Hot Mess Hotline Podcast Archives- The Change Architects

IT Leadership Growth Mindset with Michael Pompey

The demands on IT leaders have never been greater. You’re expected to be technically brilliant while also leading your teams through constant change and disruption. But what happens when your “superhero” drive to do more, learn more, and be more starts to work against you?

As Michael Pompey, Chief Information and Transformation Officer for the Girl Scouts of Eastern Pennsylvania, shares in a recent podcast interview, many IT leaders fall into the trap of believing that “more is more.” They push themselves to the limit, taking on every challenge and striving for perfection. While this drive can lead to early success, it can also become a recipe for burnout and stagnation.

CIO Coaching: Leading with Clarity and Confidence in the Age of Digital Transformation

The role of the CIO has never been more demanding. In today’s rapidly changing technological landscape, CIOs are tasked with not only managing complex IT infrastructure, but also leading their teams through digital transformation, driving innovation, and ensuring cybersecurity. The pressure is immense, and the stakes are high.

Many CIOs find themselves at a crossroads. They are technically brilliant, but may struggle with the “people” side of leadership. They understand the importance of change management but may lack the tools and frameworks to effectively lead their teams through this process. This is where CIO coaching can make a world of difference.

Accountability Isn’t a Weapon, It’s Empowering with Kerry Siggins

What if accountability isn’t a weapon? Empowering leaders, like Kerry Siggins, have embraced accountability so highly that they wish for that kind of freedom and ownership for everyone around them. Most trainings on accountability say to “Hold employees accountable.” What if, instead, we invited employees into accountability. It’s an invitation into empowerment.

Accountability is a topic we discuss a lot, especially when it comes to change and transformation. Nothing changes unless individuals decide to change first. Organizations don’t change; people do. Not only does Kerry share her story of transforming her company three times, she transformed her own life from addiction into recovery because of accountability!

Scaling Without Structure Creates Burnout in IT with Tonya Wallace

Scaling without structure in IT often allows bad behaviors to create toxicity in a culture. The Change Architect’s executive coach, Tonya Wallace, shares an experience scaling a team where one person’s toxic behavior was limiting autonomy, creativity, and decision making. This team had recently gone from launching an innovative product to then maintaining it — but the team hadn’t adapted its speed and practices to this new way of working.

Tonya shares how she helped bring self awareness, scalability, and structure that drastically improved trust and culture in a very quick way. Her quote blew me away, “Play chess with your hands behind your back and all you can use is your words.” This is influence in our modern working world. This is the key tool we have: our voice. As an ambitious leader, wouldn’t you want to use your most powerful tool in the most powerful way? This conversation will increase your power! Won’t you give it a listen?

Is Your Tech Team Accountable for Action or Outcomes with Jason Botts

Are you accountable for action or outcomes? Jason Botts is an innovative, results-driven technology leader who creates high-performing teams. He is passionate about creating tech transformation that actually matters to its companies, customers, and stakeholders.

We discussed why benchmarks aren’t good enough and how trust and listening can solve even the worst tech disasters. Listen to this episode where Jason shares one of the worst days on the job – only 90 days after an ERP implementation with some 3 a.m. trust building.

If You’re Involved You Own It: Extreme Ownership for IT Leaders with Brian Burk

Extreme ownership for IT leaders means: if you’re involved, you own it. Brian Burk brings his IT leadership experience to our conversation with his wise counsel and practical tools for accountability. Today’s projects are complex and have moving targets. It’s easy to want to avoid responsibility for results. But you’re here because you’re a leader that wants to see big change so avoidance is unacceptable.

Brian shares multiple tools to bring more change and accountability — all while making a successful business even more successful. There are training ideas and a process for group brainstorming called SARGE. Listen in for ways to bring more ownership into your teams.

Example of Technical Debt and Its Cultural Consequences with Ken Knapton

How about a specific example of technical debt and its cultural consequences? Ken Knapton shares a real world example where tech silos and cultural silos reinforce each other. This company had several overlapping solutions that wasted money and created at least $5 million in cash expense — while individuals were losing their jobs!

If you’re struggling to articulate the case for why technical debt is holding your enterprise back, listen to this episode for the real world implications, criteria to evaluate and quantify, how to know you have a problem, and how to leverage your tech debt to the tune of 50%.

Insider Threat Detection Comes From Strong Outside Relationships with Robert Field

Insider threat detection comes from new school technology and old school relationships. Robert Field learned of sabotage coming from one of his employees from a trusted relationship outside of the organization. Yes, technically, technology could have detected this. But the reality was that Rob’s focus on relationships saved his company’s bacon. He had people around him that cared about his success.

As a leader, do you have strong enough relationships to tell you the hard stuff, the stuff you don’t want to hear? Do you lead with integrity every day? Do you have people and technology to protect you from the bad stuff? Listen to this episode for how insider threat detection is a people, process, and tech problem and how to fix it.

What Got You Here Won’t Get You There with Ravi Bommireddipalli

What got you here won’t get you there if you’re a leader driving growth and transformation. Ravi Bommireddipalli is a CEO who focuses on unlearning as much as he learns. For Robosoft’s next level, he’s being charged with leading the company to where it has never been. Along the way he’s going to become a leader he’s never been. And he’s going to grow more leaders so that not all operational details continue to come through him.

This episode covers great ground on how CEOs and CIOs need to problem solve at higher levels, cover both the offense and the defense, communicate simply, and hire people who challenge them.

Every Step of Growth Has Its Own New Challenges with Asad Ur Rehman

Every step of growth has its own challenges and hot messes. CEO Asad Ur Rehman learned these lessons the hard way as he’s grown from freelance software developer to CEO of a 300-person global firm. There’s a myth about success that when you achieve a certain salary, revenue, job, client, etc. etc. etc. THEN things will get easier, better.

Here’s the good news: as you uplevel, you get more challenges. These challenges get bigger and you have to uplevel your problem solving skills. The only way is through and a commitment to learning.

I learned from Tony Robbins a long time ago that modeling the behavior and learning from other folks who have “Been there. Done that.” is a powerful way to jumpstart my plans. You can do that most simply by reading the books your role models write. Listen to Asad’s and my conversation to hear how Asad learned how to become a successful CEO when growth was often 2 steps forward and 1 step back.