June 3, 2026 I was talking with a friend recently, and the topic came up that a mutual CIO colleague had recently tendered his resignation. It’s for all the reasons you’d suspect, and many I’ve talked about before. Probably too often. The old joke about the title CIO meaning “Career Is Over” ain’t far removed,…
September 4, 2025 I’ll admit it: I’m a Star Trek fan. But not a hardcore, “go to the conventions” style fan. Over the years, I’ve watched The Original Series (TOS), The Next Generation (TNG), a bit of Voyager, Discovery, and lately, Enterprise. Never DS9, which is a flaw in me, I’ve been told. Thanks to…
May 25, 2025 As a choir singer, I’m a Bass. I’ve told my fellow Bass singers in church that a certain number of us must always show up, because we’re the anchor. Not to take anything away from our friends in the other ranges, but if we’re absent, the depth and resonance suffer. As a…
In our lives and careers, no one makes it alone. Everyone has colleagues and mentors who generously give their time to help make us better people. This is why I seek to pay it forward with my teams and colleagues because I was given so much. I recently remembered my late colleague, Barbara Horgan, who…
He’s talking about phones — again. A cautionary tale of technical outcomes and incomplete information. Strap in… Recently my team and I completed a long-overdue VoIP project, spurred on by building a new 60,000-square-foot addition and needing something more modern than a copper-based, expensive PRI system (from 2001 maybe?) with proprietary VoIP clients grafted on…
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…
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…
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…
“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…
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…