July 9, 2023 “I’ve looked at life from both sides now. From up and down and still somehow…” When you’re an IT leader, you need to remember the words of Hippocrates. No, not those words. In addition to the famous Oath taken by doctors, he also came up with the shorter and catchier “First, Do…
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May 31, 2023 It’s been a minute since I’ve taken the time to put pen to paper. It’s hard sometimes to distill the events and trends into something worth writing about. I do that, dear Reader, because I don’t want to just throw things at the wall. I prefer to give you something meaningful that…
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April 23, 2023 Every Therapist needs their own Therapist. When you’re a leader and change agent, you have to be a therapist sometimes — to the folks who report to you and to the organization as a whole. Your job is less about tech and more about encouraging people and organizations to change behaviors. As…
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“If work violates your values, quitting is an expression of integrity.” Adam Grant, Author & Organizational Psychologist February 27, 2023 This last Christmas, I was talking to a friend who didn’t understand Quiet Quitting. What my friend didn’t understand was Why. Why, if you’ve got a good job, would you not seek to do your…
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Today is my 60th Day with my new employer. My team asked me recently, “Why do you keep count like this?” I tell them that it’s to preserve momentum — forward movement. Coming into a new organization, with challenges and things to address, you only have so much time to effect change. You have to…
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Dispatches from the Front As we get comfortable with a pandemic becoming endemic, we might be starting to lose a bit of personal, anecdotal data on our own COVID outbreaks. So, in the interest of everyone being their own best advocate for their own health care, I thought I’d share my experience this week: Wednesday,…
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Shortly after the midterm elections this year, I wrote the following opinion piece for the Tulsa World. I always tell Editor Ginnie Netherton-Graham that I’m at least good for one piece per year… Column: Don’t believe the hype, recognize propaganda when you see it (tulsaworld.com) After enduring another election season filled with lies and half-truths,…
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November 11, 2022 Periodically, post-pandemic (is it?), colleagues and former colleagues have reached out with some interesting career opportunities. Some have been local, and some have been back in the Pacific Northwest — place means less and less these days as I’m remote or hybrid from almost all of my clients, and we seem to…
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December 2, 2022 My very first full-time IT gig was as at the University of Tulsa, as the manager of campus computer labs (75-80% — which was essentially a specialized form of desktop support), followed by general campus desktop support (20-25%), not to mention having to wrangle 36 student workers across 5 computer labs. The…
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Wisdom can be found most anywhere, if you just look. Particularly so if you’re like me, and revel in the unexpected linkages between all sorts of things. Not long ago I was doing some research on an area nonprofit, which meant learning as much as possible about their leadership. Which in turn led me to…
