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.