The Next Great Tech Leader Won’t Be a Technologist | Patrick Adesso

Leadership Language

CIO Patrick Adesso discusses the transformative impact of AI on technology leadership, arguing that the next generation of leaders will act mor

Key takeaways

• The future of tech leadership lies in 'orchestration' and 'linguistic' skills rather than deep syntax mastery.
• AI allows leaders to move from discussing software alternatives to presenting working prototypes built in days.

Main topics

• AI's impact on leadership roles
• Aviation as a metaphor for professional confidence

Notable quotes

The next great tech leader won't be a technologist necessarily, they'll be a linguist.

Conclusion

The episode serves as a call to action for technical professionals to

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) We should be considering AI as an alternative. I'm not saying it wins every time. I'm not pushing for it to win every time. But unless we do that, we will be behind the curve. We will be the last company to adopt these automated processes, and we can't be in that position. Speaker 2 (0:19) What AI in my world, in the software world, was able to do was we were talking about things like eliminating some legacy software from some expensive legacy software, underperforming high-dollar software, where we would normally go into a meeting, start talking about how we could possibly find alternatives to this. And now I come into that meeting with a prototype built, and they're looking at this like, this feels done. When did you do this? I said, well, I started Friday. I worked a little bit over the weekend. I got excited about it. And, you know, for our Monday meeting, you have something to click on and see my vision and what we can do with a small dev team with dedicated people that know the business, that know their users and are now empowered by AI. And it's, it is in a lot, it is a lot different. That conversation has evolved dramatically. Speaker 1 (1:23) Hey, welcome everybody. My guest today is Patrick Adesso. Patrick is CIO and technology generalist who spent his career building real systems from custom Internet of Things hardware deployed to over 50,000 customer sites to generate IT tools he's building today. Patrick holds multiple patents. He's a commercial pilot, which is pretty cool. He still writes and shifts software himself. Listening to Patrick worth your time today isn't just what he's built. It's how he's leading his organization through AI transition and a theory he has about who wins next. He thinks the future belongs to linguists, and I couldn't agree more. This is the Leadership Language Podcast. So let's find out why and let's talk to him. So Patrick, welcome to the Leadership Language Podcast. So good to have you today. I want to start with something you said in a recent conversation we had, that the next great tech leader won't be a technologist necessarily, they'll be a linguist. I want to earn our way to that idea today because I think it's going to surprise some people that Speaker 2 (2:26) are Speaker 1 (2:26) listening. But first, let's get to how you got here. And again, it's great to have you here today. Speaker 2 (2:33) Thanks, Bill. I'm excited. I always enjoy our conversations. This is one that's been kind of bubbling around my mind for a while, and I'm excited to just talk about it. Speaker 1 (2:43) Yeah. You know, you and I, we got to know each other. I mean, I've known you for a while through our time, like my time in Tampa area. But then we've got to know each other a little bit over the last couple of years, and I always enjoy talking to you. You've got such an interesting past. I think about you as like a Renaissance guy. I don't know if you would ever think about that. But like when I when I got to know you and I think about like all your capabilities is like, man, I'm envious. And he's got nice hair. So like my like, gosh, these guys got it all. You know, you've you've had a you've had an unusual path to where you are. You're a pilot GIS application developer now CIO CTO building AI systems. by hand, like you're very hands-on. Walk me through, if you can, like how those pieces connect. And if we go back to flying, like what's one thing flying taught you that shows up in how you lead and how you do your work today, really? Speaker 2 (3:44) Yeah, I mean, it goes back from the technology standpoint, goes back so far to before college, really from a time when I was a child. You know, I was failing. seventh grade math because my father decided that I should learn QBasic. And the first thing he taught me was how to write some software to solve systems of equations. And I wasn't showing my work. And that's sort of that really, I mean, that set me on a path to falling in love with software. And yes, I've made a career out of it, but I've always seen it. It's my passion. It is a creative outlet for me. It is something that I've always just been absolutely in love with. And I initially went to school, to university for computer science. I went to a small high school and then I went to University of Iowa and I tested exceptionally well. And I stepped into my first computer science class, which was computer science two. And there were probably about a thousand kids in the class. Speaker 2 (4:52) double-decker auditorium, and I'm just a young kid. It had really no formal computer science training at that time, all self-taught. And I knew at that moment that was not necessarily for me. I toughed out about a year. And when I went home that summer, my father had become a flight instructor the year I was gone. And we spent that summer flying together. We had a great summer. We flew all over the Midwest. And I remember sitting in the plane with him and saying, Dad, you know, I'd really like to do this instead. And he said, well, you know what? Find a school and we'll figure it out. So I found Florida Tech, Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Florida. They let me fly right away. They had a curriculum of aviation, computer science, and aviation management. I studied both. I loved flying. I took to flying. And your question about... what is the one thing that I took from aviation that applies today? It was interesting because I spent some time reflecting on that question and there was more than one thing. I kind of had to noodle through them. But I think the most important lesson I learned was it was a confidence, a lesson in confidence. It was a lesson that Speaker 2 (6:18) One of the first times when I was flying alone in an airplane, I had the realization that I was the kind of person that the buck can stop with me. I learned that I can be the guy that when everybody's in trouble, and this kind of goes to your renaissance because that is sort of a good fitting term. I'm the guy that people call when they need something taken care of. They need something fixed that they can't figure out. They need something done. And that's when I realized that. That's what flying brought me. It gave me that confidence to be like, I can do this. I can be the guy that the last in line, the one who's going to get the project done. And I've certainly carried that with me. It's been an important lesson for me. Speaker 1 (7:05) Man, thanks for sharing that. One of the things that jumped out at me is your relationship with your father. There's a lot of dads listening right now, and there's a lot of soon-to-be dads listening right now. And what I heard in there, Patrick, that I just really think is cool and a good message is that your dad was supportive of you. And your dad came alongside you. Speaker 1 (7:34) program together. He, he like held you a little bit accountable, you know, from a discipline, like if you're going to do this, like do it well. And, and then when you pivoted, like he was supportive in that too. Like he, you know, like I always say, you know, people, kids will find their path. Right. And it sounds like your dad was so supportive in there. And you hadn't told me that part of the story before. So thank you for sharing that. That's really cool. So to all those dads out there. And I know there's a lot of dads right now that are really working with their kids in programming because there's so much that we can do now. So anyway, thanks for sharing that. You still write code. I do. So like you didn't, like you took a different path, but your heart is still in building capabilities and you build systems yourself as a CTO. You have a team, but you're still hands-on. And, you know, most executives. at your level have stopped. Why haven't you? Speaker 2 (8:30) I said it a little bit before. It's a passion. It's obsession and addiction. We can call it a lot of things for me, but I love it. I think the first... The first point to why is it brings me joy, right? It is something that I love building. I love building something. I've always loved software for the notion that I can build something out of nothing, right? I can open Notepad and I can start writing code, give it to a compiler, and something comes out the other side, right? Yes, it's not a physical thing necessarily, but it is. something that can provide utility to somebody it's something that i think is cool it's just something and i love that about software i've always loved that about software um that's the the main reason but there are there are in the enterprise world my job there are other reasons why um Part of it for a long time was just to build trust in the team. I've always enjoyed a small team. You know, where I work, Dex Imaging, we have 1,800 employees. We're not a software company. We write software to enable the company to grow, to do things more efficiently, to... sell more copiers, right? Those are the reasons we're building software. So we build internal tools for Dex people. We're not selling the products that we're making. So I've had the luxury of always having a small team, super dedicated, super knowledgeable about the industry. We're all very close and I want them to respect me. And in order to do that, I need to be close to the metal. I need to be in there with them. Sometimes I can annoy them, I think. They're like, oh, the CIO is in the repo, guys. Everybody watch out. But it's usually not – I don't get that deep into the day-to-day. It's usually I'm up front. My job, the way I see it, is to – that pilot lesson, right? I'm where the buck stops. It is my responsibility to say, we are going to take on this project. This is what's best for the company. And I'm responsible for the outcome. What we ship, it doesn't matter about any of the code that was written, how it was written, who wrote it. All that matters is what we put out there adds value to the organization in the way that the organization needed. So that's why I stand up. I can't do that by. having conversation with somebody, sending it off to an engineer and hoping that nothing's lost in translation and the vision that I had is going to be shipped. So I get involved and I stay involved. Speaker 1 (11:16) That's really great. So it sounds like you have really good trust relationships with your team, which is key, especially if you're in the repo looking at what's going on and being part of that. So, you know, one of the things we had, I don't think we talked about this in our last conversation. Today, more than ever, the CIO, the CTO, whatever the title is, leading the organization from a technology perspective, they have to be so much more business mindset than the past. When I started my career, we were called data processing department, and it was just keeping the administrative systems running. And today, the CIOs, leaders,