You've Been Heard

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.

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.

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.

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 claim to prove the Earth is round.