Heavy Strategy

Latest Episodes:

HS108: Keeping the (IT) House Clean to Avoid the Plague Jul 22, 2025

Show notes

Whether it’s CNAME records pointing to dead endpoints or abandoned cloud storage buckets still mentioned in the makefile or Chef recipe, seemingly innocuous bits of infrastructure that don’t get cleaned up can turn into serious security threats. (Both of these examples are taken from real-life attacks, BTW). When and how and who within IT should... Read more »

HS107: Your (Late) New Years Resolution: Follow Your (Amended) Strategy Jul 01, 2025

Show notes

Here we are, a bit more than halfway through the year. How’s your execution against your strategy going? Roiled by the economy? Disrupted by tariffs? Thrown off by staff retirements? If you built a proper technology strategy in the first place, driven by the business strategy, then no matter what is happening don’t ignore it,... Read more »

HS106: Planning for the Epochalypse Jun 17, 2025

Show notes

IT teams deal with technology lifecycle issues all the time–including Y2K, which enterprises across the world grappled with for years. The Epochalypse, or Year 2038 Problem, is similar. Specifically, some Linux systems’ date-time counters will go from positive to negative at a specific date in 2038, potentially wreaking havoc on embedded systems and any other... Read more »

HS105: How to Train Your Unicorn: Thoughts on Ops Architects Jun 03, 2025

Show notes

You need someone to design your operations processes–or perhaps redesign them. That’s an Ops Architect. Should you take an ops person and train them up in architecture? Or an architect and train them up in operations? Do you even have that ops/engineer/architect organizational structure – and should you? Johna and John dive into this discussion... Read more »

HS104: How Long Should Your Planning Horizon Be? May 20, 2025

Show notes

How far ahead should you plan, and what things belong in your strategic plan? Conventional wisdom holds that a 3-year planning horizon is “about right”–but in a period of rapid technical and geopolitical change (such as we’re arguably in right now) does that go too far out, particularly when agile methodologies recommend shorter action plans... Read more »

HS103: Why IT Is Like Ultimate Frisbee May 06, 2025

Show notes

It’s all well and good to develop a technology strategy, articulate and document the strategy, and agree (supposedly) on that strategy. But what do you do when one or more of the tech teams act in apparent opposition to the strategy? John and Johna discuss why this happens and what questions you need to ask... Read more »

HS102: IT’s Role In AI (Sponsored) Apr 29, 2025

Show notes

AI can impact an enterprise in several ways: making individuals more productive, making products and services more effective, and making it easier for customers and partners to do business. IT plays a critical role in enabling AI to have these impacts. On today’s sponsored Heavy Strategy, Cisco CIO Fletcher Previn explains how to locate AI use... Read more »

HS101: Time for a Cybersecurity Spring Cleaning? Apr 22, 2025

Show notes

Most organizations have a long list of security holes in the form of unpatched systems and other known but unresolved vulnerabilities. Is it time to hit the big PAUSE button and fix, patch, or mitigate all of that before we resume deploying new systems (and their accompanying risks)? Join us as we tear into whether... Read more »

HS100: Lead Without Lying: The (Radical) Strategy of Honesty Apr 08, 2025

Show notes

Is it actually possible to run a team without lying? Steven Gaffney, author of the book, “Just Be Honest”, joins Johna and John to talk about why being honest is harder than it sounds–and how (and why) to do it anyway. Steven spends his career advising science and technology leaders about how to be more... Read more »

HS099: From CLI to CFO: Translating Complex Network Data into Clear Strategic and Financial Insights (Sponsored) Apr 01, 2025

Show notes

IT and network leaders need more than uptime—they need to know what their networks cost, what they deliver, and how future changes will impact the business. That’s where Netos comes in. CEO and founder Richard Foster joins Johna and John in a lively discussion to explore how Netos turns complex operational data into clear financial... Read more »

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