Heavy Strategy
Packet Pushers
From technology to workplace culture, from geopolitical trends to economics, Heavy Strategy debates pivotal questions in enterprise IT. Hosts Johna Till Johnson & John Burke bring their technical expertise, analytical acumen, and contrasting viewpoints to discuss complex topics of interest to IT leaders. Frequently irreverent and always thought-provoking, these are the conversations you wish you could have at the leadership table. Tune in and join the think tank, where unanswered questions are better than unquestioned answers.
Episodes
Mentioned books
Aug 5, 2025 • 32min
HS109: Is AI a Purchase or a Hire?
Is adding AI to your environment a software purchase? Or is it more like hiring an employee? Heavy Strategy’s John Burke and Johna Johnson debate whether AI should be treated as just another application you buy and use, or be handled like an employee you’re bringing on staff (complete with background and reference checks, training... Read more »
Jul 22, 2025 • 24min
HS108: Keeping the (IT) House Clean to Avoid the Plague
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 »
Jul 1, 2025 • 32min
HS107: Your (Late) New Years Resolution: Follow Your (Amended) Strategy
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 »
Jun 17, 2025 • 28min
HS106: Planning for the Epochalypse
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 »
Jun 3, 2025 • 27min
HS105: How to Train Your Unicorn: Thoughts on Ops Architects
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 »
May 20, 2025 • 29min
HS104: How Long Should Your Planning Horizon Be?
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 »
May 6, 2025 • 26min
HS103: Why IT Is Like Ultimate Frisbee
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 »
Apr 29, 2025 • 41min
HS102: IT’s Role In AI (Sponsored)
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 »
Apr 22, 2025 • 32min
HS101: Time for a Cybersecurity Spring Cleaning?
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 »
Apr 8, 2025 • 42min
HS100: Lead Without Lying: The (Radical) Strategy of Honesty
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 »
