Author: Anthony Carlson

AIM IT Leadership Academy: Self-Management & Empowerment

This months AIM IT leadership Academy was held at Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Nebraska. This was a my first time at this building.

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The session was in the Aksarben room. The room had pictures of when Aksarben had horse racing.

The topic was Self Management & Empowerment. The facilitator of the session was Randy Roberts. She talked about how this day would be packed with information.

Do you believe you are a extraordinary person outside of work?
Some people can’t just turn it one and be Amazing. A person has to have standards to who they want to be in life.

What are my standards vs Accomplishments? Who do I need to be at work vs life? Is my life better than before? As a person I need to find Source of what makes life better?

  • Self-Awareness: Environmental to live life.
  • Responsibility of Leader is dual for self and others.

Any result in life is based on actions. As individuals we go straight to actions. Should we look at more. Organization entrenches the culture of action, but else is there besides action in a organization.

Reality

Convinced of a belief is the truth to most of us. How to agree something is Real? Reality exists and persists without us. To find the difference between something real? A person needs to find secondary Decisions: Collect data to be right? That is real.

Opinion, Assessment comes from speaking?
Language over belief. Powerful Reality will cause results to go up.

Describe Self
1) Consistent
2) Creative
3) Reliable

A adult only has to hear 3 things to be influenced. We have behaviors to act certain way. Don’t stand a chance unless we resist of lure to full fill a role
There is a time in our life that something was said that shaped our life: Mine is “When you are tired you have to work the hardest”

When a person makes stuff up: Everything goes wrong, things you do will go wrong. You see this in opinion vs reality. A opinion is that “Technology People are not good at working with people” People say crazy things if you let them. People make things up to force a story. The Behavior allows people to  get stuck.

People take extraordinary when given option. There is a capability

 

you can be right, but both are not right
When you lead with a story and believe you are right it leads
Behavior Address
top person who give permission to act this way are they broken and not acceptable.

The Line

Randy talked about a line. It is how much are you above something vs how low will you keep yourself.

In an conversation with someone. How long can you stay above or below line? How long to be relevant?

90% Awareness: Where you are at the moment. Recognize are you above or below the line. When Awareness is below the line 10% of are not aware.

Get focus and take a minute to get back
Adults lead better before than after a conversation.
People need to recover when things don’t go their way. Leaders forgive people fast. How do I recover personally? I breath, stand and shake head.

Promises

In life you don’t generate promise of who you will be.
Well meaning, promise. Life by Design

Who am I committed to be in the future?

My bold statement: “Who am I in this world. I am a confident person who is committed to encourage the people closest to my heart.”

Hero’s are everywhere. Be a hero to others.  Listen powerfully to others. Listen with heart. Let them know you are there.
Creativity = listening
Don’t hijack conversation to interject your thoughts.
Emails are for information not communication. Don’t hide behind your computer. Who do I have to be to make this happen. Fear is a good thing. Over promise is growth. Deepest fear is that we are powerful. Liberate fear.

Saying right thing, but not acting a certain way is not the way to live. Can’t speak powerfully but have behavior.

Love your people so they can become fierce.

When you give people  a choice they become extraordinary. People want to be amazing. Love shows up in Reality.

What registers for people to respond? Contribution of someone letting you in. Hire Expert People. Relate to powerful people. That is leadership.

2019 Spring UNO Nullify Capture the Flag

The Cybersecurity (Nullify) student group hosts a Capture the Flag (CTF) competition for regional High Schools. I decided to sponsor this event as a great chance to network and get the Farm Credit Services of America name out to this group. I received information about being a sponsor back in November of 2018.

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Planning

Working with Information Technology leaders Russ Wagner and Rex Earl. We decided to sponsor the Bronze for $500.00.

Leading up to the event I coordinated with the Security Team for volunteers to help at the event. I also secured a table by working with the

Christie Smith, the Academic Program Coordinator at PKI. School of Interdisciplinary Informatics. She told me that they have never had a sponsor at the event before and was thrilled that I would show up.

Day of Event

The event was at the Scott Conference Center on UNO Campus. I arrived about 8:45 a.m. I met Christie who helped get my table set up in the far corner of the room.

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The event kicked off at 9:00 a.m. I was happy to hear Farm Credit Services of America was given a mention as a sponsor of the event. After looking over the T-Shirt that everyone at the event received our Bio Star Logo was on the back of the shirt.

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The room was set up that each high school had 4 to 6 members that worked as a team trying to earn points for finding vulnerabilities in a website.

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Through out the event I meet the following Professors

  • Dr. Bill Mahoney (Faculty advisor to the Nullify Student Group)

  • Dr. Matthew L. Hale (He teaches mobile application development. Mostly in Android. We exchanged emails for a potential class room visit in the future).

  • Dr. Robin A. Gandhi (Teaches mostly about Security Assurance and Attack)

A big thanks to teammates for working split shifts to help out.

    2019 Spring UNO Delta Sigma Pi student Meeting

    On Thursday January 31, 2019 I visited the University of Nebraska-Omaha CBA student organization DELTA SIGMA PI. I was extending a invitation by the faculty advisor Dr. Erin Miles to speak to the group about professional development.

    I arrived about 7:00 p.m. at Mammel Hall. From 6:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. the group was finishing up with New Pledges.

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    I waited in the commons area for the pledge ceremony to get over. The president came out to get me about 7:20 p.m.

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    The meeting was in Mammel Hall 113 which is the Auditorium. When I walked in I estimate there were about 30 students.

    I started the meeting off showing the students the Technology Works Here video. When the video was over I invited the students to “Innovation Works Here” on February 15th. Every student was given a physical invite. I took information with a Office 365 From. 16 students gave me information.

    Besides my role of Lead Application Developer I also serve the role of being a College Ambassador for FCsamerica to strengthen relationships with the University of Nebraska – Omaha (UNO).

    I spent the next 15 to 20 minutes talking about Career Development and answering questions.

    I talked about various forms of Leadership

    • · Self-Awareness
    • · Self-Management
    • · Relationship-Management

    The meeting ended with group picture.

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    When I got home I used word mail merge to send a personalized message to each student.

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    AIM IT Leadership Academy: Creativity and Innovation

    Friday January 4th was the third session of the AIM IT Leadership Academy on Creativity and Innovation. The session was TD Ameritrade Headquarters.

     

    Started with ice Breaker trying to have each table get as many of the same color candy.

    What is Innovation

    Innovation is about scope. Before you start tackling a task. Do you ask questions? Remember you will always need help to make something happen.

    When it comes to communicating:

    • Talker says about 130
    • Good Listener hears 400 to 600
    • Distracted Listener misses %45 of words

    How to put Value on Something? Someone has to want the product or idea. 

    Is value Subjective? What determines something value or cost?

    Types of thinking:

    • Boundary
    • Lateral 
    • Backward-Forward 

    Types of Value: 

    • Sentimental
    • Monetary 
    • Cultural 

    Define what Innovations is to you or the company?

    Understanding the value of a innovation idea? Do you have the mindset for Innovation. Does you company have the mindset? Do you have the Tools and space have innovation. 

    You can spin anything from innovation to iterations. Step back and ask someone to be innovative? What’s there response. A  better person should make the team better? What is a person motivation to Innovate. A person may be a visionary but not at executing that vision. 

    The team may be more innovative then the company. I truly believe that, but is this a team that gets more done for the team or causes change in the company because of what they do. 

    When you think a well established company and innovation:

    • Change is Incremental 
    • Less disruptive
    • Less Risky
    • Moving Forward
    • Enticing

    Business Life Cycle

    • Birth
    • Growth
    • Maturity
    • Delcline or Rebirth

    Quote: Everything arises and everything falls: Buddhism

    Customer Naturally migrate away from a product. Something  about a product needs to change. Do you take a Defensive Strategy? Innovate to be successful for a Offensive Strategy. In a offensive strategy 

    • Incremental Strategy
    • Feature Improvements
    • Business Transformations

    Profound or radical Change is an entirely different level of change. Strive for a basic change of character has no resemblance with past configuration or structure

    Transcendent Brands

    • • Innovation 
    • • Lifestyle
    • • Emotion
    • • Differentiation

    People Perspective

    There is a cost of Innovation: Does it equal monetary cost? Is there a change mindset when doing Innovation? Change Management deals with people in most business. 

    Most people have skill set to get something done. Most people problems happen when a person is not to sure of the process to get something done. How can I show my value to helping people? How can I make people better Do people connect to innovation? What keeps people from being innovative?

    Agile is about communication and collaboration. The tenants of Agile deal with all discuss of innovating. 

    Thinking

    Vertical thinking is using obvious choices Select & reject versus Lateral thinking which is as many solutions and different perspectives. 

    • Write down initial statement
    • Underline keywords in problem
    • Throw out words

    Backward and  Forward Planning

    • Visual Desired Result
    • List task & times
    • Plan supporting Tasks the same
    • Assign Responsibilities

    LATERAL + BOUNDARY + backward forward thinking are building blocks of innovation. The follow are some characteristics  of a company that embraces innovation. 

    • Top Leadership supports innovation
    • Diverse set of Personalties and skills
    • The workforce & culture with innovation connect
    • Failure is expected and OK
    • Employees have time to innovate

    What this session taught me is Innovation without value is a gimmick. If the correct influence is not done. Then passionate thoughts are really just opinions on what should be done. 

    We did an exercise on what is a Innovative space. The outcome of exercise didn’t set well. It should have been what is the ideal work space a person needs to work. 

    No one wants to fail at something, but we don’t innovate because it is a time issue. Is it a time issue or really a focus issue. That you don’t want to focus on things that you might fail at. 

    The last exercise and part of the class was our table was to think of a innovative way to save a dying company. We grabbed Napster and our idea was passionate, but no next steps to do anything. 

    Overall this was a good session. The facilitators were excellent. My take away is in some area of Information technology the work we do is really innovative.   Innovation happens every day.  We don’t call it that, but that what I got our of this session. 

    AIM IT Leadership Academy: Strategic Planning

    Friday December 7th was the second session of the AIM IT Leadership Academy on Strategic Planning. The session was the AIM institute downtown building.

    The meeting was on the second floor Combine Community Meeting room.

    Like the first meeting. I had an assigned seat with the agenda for the day was laid out at the table.

    Strategic Planning

    The morning started off with a talk about, What is Strategic Planning?

    The three things the presenter wanted us to know:

    1. What is Strategic Planning?
    2. Tell how you would do it?
    3. Motivate to develop and Embrace.

    Today’s IT Leader is similar to other roles in leadership.

    Relationships & communication give you a credibility mindset.

    Having a vision of Operational Excellence starts with Strategic Planning.

    We teams are:

    • Visionary + builds operational plan
    • Communicator + own the numbers

    Don’t break what works today?

    How do you measure? Which is hard?
    Is what you are changing a strategic enabler?

    • Know the Business
    • Know your business
    • Create a plan & effectively communicate that plan
    • Execute, measure, adjust

    Employees want to know how to help the plan?
    What do I do with the plan?

    IT can help:

    • Grow Revenue
    • Reduce Operating Expenses
    • Manage Risks

    Know the business:

    • Read company newsletters
    • Read announcements
    • Read about industry
    • Face to Face with business
    • Business Initiatives

    Know your business

    • Products and services
    • Assets and Resources
    • Talent Development
    • Technical Investments

    How to communicate a plan?

    • Obstacles and how to overcome them
    • Timeline
    • Measure Success

    Why we choose to “not” be strategic?

    • Not good
    •  To busy
    • Value in it
    • Not my job
    • Nothing to show

    Why to embrace Strategic Planning?

    Pros

    • Career Advancement
    • Work life Balance
    • Budget Done
    • Happy

    Cons

    •  Limit Career
    •  Up late at night
    •  Budget issues
    •  Not happy

    Omaha Companies

    The rest of the day involved hearing strategic plans from different CIO’s of Omaha based companies.

    Farm Credit Services of America
    Werner Enterprises
    Nebraska Furniture Mart

    The presenter would take time telling the group about their company. Then tells us about that companies strategic plans. The final part of the their presentation was to tell us a strategic problem their company would like each table to attack. The table would then spend 30 minutes to build a 3-minute presentation using what we learned from the first presentation of the day.

    The 30 minutes was challenging. The ability to get our table to gather ideas, create a solid talking point, then determine how it would be presented.

    After each table gave their presentation to the board which were the three CIO’s. The board would ask questions.

    Questions
    How do you measure you request?
    What’s going to go wrong?
    Where did you get a proposal?
    What is your contingency plan?

    Feedback
    Years ago, Information Technology was seen as overhead. The current state of a business is IT is core to the business. How will your language have IT engage in a recommend when presenting a strategy? Are there ever objectives to educate other parts of the business? Are there costs to get up and running? Then be careful in numbers? What is a timeline to the proposal?

    Awesome ideas start with words that get to the point.

    If you did a good job in presenting your strategy. The response to your proposal should be “What do you need from me?”

    Presentation Skills

    The last hour of the day was working on Presentations Skills. Members of the Omaha Chapter of Toastmasters International.

    Tips for presenting or speaking:

    • There are no rules
    • Let things go
    • Talk about self
    • Prepare
    • Transitions
    • Remove distractions
    • Audible Level
    • Eye Contact
    • Visual Aids
    • Tell the best story, then keep telling the story.

    Takeaways

    This class made me get “It” when looking at levels of leadership. I know grasp the roles of different levels of leadership in terms of planning and leading an organization. The acts of planning are the same at any level, but it is the breadth of responsibility of the planning on why people are chosen to lead from a organizational level.

    Improving Enterprise Architecture skills for the Omaha area professionals.

    Improving Enterprise Architecture skills for the Omaha area professionals.

    I found a Enterprise Architecture group on https://www.meetup.com I have been wanting to improve my skills, but also get a better understanding what others in the community see in terms of Enterprise Architecture.

    The meeting was at Mutual Omaha. I have driven by the building for years, but never physically been in the building.

    I was given a tour of the area under the doom. There are four restaurants and lots of opening seating.

    On the tour there was a area that is marked as collaboration area of the future. It was interesting to see how it was laid out.

     

     

     

    We made our way to one of the conference rooms to start the meeting.

    The start of the discussion was a eye opener. It was the difference of Enterprise Architecture vs Software Architecture. I cam to the group looking at the approach of Software, but thinking about how the Enterprise ties to the business was more compelling to me.

    Different Discussion Points

    Enterprise Architecture is about solution at a larger scale. Architect your enterprise to meet the business.

    Disciplined Agile 2.0 YouTube video
    •Goal Driven
    •Disciplined Agile Delivery Framework

    Togaf Architect: First time ever hearing of this solution.

    Challenge of recreating or how do I get something for Free. Who pays for it? How do you get businesses to build application where technology is talked in terms of business.
    •Value of EA gives guidance to let teams provide value.
    •How do you engage different technology teams?
    •Mutual of Omaha uses three week sprints?
    •Following standards vs guidance.
    •Complete visibility in the work
    •Business team hearing what there systems does.
    •Service Catalog

    •Talking to Business Owner about the features of what a system does not the application.
    ◦Business Capability model.
    ◦Why do we teach people to talk features applications or technology?
    ◦Capabilities of the system for the business
    • Should enterprise architects give solution to software teams.
    ◦Does this that impedes business from success.
    ◦Are you meeting business objectives?
    ◦Support Delivery teams
    ◦Finding individual success on teams and how can others use it.
    ◦Be the team people wants to call.
    ◦Negations of technical dependencies.

    2018 Fall UNO College of Business Capstone Cup Finals

    The University of Nebraska-Omaha College of Business Capstone Cup finals took place on Friday, November 130th on the first floor of Mammel Hall, located at 6708 Pine Street, Omaha, NE 68182.

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    This was a second time attending the finals of this event, but this time I was going to be a judge. Since Farm Credit Services is a sponsor of the event there was a reserved table for the networking event portion of the event lasting for about an hour before the finals started. It is a great opportunity to speak with our students and attendees.

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    Finals

    The finals were held in the auditorium. I was glad with the sponsorship money ($500.00) I had a judges seat in the first row.

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    Our logo with company name was recognized during the finals.

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    The format of the afternoon was going to be the following:

    1:00 PM Welcome by Associate Dean Harland

    1:10 PM Presentation 1

    1:30 PM Presentation 2

    1:50 PM Presentation 3

    2:10 PM Presentation 4

    2:35 PM Judges Deliberate

    2:45 PM Awards Presented

    The presentations were treating the judges like a Board of Directors. The groups were pitching how they can transform the YETI company. I took a lot of notes, but I personally did not have many questions. The team that won had recommended a YETI fridge targeting hunters and fishermen: from the field to the fridge. This was the same group that had reached out to me about blockchain.

    The sponsorship was for the FALL 2018 and Spring 2019 years. So I look forward to do this again next semester. 

    2018 Fall UNO Speed Mock Interviews

    On Wednesday, November 28, 2018 from 1:30 P.M. to 4:30 P.M. at the Milo Bail student center on the main campus of the University of Nebraska-Omaha (UNO).  I participated in the Thompson Learning Community Speed Mock Interviews

    There was a record 230 students from  Thompson Learning Community (TLC) sophomore students that participated in mock interviews.  The goal of the interviews is for a student to meet a variety of employers and gain valuable interview experience. A good majority of these students where first generation college students.

    I was positioned in the far back area of the of the 2nd floor Center room.

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    Starting at 1:00 p.m. about 20 some students were brought in the room and staggered at different employers. Each interview was to last for 6 minutes with a two minute feedback.

    For each interview I asked 4 questions in some form.

    • Tell me about how someone describes you?.
    • Tell me about a project you have worked on?
    • Tell me about a time where you have mentored someone?
    • So when have you had a setback? How did you handle it?

    For each of the students I provided feedback on why I asked the questions. 

    I followed up with a email to interviewee. For each of the students I recommend looking student and communities groups. Get a linkedin account.  I also recommended starting a personal blog.

    I feel these are type of events where I can make a difference.

    2018 YPIA – Nebraska and Southwest Iowa Executive Breakfast Forum

    This morning I attended the 2018 Young Professionals in Agriculture – Nebraska and Southwest Iowa Executive Breakfast Forum hosted at the Scoular Ballroom in Downtown Omaha!

    At the event, I had the opportunity to network and interact with one another over breakfast. They had a fruit, eggs and sausage. My name badge had a number 7 which was the table I was assigned for the event.  I sat next to another Farm Credit Services of America Employee. There were actually a good number of Farm Credit Services of America employees there.

    The opening discussion was about how technology was reshaping Agriculture.  The panel moderated was Dr. Tom Field from the Engler Agribusiness Entrepreneurship Program at the University of Nebraska. Panelists were Quantified Ag, Tractor Zoom, and myAgData.

    I had heard the CEO of Quantified Ag talk before. I knew his company was Fitbit for cattle. He talked that feedlots are savvy. They use data and Analytics to have more information to make better business decisions.  Tractor Zoom talked about simplicity and user experience. MyAgData talked about standards, cloud computing and changing people’s mindset.

    If you were starting a business:

    • Niche vs salable.
    • How can you fail cheap?
      • How or what is your proof of concept
    • Is it a solvable problem you are after?
    • Will there be market acceptance?
    • Funding
    • Human Capital
    • Laws & Regulations

    The question was asked if they could reset.

    • Realize things take longer than you expect.
    • Have customer validation
      • Don’t invest in ideas that customers do not want
    • Start as a Inc instead of LLC? I need to research the why of that statement.
    • There are experts in fields. Find those people to help you along the way.
    • Understand development cycle of a product.
    • Learn by Failure is not cheap.
    • Look at Outside Influences who are competing in market.
    • When marketing to producers do it digitally. “How to Video’s” on YouTube are big customer influences.
    • Can you produce a future business plan? Is it really a execution plan?
    • Lead, follow or get out of the way mentality
    • Legal: How many lawyers do you need? A lot!!!!

    On the way out I talked a few minutes with Vishal Singh of Quantified Ag. Then really walking out of the ballroom I talked to Kyle McMahon about the development stack at TractorZoom.

    Overall it was a good event. I will have to look into membership with the YPiA.