You've Been Heard

You've Been Heard

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You've Been Heard episodes

  • 459- Make the Approved Path Fast Enough w/Brandon Muncy
    Everyone's using ChatGPT on their own to save 30 minutes a day, and nobody will wait six weeks for a review, so Brandon Muncy, Director of Information Technology at PepperPointe Partnerships, wants to make the approved path fast enough that a shortcut isn't tempting. After building the dental service organization's in-house IT team from a fully outsourced start, he explains why onboarding broke even when everyone did their job and why he expects the next 18 months to be about identity and permissions for AI agents.
    Brandon Muncy's path into IT leadership wasn't a straight line. After an engineering degree he went into retail management at Verizon and AT&T to pick up the business side, then moved into research computing at the university. From 2018 to about 2021 he was the Linux person on a 10-node cluster, hundreds of VMs, a deep-learning machine and a VDI setup for researchers. PepperPointe, where he now leads IT, is a dental service organization in Lexington, Kentucky with hundreds of practices across a couple of states. When he joined in late 2022, its IT was fully outsourced, with no internal team. He has built a team of about seven people for upwards of 1,500 users.
    He found out that you don't change the perception by explaining it. Better decks didn't work, because nobody updates a belief based off a slide, so he works one visible win at a time, and onboarding is one of the vehicles. When a new hire starts on Monday and IT finds out Monday, everybody has a bad week, even though everyone involved did their job. Instead of blaming the office, which is busy running a practice, his team went to the office managers and, looking at onboarding from their chair, found a defining step that tells IT sooner. He also describes his real bad day: by 4 o'clock he has been useful maybe 11 times and hasn't moved a single thing forward.
    On AI, Brandon says that in healthcare it shows up as a governance question before it shows up as a capability question. People using ChatGPT on their own save 30 minutes a day and won't wait six weeks for a review, so he wants an approved path fast enough that a shortcut isn't tempting, even if the first version is half-baked. Only his administrators have access to Copilot, so the team can start working on DLP policies. His 18-month prediction is identity and permissions for non-human actors: if the tool touches patient data, it's a business associate, and he expects an enforcement story.
    Key takeaways: Make the approved path fast enough that a shortcut isn't tempting, even if the first version is half-baked.; Change how the business sees IT one visible win at a time, because nobody updates a belief based off a slide.; When onboarding breaks, look at the process before you blame the office, then give the office one defining step that tells IT sooner.; Keep Copilot to your administrators so your team can start working on the DLP policies.; Guard your strategic thinking time: a day of being useful 11 times can end with nothing moved forward.; Treat documentation as part of the process, because it loses the prioritization fight every time.
    45 min
  • 458- Stop Turning the Light Off w/John Errington
    John Errington, Director IT/IS at Pengate Handling Systems, tells his teams something they hate to hear: turning the light off every day is the thing to automate, and their time belongs on why the light keeps going off. With more than 27 years in IT, he also explains how he learns a new business from the people with their boots on the ground, and how AI took three to four days of pulling major-incident data together down to a 20-minute process while his problem managers still checked it for accuracy.
    John Errington fell into IT by accident. A couple of years out of high school he was working in records management at a pharmaceutical company, where knowing how to turn on a computer made him the de facto local IT guy. At GSI Commerce, a Linux shop he joined in 2010, a new leader pulled him into IT leadership "kicking and screaming," and his own light bulb moment came when he got a script put on an alert his team kept clearing by hand.
    He often uses the light analogy with the teams he manages, and they hate to hear it: the light you turn off every day is the thing to automate, and the value add is fixing the core of the problem. Four weeks into a new job in material handling, he explains how he learns a business he doesn't know yet. It starts with the people with their boots on the ground. Here, that meant ride-alongs with the field service techs, the people who "keep the cash register open."
    John also gets into how silos breed a not-it mentality on outage calls, and the SWAT team approach John's operations teams used instead: everybody jumps in and stays until they're cleared. John sees AI the way he saw automation, as a tool that needs a human at the decision-making part. In his last job, AI postmortems of recorded major-incident calls took much of three to four days of work down to a 20-minute process, and his problem managers still reviewed all of it for accuracy.
    Key takeaways: If your team clears the same alert every day, automate it, then spend the time you get back on why it keeps going off.; Learn a new business from the people with their boots on the ground: ride along with them, then take what slows them down to whoever owns that process.; On a major-incident call, have every team report on its own area and stay on until you clear them.; Let AI draft the postmortem from the call recording, and have your problem managers check it for accuracy.
    47 min
  • 457- Your IT Roadmap Needs a Top Five w/Teresa Duran

    Technology leaders can contribute to business decisions when they understand what the company is trying to accomplish. Teresa Duran, chief information officer at Tree Top, joins Phil Howard to discuss the questions she asks in her first 90 days, her preference for five current priorities over a rolling five-year project list, and why technology strategy should follow company strategy.

    She explains how scattered company information limits decisions, how to decide what outside suppliers should build and what internal staff must maintain, and why a quickly built tool using artificial intelligence still needs a support plan.

    Teresa also recounts a biotech transformation during COVID: as plans changed from a first public stock sale to selling part of the business, her team built software and kept time-sensitive corneal tissue moving. They close on career learning, mentoring future technology leaders, and making technical presentations lead to decisions.

    1 hr 12 min
  • 456- AI Still Needs Architects and Developers w/George Hicker

    George Hicker, Vice President of Information Technology (IT) and Business Transformation at Ronnoco Beverage Solutions, joins Mike Kelley to explain what happens when AI lets employees build useful tools in hours. Fast results can hide weak security, missing instructions, unclear ownership, and problems that appear when more people use the tool. George offers a practical response: bring the technology team in early, write down the plan, have experienced developers check the code, test with safe data, limit access, keep backups, and make people responsible for the result. He also explains why skilled software designers and developers become more valuable as AI creates work faster.

    53 min
  • 455- Influence Matters More Than Technology w/Jeff Hobbs

    Jeff Hobbs, Director of IT at SV Labs Corporation, joins Mike Kelley to discuss the leadership skills that matter beyond technical expertise. Jeff explains how he uses Copilot to tailor communication for different stakeholders, examine unfamiliar security questions, troubleshoot Intune issues, and help a small team close knowledge gaps. He also discusses the limits: AI output needs review, paid licenses need measures, and easy access to public tools creates data-protection risk. The conversation returns to one idea throughout: technical ability can get a leader noticed, but influence, relationships, and business judgment move the work forward.

    41 min
  • 454- Earn Your Seat Beyond Technology w/Scott Holleran

    Scott Holleran, CIO of Altus Fire & Life Safety, joins Phil Howard to discuss what gives technology leaders real influence inside the business. Scott shares lessons from the Army and three private equity-backed technology roles, including why leaders should walk the floor, ride with frontline teams, and map the full process before choosing a system. He explains how to frame difficult requests through cost, time, return, and tradeoffs; why business-specific data expertise belongs close to operations; how clear behavioral scorecards help teams perform; and why AI will strengthen specialists rather than erase the value of expertise.

    36 min
  • 447- Learn the Business to Lead Technology w/Dr. Michael Barr

    Dr. Michael Barr has worked across military communications, infantry leadership, university teaching, research operations, and healthcare IT. In this conversation with Doug Camin, he explains how that range changed the way he leads. They discuss connecting technology to operations, preparing people for work beyond their current role, making decisions with incomplete information, and building a succession pipeline before a key absence exposes the gap. Michael closes with a direct challenge for emerging leaders: study the parts of the business that sit outside your technical comfort zone.

    35 min
  • 453- Make Approved AI Easier to Use w/Mason Herbel

    Mason Herbel describes the shift from an AI startup to Parallel Systems, where the first questions were about governance and company data. Some employees already used AI. Others had barely started. His advice for IT leaders: give people a clear route to approved tools, then make that route easy enough to use at work.

    He suggests company enterprise plans, agreements about data handling, and a trial period for tools employees request. After the trial, check actual usage and whether another paid app already does the job. Blocking a website has limits when someone can reach for a personal phone. Mason puts it plainly: “So you may as well make it easy for people to use in a secured manner.” This is his proposed approach, rather than a report of a completed company-wide AI rollout.

    We also get into choosing infrastructure one workload at a time. Mason recounts moving an engineering firm away from aging local servers after checking its remaining applications and Microsoft licenses. At an AI company, he argued for examining owned GPUs as API bills grew. He describes that proposal and the conversations around it; he does not claim verified savings from a completed GPU deployment.

    For IT leaders trying to get a useful idea heard, Mason explains how he kept discussing the GPU proposal with a principal engineer. He also recalls asking to join a server installation early in his first job and learning by doing when the lead technician had to leave. The practical thread: ask how the work gets done, bring colleagues into the decision, and keep everyday IT needs covered while taking on new projects.

    47 min
  • 452 -Make IT A Business Partner w/Jim Harden

    Jim Harden began his IT career in the Marine Corps, building tactical data networks from commodity gear before moving into corporate technology and leadership. Now CIO at Singleton Schreiber, Jim joins Phil Howard to explain how IT can move from break-fix support to business strategy.

    He shares why his team is giving lawyers one governed entry point for AI workflows, how infrastructure as a service cut new-office deployments from days to hours, and why growth requires two- and three-year technology plans. Jim also explains what he wants from specialist vendors, including a project that consumed about $40,000 before being scrapped, and why a strong project manager can be worth every penny. The conversation closes with lessons from bad leaders, useful feedback, humility, and the questions Jim asks at the end of every one-on-one.

    44 min
  • 451 -Your Value Is Bigger Than Your Code w/Peter Vardaro

    Peter Vardaro started in biomedical equipment service, where unreliable connectivity and slow documentation often consumed more time than the repair itself. That frustration pulled him into low-code experiments, enterprise applications, medical-equipment logistics, and team leadership. In this conversation with Mike Kelley, Peter explains why applications must be designed for the business that may exist tomorrow, how repeated support tickets can point to features that help hundreds of people, and why leaders should measure and celebrate the time their teams return to the business. Peter also discusses vendor accountability, protected health information, AI governance, vibe-coded prototypes, and his belief that AI will make human judgment and relationships more valuable.

    45 min

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