Recently, I concluded the hiring process to bring on a new team member for my organization. It had been more than a year since our last hire and working through the process again acted as a reminder for what I look for in candidates. Before I started in leadership, I often found myself wondering what was happening on the other […]
Hello again everyone! It’s been a whirlwind of late for me trying to keep up with all my responsibilities in Texas local government. Last week we had our TAGITM annual conference for the first time in two years and it was such a blast. Two years felt like more, but it was fantastic to see familiar faces on both the […]
Hard to believe a year has passed since I purchased the countryexec.com domain and published my first post. Mere weeks prior the COVID-19 pandemic had completely annihilated our way of being, and society was in the midst of a toilet paper outage that I have yet to comprehend. I had been considering creating a website for some time, with the […]
Howdy folks! I’ve been pretty busy writing quite a few guest posts here lately. Primarily these have been for GovLoop through a twelve-week featured contributor program I signed up for. I also have a second article for GovCIO Outlook Magazine coming out soon and wrote a long form guest post for another website that was posted in February. Check out […]
Recently Mrs. Country Exec and I were talking and I mentioned to her that my thirty-year high school reunion was around the corner. Technically it’s three years away, but the way time burns by these days it’ll be here before you know it. She’s only slightly younger than me, but she was floored by the realization so many years had […]
As I sit here waiting for the greatest winter storm to hit Texas in thirty-five years to pass, I’ve had plenty of time to detach from life’s standard obligations and think about some things. We breezed right through Valentine’s and President’s Day dealing with the wrath of the storm. That said, I didn’t want the criticality of the situation to […]
I crave simplicity. Dream of it. I cannot walk by a cluttered area in my personal or professional existence without wanting to do something about it. For many years I have felt I possessed a sprinkling of OCD. Not to the point where it dominates my actions, but enough to feel slight anxiety when I see something noticeably disorganized. Minimalism, […]
I consider myself a bit of a renaissance man having grown up in a world I would term to be a closed environment. We knew what we knew and that was that. We didn’t take vacations. Traveling the country or visiting Disneyland sounded like crazy talk. That just wasn’t in the cards. Fancy types did that, not us. There was […]
Last month I wrote a post reflecting on 2020 and focusing on the many positive’s life has to offer, even during these trying times. I’d like my last post for the year to dig a little bit into what’s in store for the country exec blog in 2021. The quick and easy answer is much of the same. I’ve enjoyed building and […]
Here’s something not everyone can lay claim too. I conceived a phrase, a way of being in a professional context. Yet another oddity in my professional existence. I am particularly proud of my creation as I believe it defines me and who I am as a professional incredibly well in just two simple words. That phrase is Country IT. That’s it. […]