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.