You've Been Heard

Jose Young, CTO at Beyond Air and founder of BrightPeak AI Solutions, and Luis Oliveira, Director at T4 Guidance Measurement, compare what carries across industries and what has to be learned from the ground up. They talk through early programming days, hurricanes, cloud recovery, COVID-era healthcare technology, stakeholder buy-in, SAP and manufacturing realities, and the rush toward AI. The strongest lesson is blunt: IT earns trust when it solves business pain, learns the operation, and avoids becoming the hammer looking for a nail.

Transcribed - Published: 2 June 2026

Cody Aldinger is VP of IT at KLJ, managing technology for 30 offices across the US. He's learned that a huge part of his job isn't technology—it's sales. Convincing business leaders that IT is worth listening to.His AI philosophy cuts through the hype: "The word hallucination is a fancy word for flat out wrong." He's focused on practical governance, teaching context over button-clicking, and using AI as a thought partner.We get into the gap between AI expectations and reality, why throwing AI at bad processes just makes them faster, and the pricing disaster nobody's talking about. Cody shares how he's rolling out Microsoft Copilot to 650 employees while keeping guardrails in place.The biggest takeaway? People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. In the AI world, that means listening first, understanding the real problem, then figuring out if AI is even the right tool for the job.

Transcribed - Published: 26 May 2026

Eric Brosius, Vice President of IT at Sun River Health, joins Mike Kelley to talk about the real pressure behind healthcare technology leadership. He shares how his team supports multiple entities with different risk profiles, what COVID demanded from healthcare IT, why AI governance now has to account for PHI and vendor behavior, and how leaders build teams that answer the 4AM database call. The conversation is a grounded look at AI, compliance, process discipline, and the invisible work that keeps care moving.

Transcribed - Published: 21 May 2026

Edward Marchewka, CIO at Illinois Bone and Joint Institute, joins You've Been Heard for a practical conversation about board communication, cybersecurity leadership, and the gap between technical expertise and business trust. He explains the information asymmetry gap, why fear-based security messaging often backfires, and how IT leaders can connect risk to confidentiality, finance, people, reputation, availability, and data integrity. The episode also covers adult learning, remediation ownership, third-party validation, operationalized security, incident response discipline, and the career lesson Edward gives every emerging IT leader: do not sit behind your desk.

Transcribed - Published: 19 May 2026

Dario Sarmiento started as a help desk fixer at one of the world's largest law firms during the dot-com boom. He thought his job was solving tech problems. Turns out, his real job was understanding how every department actually works.Now CIO at Wilshire Law Firm, Dario brings a unique perspective shaped by 25 years in legal tech and a master's in theological studies. His approach? Servant leadership that puts people first and treats IT as the connective tissue of the organization.We get into workflow intimacy (why IT touches every department differently than HR or Finance), the upside-down leadership triangle, and why AI governance is about teaching people to use the right hammer for the right job. Plus the story of an employee who almost quit to become a bus driver—and how Dario's intervention changed his entire trajectory.The biggest takeaway? IT's strategic advantage isn't technical expertise. It's proximity to how the whole business actually operates.

Transcribed - Published: 12 May 2026

Steve Goudreau has been in IT leadership long enough to know the difference between being at the table and being heard. At his current role, he has a seat at the executive round table. At his previous company with five times as many direct reports, he didn't even have director-level access.The difference? Understanding what executives actually need from IT. Not helpdesk metrics or project status updates. Information that helps the company make better decisions about technology, risk, and investment. "You want the information you're presenting to move the company forward," Steve explains.We get into executive communication that works, AI strategy that starts with goals instead of tools, and shadow AI governance that doesn't kill productivity. Steve also breaks down technical debt as future cost made visible, the questions CEOs should ask their IT leaders, and why the strongest leadership skill isn't technical.His biggest insight hits different: "There is a cost to know things." Training costs money. Research costs time. But staying ignorant costs more.

Transcribed - Published: 7 May 2026

Robert Sheesley explains why AI needs business architecture, capability maturity, intelligence architecture, and organizational change management before it can create durable value.

Transcribed - Published: 5 May 2026

Drew Ludwick brings military communications pressure, network engineering depth, and modern CIO judgment to a blunt lesson: technology will fail. The work is making sure the mission does not. Drew Ludwick did not plan to become an IT leader. He started as a network engineer who liked hard environments, messy infrastructure, and the pressure of making systems work when the stakes were real. That background shaped his view of so-called zero-fail environments. Drew argues that technology breaks at the worst possible time. The real discipline is building redundancy, preventive maintenance, planning process, and team readiness around the mission that cannot stop. In this conversation, Drew connects lessons from military communications and the White House Communications Agency to business IT leadership today. He explains why leadership intensity has to change by context, why IT needs a seat in business planning before systems are bought, and why data governance now sits at the center of AI risk. The conversation closes on a warning most teams will recognize: vendor management is becoming one of the next big security problems, especially as vendors add AI features inside business systems with limited visibility. Key takeaways: Plan for mission survival, not perfect uptime.; Frame technical risk in business language.; Govern data before scaling AI.

Transcribed - Published: 30 April 2026

Bart Waress has led IT across healthcare, telecom, banking, oil and gas, mining, data centers, and energy. His lesson is blunt: transformation sticks when IT listens first, speaks the business language, and proves value where work actually happens.

Transcribed - Published: 28 April 2026

Nick Feczko took the VP IT seat at DuBois Chemicals six months ago after walking away from an environment that ran on ego and politics. He came looking for a place where IT careers get built on common sense instead of theatrics, and he is running the AI rollout the same way.

Transcribed - Published: 23 April 2026

Thomas Wolf runs IT for DEUTZ Corporation in Atlanta, the Americas hub of the 162-year-old German engine maker. His job is balancing global governance with local execution.

Transcribed - Published: 21 April 2026

Josh Siddon is rolling out managed Wi-Fi across three hundred multifamily properties at MAA. The infrastructure is the easy part. The hard part is pulling IT out of the back room and into the business, where it now has to live. Josh Siddon is VP of IT Architecture at MAA, one of the largest multifamily operators in the country, and the founder of ResiQ, a consultancy helping smaller operators navigate managed Wi-Fi, cloud migration, and PropTech vendor selection. His team is rolling out managed Wi-Fi across a 300-plus property portfolio, with per-unit VLAN isolation, 10-gig pipes, and contractors cutting cable through occupied brownfield buildings. The engineering is hard. What he argues is harder is the identity shift IT has to make alongside it. Josh says you can't be just a nerd anymore. A resident's Wi-Fi connection isn't a ticket, it's an operations promise, which means IT now lives in the budget meeting, the project planning cycle, and the CEO's goal-setting conversation. He traces his own ability to make that shift back to a mentor who made him work a week in the hotel, food and beverage, finance, HR, and the buffet line before he was allowed to touch IT. We get into how he's rolling the same playbook forward for the AI wave. Josh lived through RPA at a private-equity-backed retail chain, automating eighty percent of Tuesday-through-Thursday workload without cutting a job. He thinks AI is the same wave with fewer lines of code and the same trust-building work. His team at MAA integrates MCP and Copilot Studio into third-party systems to turn Copilot from a desktop tool into an enterprise platform, and he's a self-described Claude fan. Josh's prediction for eighteen months from now: the conversation won't be about the technology. It'll be about former CIOs and CTOs running companies as CEOs. Key takeaways: You can't be just a nerd anymore. People skills and business fluency are the job now.; Managed Wi-Fi turns IT into operations. A resident's connection is a promise, not a ticket.; AI is the RPA wave again. The trust-building work matters more than the tool.

Transcribed - Published: 16 April 2026

Scott Kutz runs IT at a construction equipment dealership where excavators connect to the internet and OEMs move faster than the infrastructure can follow. His answer isn't to be the hero. It's to make himself unnecessary. Scott Kutz is five months into his role as IT Manager at Brooks Tractor, a construction equipment dealership where service managers remote into customer excavators in real time and OEM vendors push cloud platforms faster than most dealers can upgrade their bandwidth. He came from a larger privately held construction company where he watched IT people hoard knowledge, refuse to explain their work, and position themselves as irreplaceable. He decided early on that wasn't going to be him. Scott's approach comes from his father, a twenty-year Marine veteran in communications who taught him that slow is smooth and smooth is fast. "It's okay to not know, but it's not okay to stop learning and it's not okay to stop teaching. Because knowledge kept to yourself isn't being kind." That line runs through everything Scott does. He lets his team push buttons on decommissioned systems knowing things will break. He asks people what they do for fun so he can explain IT problems using their language. He told one coworker he fixed their computer by changing the spark plug in their engine. We get into how construction equipment dealerships are quietly becoming high-tech environments, why Scott turned a frustrated coworker into an ally who championed a company-wide bandwidth upgrade, and how he earned a seat at the leadership table five months in by learning the dealership's service operations before touching the IT. Scott's test for himself is straightforward. If he wins the Powerball tomorrow or gets hit by a bus, the business should keep running without him. If it can't, he's not indispensable. He's a single point of failure disguised as expertise. Key takeaways: Make yourself unnecessary. The business should run without you.; Let people fail in low-risk environments. They learn faster that way.; Learn the business before you try to change the IT.

Transcribed - Published: 14 April 2026

Rob Spellman spent 25 years thinking he had to be the smartest person in the room. Then he learned that being a bulldog who gets things done beats being the expert every time.

Transcribed - Published: 9 April 2026

Antonio Marin spent decades thinking CIOs earn their seat by talking technology. Then he learned business leaders don't care about CPU utilization, they care about business outcomes.

Transcribed - Published: 7 April 2026

Piotr Mlodecki spent years watching business leaders hide behind software limitations. Then AI removed all the excuses and exposed the real problem: bad process architecture. Piotr Mlodecki is Chief Transformation Officer at SOL-MILLENNIUM Medical Group, where he's learned that AI's biggest threat isn't replacing humans—it's exposing bad business design. For years, companies could blame slow software delivery for operational failures. Not anymore. "The ROI does not come from the question answered. It comes from a task executed, the job done." Piotr argues that most companies are treating AI like a faster layer on top of broken processes instead of rebuilding how the business actually operates. We get into why feasibility is no longer the bottleneck, how to design agents like real employees with KPIs, and why your data architecture determines whether AI transformation succeeds or becomes expensive automation theater. The prediction? In 18 months, we'll be competing on who built the better agentic enterprise, not whether we should use AI at all. Key takeaways: ROI comes from tasks executed, not questions answered; Design agents like employees with job descriptions and KPIs; Data architecture determines AI success more than the models

Transcribed - Published: 2 April 2026

Stephen Salaka has a PhD in psychology and builds nuclear weapons systems. Then he learned the hardest truth in tech: AI can't fix what humans won't adopt. Stephen Salaka wanted to build nuclear bombs. A lab accident sent him to computer science. A stint in Japan taught him his real superpower: making humans actually use the technology he builds. Now he's a CTO with a PhD in Industrial/Organizational Psychology. That combination makes him dangerous to every AI myth floating around C-suites. "The biggest fundamental misconception is AI is going to be a panacea for everything," he says. "The real trouble most organizations face is the people." We get into why UPS's maintenance system failed for years until Stephen added change management, how vibe coding should stop at the prototype stage, and why the AI bubble collapse is coming faster than anyone thinks. Plus his framework for bringing order to chaos without mandates. The payoff: Stephen's lived at the fault line between brilliant technology and stubborn humans. He knows which one wins. Key takeaways: Change management isn't optional - it's the actual product you're delivering; Vibe coding works for prototypes, then convert to proper backend components; Smooth processes first, then speed follows - not the other way around

Transcribed - Published: 31 March 2026

Andrew Rosenblatt has been CIO at three PE-backed healthcare companies. Then he learned the hardest truth about IT leadership: "You're perpetually selling and you need to convince them that it's actually not your idea. It's their idea."

Transcribed - Published: 26 March 2026

Tim Armstrong runs IT for a construction company with a team of four serving 175 staff. His take on the biggest mistake IT makes: gatekeeping support behind ticket systems instead of helping people first. Tim Armstrong is 90 days into his role as Manager of IT at PROCON, a design-build construction company in Hooksett, NH. With a four-person team serving 175 staff, he has had to build trust fast, deploy Kanban sprints from scratch, navigate shadow AI, and figure out what technology means at a company that builds buildings for a living. His philosophy: IT exists to serve, not to gatekeep. Key takeaways: Not everything requires a ticket. Help first, document later.; Deliberately undercommit on your first sprint to calibrate real velocity.; IT leaders need to know enough to have an intelligent conversation, not enough to do everything themselves.

Transcribed - Published: 25 March 2026

Nathan Kaufman built CMMC compliance from scratch at a defense contractor with SSH open to the internet and no Active Directory. Then he learned the hard way that technical wins mean nothing if you can't communicate your value. Nathan Kaufman walked into a $100 million defense contractor with 80 employees, zero IT infrastructure, and two years to become CMMC Level 2 compliant or lose all DoD contracts. No Active Directory. SSH open to the internet. Engineers buying equipment with personal credit cards. A flat network running on unpatched switches. He built it all from the ground up. Deployed CrowdStrike across 350+ endpoints. Migrated to Azure GCC High. Survived a merger, acquisition, and divestiture simultaneously. Grew the team from one person (him) to five across three locations and 260 employees. Passed the CMMC audit in November 2025. Then he got fired in August. We get into the technical path for CMMC compliance, why "permission to play" became his rallying cry with executives, and the SBI framework for communicating IT value. Nathan shares his biggest lesson: you can have amazing technical skills, but if you don't advocate for yourself, nobody else will. The brutal truth about building compliance infrastructure while life happens around you. Key takeaways: "Permission to play" - compliance isn't optional for DoD contractors; SBI framework: Situation, Behavior, Impact for communicating IT value; Technical wins mean nothing without executive communication skills

Transcribed - Published: 24 March 2026

Stephen Chen spent seven years learning digital transformation isn't about technology. Then he discovered the business problem you choose to own defines your entire career.

Transcribed - Published: 19 March 2026

Bill Markut, IT Director at Gränges Americas, built a five-year roadmap to transform manufacturing IT. From the Department of No to the Department of No, But. And why AI won't fix a decade of infrastructure neglect. Bill Markut spent 36 years avoiding management, preferring hands-on technical work. Then he became IT Director at a manufacturing company running 25 years behind the tech curve and discovered something that changed everything: the power of getting IT and OT to actually talk to each other. Key takeaways: Manufacturing IT runs 20-25 years behind the technology curve. That gap is the opportunity.; The event storm exercise gets IT and OT in one room. That is where silos actually break.; Hire for initiative, not just technical skill. Addition by subtraction is real.

Transcribed - Published: 18 March 2026

Michael Murray manages 120 project candidates but calls them exactly that—candidates, not projects. Then he learned why the Department of No should actually be the Department of Why.

Transcribed - Published: 17 March 2026

Roy Cherian spent 25 years watching IT leaders pretzel themselves explaining budgets to executives who don't speak tech. Then he learned why 95% of AI deployments fail: everyone's picking tools before finding use cases.

Transcribed - Published: 12 March 2026

Josh Tanner runs IT and cybersecurity solo at a Goldman Sachs-backed behavioral health company. 350 users. PHI everywhere. His argument: stop checking boxes and start building an actual security program

Transcribed - Published: 11 March 2026

Thomas J. Sweet runs IT for a PE-backed company with eight acquisitions and three people. His most reliable hiring signal? Home labs beat credentials every time.

Transcribed - Published: 10 March 2026

Karl Weber spent 30 years in technology sales before becoming CIO at Rolfson Oil. His biggest insight: stop selling to the CIO and start solving the business problem.

Transcribed - Published: 5 March 2026

Karl Weber spent 30 years in technology sales before becoming CIO at Rolfson Oil. His biggest insight: stop selling to the CIO and start solving the business problem. Karl Weber has a rare perspective. He spent 30 years on the vendor side selling technology, then crossed over to become CIO at Rolfson Oil, a 500-employee fuel transportation company delivering 30 million gallons monthly to oil fields. What he discovered will change how you think about IT leadership. Karl inherited a mess: four or five overlapping tools with no strategy. His sales background taught him something most CIOs miss: "I had a lot of success trying not to sell the CIO. I wanted to sell to the person that had the business problem." The budget and pain sit with business unit leaders, not IT. We get into his one-question decision filter (does this impact revenue?), why AI investments will face a reckoning in 18 months, and the Gap pitch that won a 100,000-employee deal because his team wore their clothes. The payoff? A framework for becoming the strategic advisor executives actually want at the table, not the afterthought they call when decisions are already made. Key takeaways: One decision filter: does this impact revenue or not?; Sell to the business problem owner, not the CIO; Ask 'why' before 'how' to uncover real needs

Transcribed - Published: 5 March 2026

Brian Rowe got hired to build security at a 100+ year old manufacturing company. Then he discovered the real problem: you can't bolt security onto IT that's still running like a mom-and-pop shop.

Transcribed - Published: 4 March 2026

David Williams spent years thinking his CIO title made him a leader. Then he learned the difference between managing and leading: 'The title that you have does not make you a leader. It can make you a manager.'

Transcribed - Published: 3 March 2026

Bryan Shanafelt manages IT across 8 offices with just 4 people. Then he learned the secret to building teams that solve impossible problems: hire for personality, not just skills.

Transcribed - Published: 26 February 2026

Craig Gehrke consolidated 14 ERPs into one and won the 2025 ORBIE Award. Then he learned the secret to getting IT heard: 'Move their cheese occasionally.'

Transcribed - Published: 24 February 2026

Bradley Stokes has done six private equity turnarounds using the same five-step IT playbook. His secret: stop being the department that keeps the lights on and become the business partner that drives value creation.

Transcribed - Published: 19 February 2026

Dana Kline built an IT team from 1 to 11 at a PE-backed energy company. Then he created a vendor scorecard so tough that an Oracle VP said 'nobody ever measures us like this.'

Transcribed - Published: 17 February 2026

Sandeep Shenoy has spent seventeen years integrating AI into medical devices at Viant Medical. He's not anti-AI. He builds it every day. But he's watched the industry rush to deploy systems trained on data sets that were never designed to be fair.The problem isn't the technology. It's the history baked into the data. "When AI makes a mistake in finance, you lose money. When it makes a mistake in healthcare, you could lose a life." Early fitness trackers failed to read female heart rate patterns because of biased training data. That already happened.We get into bias audits as continuous process, fairness by design principles, and accountability frameworks. Plus why ethics needs to move out of the compliance box and into business value.The uncomfortable truth: patients have zero say in how these devices work. They just know a doctor told them they need it. By then, discrimination might already be built in.

Transcribed - Published: 12 February 2026

Shane Petty works in midstream oil and gas where margins are tight and every dollar counts. He inherited a 30-year-old ERP that only twelve people in the country could support. Leadership thought SAP was running the show. Reality? One guy with an Excel spreadsheet was keeping everything alive."If I don't have that opportunity to speak into those things, well, then I'm just a robot, making sure that people are getting their monthly cybersecurity training," Shane says about working without executive vision.We get into the three things IT sits at the center of, why walking leadership to the shop floor beats PowerPoint presentations, and how Shane saved $350,000 annually by replacing legacy systems. Plus his framework for getting heard when leadership has no vision.The biggest takeaway? IT leaders aren't just the department of IT anymore. They're at the junction of leadership, processes, and people. That's where the real power is.

Transcribed - Published: 10 February 2026

Dr. Sergio Sanchez has sat in seats most IT leaders never will. Operating rooms. Gaming studios shipping Call of Duty. Apple's Genius Bar. Catholic Church administration with 72-year-old nuns who never touched computers.His diagnosis? IT speaks a language nobody else understands. "We assume that everybody has the same knowledge that we do," he says. Meanwhile, users with AOL accounts become prime targets for scams.We get into why cybersecurity is a communication problem, not a budget problem. How to translate tech-speak for executives who sign the checks. And why programmers will become bug hunters in 18 months.The biggest takeaway? "No matter how much money you invest in cybersecurity, take one person to click the wrong link and all that money goes out the window."

Transcribed - Published: 5 February 2026

Ken Widner has a psychology degree, not a computer science one. That's not a footnote. It's the whole story. He was supposed to do marriage counseling. Instead, he became CIO at Do It Best, running IT for 9,000+ retail locations while integrating True Value out of bankruptcy.His insight? IT leaders fail because they lead with logic instead of emotion. "Nobody cares if the system is up, if it's horrible to interact with," Ken says. While most CIOs show up to meetings with uptime charts, Ken shows up with stories from warehouse workers about how pick-to-light changed their lives.We get into the squeaky wheel problem (availability bias in leadership), why your C-suite peers are team one (not your direct reports), and Ken's "challenge, align, commit" philosophy. Plus his take on AI hype, the Department of Prioritization vs. the Department of No, and why he spends more time with his CFO than his architects.The payoff? Ken got a new tech center in Dallas approved not by making a business case, but by building relationships where his peers championed IT initiatives for him.

Transcribed - Published: 3 February 2026

Transcribed - Published: 27 January 2026

John Doherty is CIO at Columbia Forest Products, but he started in marketing. That accidental path gave him something most IT leaders don't have - he speaks business first, technology second.The problem he keeps running into isn't technical. It's structural. IT gets called in after the business has already decided what they need. Someone shows up and says "we need SAP" and by then it's too late. The solution's chosen. IT's job is to execute, not influence.We get into his mill ambassador program (people looked at him like he had three heads), why steering committees come before PMO, and the "yes, but" approach that turns IT from blockers into problem solvers. Plus his prediction on what part of IT will be fully automated in 18 months.John's final message hits different: "Don't be a tech nerd. Find how to be a business person. Meet your peers where they're at. Speak their language, and you're going to break the stereotype that we're just a bunch of techies."

Transcribed - Published: 22 January 2026

Juliano Giannerini runs IT at Baker Construction and fights the same battle every IT leader faces. Someone walks in wanting a new CRM. They need Spanish speakers at the service desk. They saw a demo and it looked amazing. Nobody asked what problem they're trying to solve.When an HR director demanded Spanish speakers for IT support, Juliano asked why. Turns out craft workers weren't calling IT about tech issues – they were calling HR about payroll. Adding Spanish speakers to the service desk would have solved nothing.Always ask 'what problem are you solving' before evaluating any solutionWe get into why IT gets handed solutions instead of problems, how to force clarity before anyone mentions tools, and translating technical needs into business language that actually lands. Juliano's framework: rules before tools, and always start with the problem statement.

Transcribed - Published: 15 January 2026

Tim Elhefnawy came from operations before technology leadership. That combination gives him a perspective most IT leaders don't have.He's watched tech leaders disconnect from the room in real time. Leading with technical objections when business needed risk discussion. Explaining integration test cycles that meant nothing to anyone while ignoring deal commitments.The pattern? IT leaders who practice the art of no. Who wait to be brought in instead of inserting themselves into strategy from day one. Who think delivering the tech piece is their job while someone else handles the business piece.That's not leadership. That's being a highly paid order taker.Tim's three-step playbook for real business outcomes:1. Understand the actual problem. Not the soundbite. Tim was told there was a physical delivery issue. He went to gemba. Talked to drivers. Talked to customers. What he was sold wasn't the problem—it was half truth. Skip this step and the project fails.2. Solution with the right people before giving timelines. Don't cave to "how fast?" Get the right folks together. Walk through it. Give feedback timely—don't boil the ocean trying to achieve perfection.3. Read back your understanding. The step everyone skips. Confirm you understood. Talk through solution ideas. Tim sees people have light conversations, say "yep we got it," then build the wrong thing.We also get into knowing when to apply rigor versus when to just do it. Adding a CRM field that affects no workflows takes 30 seconds. But Tim sees analysts spend hours on regression testing and full CAB process—for a field. The waste is massive when you can't navigate what should go left versus right.Tim's advice to every emerging IT leader?"Don't allow yourself to be siloed into just technology. Learning business is just as important. You're going to be an incomplete leader without it."Because how dangerous is a business leader who understands the market, the customer, and the technology?

Transcribed - Published: 13 January 2026

Mark Baker is VP of IT at Block Imaging in Michigan. They service legacy medical equipment. Big iron MRI and CT machines that hospitals can't replace.Which means Mark deals with Windows systems no longer patched, medical device regulations, and security frameworks spanning three decades of technology. The fundamental challenge hasn't changed since Mark started at a small computer shop. Back then it was "what's a network card?" Now it's "we need AI." Different technology. Same conversation. A CEO gets on a plane, reads an article, comes back convinced this will solve everything. Mark's the one who explains physics. We get into why 85% of AI initiatives fail to return value. Mark doesn't chase bleeding edge. He's a fast follower. He waits to see what actually works before committing. "I'm not looking for a solution that's looking for a problem. I actually have an issue. And how can I actually address this with what I know about AI today?" We talk about the vendor myths that keep recycling with new labels. Cloud means you don't need backups. Wrong. It's more resilient, but not backed up unless you pay for it. New technology will save you money. Also wrong. AI tools are underpriced right now. OpenAI charges fifty bucks for something costing them two hundred to deliver. Those prices are going up. Mark destroys the idea that IT projects happen overnight. "This did not occur overnight. This will not be corrected overnight." Projects are underestimated. The lift is bigger than anyone thinks. Trying to run fast without proper planning just means you pile the next thing on top of the last thing until throughput slows to a crawl. We get into why Mark hates the word no. It shuts down conversation. When a request will blow up the security framework, he doesn't just reject it. He explains the why. He brings it to a conversation. "We have to be tactical about what we're doing and if it is the wrong path, bring that to a conversation, not just say no and walk away." The biggest struggle? IT pursues technology for technology's sake. Mark's seen departments chase zero trust or cloud without asking if it aligns with where the business is actually going. The mistake is forgetting that IT exists to solve business problems, not implement the latest framework because it sounds impressive. The answer? Push business knowledge down through your entire IT organization. From VP to intern. Everyone should understand how their work connects to company goals. Mark challenges his team to take accounting classes. Understand EBITDA. Learn the business, not just the tech stack. Because you can't speak business language if you don't understand the business.

Transcribed - Published: 6 January 2026

Chris Pacifico is Director of IT and infrastructure strategist at a healthcare company focused on mobility devices. He's spent 30 years in IT, moving from programming to hardware to security, and he's learned some hard truths about team leadership that contradict popular wisdom.Chris walked into a six-person team that wasn't actually a team. It was six individuals doing six separate jobs with zero coordination. Think baseball played by individuals instead of football where everyone works together. Sound familiar?The leadership gurus all say the same thing: there are no bad teams, only bad managers. Chris used to believe that. Until reality hit. "You can be the best manager in the world with a team of five. Four guys willing to bust their hump. And that one bad apple will still take a good team down." That's the truth nobody wants to admit.We get into his customer mindset shift. How he stopped his team from calling people "end users" and started treating them like actual customers with real business problems. "Your wife went into labor and they had to redirect her to a different hospital. You're going to get mad if you don't get that answer quick, right? Well, that sales guy's got a big deal on the line. His email is down. That's huge for him too."We cover the boring project that changed everything. Active Directory cleanup sounds terrible, but it became the foundation for everything else. Better team collaboration, faster ticket resolution, clearer communication with the business. Sometimes the unglamorous work creates the biggest wins.Chris talks about technology that actually works versus shiny objects that don't solve real problems. Microsoft To Do eliminated his post-it note chaos and helped entire departments stop missing deadlines. Power Automate reduced email overload for customer service teams. Simple tools that solve real problems beat complex solutions nobody uses.The biggest struggle? Getting executives to stop seeing IT as "little gnomes sitting under the stairs running around with turkey legs." They want cutting-edge AI but won't fund basic security. They dismiss IT input until there's a ransomware attack. Then suddenly money flows, but only until the pain fades. Chris has lived through companies where someone said "we make cardboard boxes, nobody's going to hack us." Three weeks later? Ransomware attack.

Transcribed - Published: 19 December 2025

Bob Berbeco is the Chief Information Officer at Mahaska Health, leading IT, data science, AI, cybersecurity, and informatics. He's been in healthcare technology for 27 years and holds a Six Sigma Black Belt.For most of that time, Bob operated the way many IT leaders do—shields up, knowledge expert, the guy who does all the talking.Then something shifted.When executives ask him something he doesn't know, the best answer isn't to fake it. It's four words: "I got the lead.""I may not have the answer. That's okay. I got the lead. I will run it to its endpoint, and I'll follow up to make sure it's done."That's all they need to know.In this episode, Bob breaks down his SBAR communication framework (Situation, Background, Assessment, Recommendation) that eliminates tech-speak. He shares how he presents 30-60-90 day roadmaps with SWOT analysis—then asks the question most IT leaders skip: "Is there a priority we should probably change?"We get into the label printer story. Nurses were hand-labeling surgical supplies. Printers across units were inconsistent with no standardization. One team member saw the problem, took ownership, talked to technical people, clinical people, providers, even people outside the organization—and got it done. Persistence won.Bob also unpacks why he hires for fire not credentials, how "what you permit, you promote" shapes culture, and why the beginner's mindset beats expertise every time.The biggest struggle for IT? Unlimited demand with limited resources. Bob's answer isn't to be the Department of No. It's to show executives what yes actually costs.

Transcribed - Published: 9 December 2025

Ray Martin started his IT career in a basement cage, setting up Blackberries behind a locked door. Ten years later, he's the CTO at Dimeo Construction—and he's survived two ransomware attacks.The first one fractured trust between IT and operations. The second one? Conti demanded $1.2 million in Bitcoin. Ray counter-offered $10K "so I don't have to go through the trouble." They said no. He recovered everything anyway.In this episode, Ray breaks down exactly how his isolated Azure tenant backup strategy saved the company, why your 200+ subcontractors running Gmail are your biggest security vulnerability, and what it took to convince leadership to migrate to the cloud when the Exchange server was down 80% of the time.We also get into real AI use cases in construction—why Procore flipped their agent strategy from 80% vendor-built to 80% customer-built, how to survey your team before rolling out AI policy, and Simon Sinek's take on why blue collar jobs are safe while white collar jobs aren't.Plus: the conspiracy corner, NJ drones, and why every Flat Earth experiment proves the Earth is round.

Transcribed - Published: 4 December 2025

ON THIS EPISODE ➤ Why 75% of employees are using unapproved AI tools right now ➤ How to consolidate AI usage onto one secure, compliant platform ➤ Live demonstration of no-code agent building for HR, sales, and operations ➤ Real enterprise security: SOC2, ISO 27001, and GDPR compliance explained ➤ Managing AI chat logs and preventing data leaks ➤ Building custom agents that integrate with your existing systems What happens when IT leaders stop fearing employee AI usage and start securing it? In this special live demo episode, Aaron Bailey, General Manager of Devs.ai, tackles the number one concern keeping...

Transcribed - Published: 28 October 2025

ON THIS EPISODE ➤ The real difference between AI hype and actual enterprise AI adoption ➤ Why most change management initiatives fail (and what to do instead) ➤ How to identify and solve the right problems before executing strategy ➤ The brutal truth about AI’s impact on workforce transformation ➤ Change management frameworks that actually work for AI implementation What happens when you combine change management expertise with real AI adoption strategy? Dima Syrotkin, CEO and Co-founder of Pandatron, helps Fortune 500 companies like Panasonic, Mitsubishi, and KPMG identify genuine AI opportunities and accelerate adoption. But his journey started in...

Transcribed - Published: 23 October 2025

ON THIS EPISODE ➤ What network aggregation actually means (and why most IT leaders have never heard of it)➤ How to consolidate 50+ circuits onto one invoice with co-terminus contracts➤ Real strategies for 20%+ cost savings while improving service➤ POTS replacement tactics saving thousands monthly➤ The leadership question that gets executive buy-in: “What do we lose by not doing this?” Managing internet circuits across multiple locations feels like herding cats—if the cats all had different phone numbers and billing cycles. Chris Soucie’s spent 20 years at New Horizons Communications, and he’s breaking down the aggregator model most IT leaders don’t...

Transcribed - Published: 16 October 2025

ON THIS EPISODE ➤ Why most Azure migrations fail before they start—and how to plan properly from day one ➤ The real difference between CSPs who just sell licenses and partners who drive value ➤ How to reduce Azure costs by 80% through proper architecture and licensing optimization ➤ Why IT leaders must learn to ask for help instead of fighting fires alone ➤ Moving from reactive firefighting to strategic business partnership What happens when submarine leadership principles meet cloud infrastructure strategy? At Heliant Technologies, Kenon Bliss leads infrastructure practices across the Microsoft stack, helping organizations navigate the complex world...

Transcribed - Published: 9 October 2025