My values as an IT Director and as a human being:

1. Everyone is equally deserving of my respect (until they do something pretty extreme to lose it). My staff, my co-w0rkers, the end-users at my firm, my family, complete strangers across the world, and absolutely everyone is a valuable person to me. My references to “geeks” or “users” are not meant to be condescending in any way.
2. I shoot straight. I value complete honesty, and hold myself to that standard. What I say is what I mean; there is pretty much never a hidden meaning. One drawback is that I might not “get” that others read negative meaning into my statements.
3. I work hard. I am an incredibly driven person. If I don’t pay attention, I will work myself until I am absolutely sick. Do you see a tweet at 10:12 AM? Chances are that I took 30 seconds to tweet between tasks, but since I’ll work through lunch and far into the evening, I hope you don’t begrudge me that 30 seconds. Do you see a blog post at 10:13 AM? Well, chances are that I wrote it at some obscene hour in the middle of the night and set it to post during business hours so that more people would see it.
4. I take care of my staff. I rarely ask anyone to work harder than I push myself, and I usually have much more sense when it comes to their sanity or health than I do with my own. I also consider it to be part of my job to get to know who they are inside and outside of work. Maybe you’ll come across a non-work conversation once in a while, but as I mention in my post On Geek Socialization, this is a good thing for the team and the firm’s IT service.
5. I care about the customers. I have my job so that I can provide the best service possible to the end-users at my firm. I call them “users”, not to be condescending, but because that is the common term used in IT, and this is a blog for and about leaders of geeks.
6. My family is important to me. I almost always put work first, but I’ve learned that there are certain things I need to do in order to keep my family speaking to me and keep myself sane.
7. Laughter is important. I like to have fun at work. Heaven knows, we all spend enough hours there… I go into more detail in my post On Humor.
8. I have feelings. Yes, they get hurt sometimes. Especially since I’m a generally positive person, and I greatly dislike it when people misinterpret things that I do and say as hurtful. I get stressed sometimes. I make mistakes. I’m human. I try to apologize and move on.

As a blogger, I should mention that none of the geeks mentioned in any post on this blog is a real geek. Do you think you see one of my staff here? Sorry, but you’re wrong. Maybe something might resemble something one of them did one time, but it could just as easily be based on a news article or anecdote from a colleague.