released their debut self-titled album, with the hit, “Peace of Mind.” Fast forward 20 years,... Read More Read More The post Leadership Lessons from Boston’s ‘Peace of Mind’ appeared first on Zach on Leadership.

Roughly 12-14 years ago, a war raged in every corporate IT department. The people wanted iPhones at work. Corporate IT clung to their BlackBerry’s. This is most certainly old news. Why bring it up now? I think time gives us perspective. There are lessons to be gleaned now that were hard to see then. We love to talk about the hot new tech trends. Do we ever look back and evaluate our previous positions? What did we get right? What... Read More Read More The post Leadership Lessons from Losing the BlackBerry appeared first on Zach on Leadership.

Eight years ago when I started Zach on Leadership, some of my first blog articles were about helping people advance in their careers. I love techies. I’m one of them. I spent years of my career as a technician and engineer. Then I advanced and started climbing the corporate ladder. I truly believe that techies make the best technology leaders, but few of them are equipped to succeed in leadership. That’s where I come in. I detailed the pathway that... Read More Read More The post What’s the Difference Between a Director and a Vice President? appeared first on Zach on Leadership.

Mark Zuckerberg famously started Facebook with the motto, “Move Fast and Break Things.” Eventually, they abandoned that motto after they broke a few too many things. I relate to this struggle more than most. Some lean more toward operational stability. Some lean more toward disruptive innovation. I’m squarely in the uncomfortable middle. Operations I’ve been accountable for operations my whole career. Twice now, I’ve been explicitly hired into a company because they really needed some operational rigor. Things were breaking... Read More Read More The post The Balancing Act of Innovation and Operations appeared first on Zach on Leadership.

I awoke on Friday, July 19th to a phone full of missed calls and texts. Rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I went to my work computer, and jiggled my mouse to wake it up, only to see the blue screen of death. I returned the calls and quickly got up to speed on the technical carnage impacting the planet. Some of you never heard of CrowdStrike before last Friday, but most of us in enterprise technology know it well.... Read More Read More The post The Day 8.5 Million Computers Died appeared first on Zach on Leadership.

Don’t you love it when you find a small tweak that makes a big difference? That always feels like a win because so much of what we do requires tremendous effort and the benefits are not always realized. We experienced one of these low-effort, high-reward changes this past year, and I thought I’d share our insights. Problem #1: Like many organizations, we rely on the timely cascade of relevant, contextualized information. Discussions at the executive level get shared with the... Read More Read More The post The Meeting Cascade: A Small Tweak to Improve Communication Speed and Cross-team Collaboration appeared first on Zach on Leadership.