Michael Light

Author: Michael Light

  • Creative By Design: My Unconventional Path to IT Leadership

    A Journey I Never Planned

    I wasn’t supposed to end up here. I was an art major at a private liberal arts school, a graphic designer chasing gigs that balanced creative freedom and a paycheck. Code and IT were, at best, a hobby. Yet somehow, over 20 years, that hobby evolved into a career—and an unconventional path to IT leadership. I wouldn’t change a thing.

    From IBM Selectric to Adobe Illustrator

    Growing up in the ’80s, my father—a career IBMer—made sure we always had tech around. First an IBM Selectric typewriter, then an IBM PC Jr. By the 1990s, home internet arrived. Until then, our computer handled little more than PC games and book reports. (Shout out to the dot-matrix printer and WordPerfect!)

    By college, my high school portfolio earned me one of the top art scholarships. The Graphic Design curriculum focused on Photoshop, Illustrator, and QuarkXPress but also immersed me in drawing, painting, ceramics, and sculpture. That mix built an incredible foundation for digital design. After just a few years working full-time, I won a Gold ADDY Award. Today, I still rely on those studio-learned skills—and they often feel like a superpower.

    Zigzags, Detours, and Discovery

    My career has been anything but a straight ladder. After years as a designer, a friend from church asked if I’d consider a web developer role. I dove in—and quickly realized 16-hour days were the only way to catch up. Over time, the grind eased and my skills sharpened. That leap led to other opportunities: cyber compliance, project management, and eventually program leadership in the C-suite.

    Through it all, my visual thinking, storytelling, and problem-solving became my edge. Few people stepped back to see the “composition” of an issue—what needed refining, what needed scrapping. Every detour felt risky. Every detour taught me something vital.

    Design Thinking in a Data-Driven World

    What I didn’t realize early on was that my design background would become my secret weapon. Designers think like storytellers—we ask, “What does the customer need to see, feel, and understand?” When I moved into IT, that mindset came with me.

    Whether it was developing an internal application, mapping a thousand-task project plan, or presenting KPIs to executives, I always looked for the customer—upstream or downstream. A slide with a few arrows and dates isn’t enough. If it doesn’t tell a story the audience can absorb, it’s not delivering value. Design thinking isn’t just aesthetics; it’s intention. Draw the eye. Deliver the message. Use fewer words, but make them count.

    The Scenic Route Teaches You Things

    Taking the scenic route taught me lessons a traditional climb never could: adaptability matters more than certainty, and curiosity is a superpower.

    Changing careers teaches you you can survive change—and, more importantly, how to adapt. It doesn’t always get easier, but you learn to breathe when the air of uncertainty gets thin. I’ve seen people suffocate when they couldn’t adjust, missing opportunities to grow.

    In one major career shift, I was handed a team of 50, a large application portfolio, and a key role in a corporate transformation program. It was heavy, but I didn’t complain about the weight—I built a roadmap, shared the vision, and got everyone moving together. That’s what the scenic route teaches you: to step back, see the bigger picture, and reshape the composition.

    Your Detour Could Be Your Superpower

    If your path feels anything but straight—or you’ve been told you’re “too creative” for a technical field—don’t count yourself out. The very things that make you different might be what sets you apart.

    Curiosity must be a constant companion. Dabble. Learn. Explore. Art, design, and IT are only a small part of who I am—they just happen to be the parts I’ve used to make a living. I’ve played music for most of my life, studied languages, and love the outdoors. Those side passions feed creativity—and creativity feeds everything else.

    We live in an age when knowledge is everywhere. If you feel stuck, there’s a way forward—if you’re willing to adapt. It isn’t easy, but having reached the other side, I can tell you: it’s worth it.

    Grace In The Journey

    I’d be remiss if I didn’t share the riverbed under my career: my relationship with God. Looking back at the doors that opened—and those that didn’t—it’s impossible not to see His influence. The timing, the opportunities, the peace in the chaos. When I didn’t know whether to step forward or wait, I leaned on Him. For me, faith hasn’t just helped me through change—it’s shaped who I am on the other side.

    Now It’s Your Turn

    My path has been more Picasso than Rembrandt, but every brushstroke mattered. And if my unconventional journey can lead here, so can yours. What unexpected turns has your career taken—and what have they taught you?

  • Culture: The Invisible Anchor Weighing Down Enterprise Transformation

    Why Transformation Fails

    If the aim of enterprise transformation is to reshape the organization into something fundamentally different by the end, then it’s critical to understand how things got to their current state. One major factor is company culture.

    Some of the more obvious areas to transform could be technology or digitization of business or even how the organization is structured. But how many times have companies reorganized only to find that the systemic issues are still there? According to McKinsey, around 70% of transformation efforts fail—often due to cultural resistance and unchanged behaviors. Without shifting the underlying culture, it can feel like putting the enterprise into a blender—everything moves, but nothing truly changes.? You need to look at changing not only the structure of the company but also the culture, the habits, the paradigms that exist that perpetuate the underlying needs for transformation.

    The Cultural Drag

    You can take all the paper processes in the company and replace them with the perfect digital platform and show some incremental success, but if you’re not changing how the company collaborates, solves problems, defines accountability, and demonstrates authentic leadership, then the transformation remains superficial—modern on the outside but unchanged at its core.

    Company culture can be an invisible anchor, slowing every aspect of the transformation—which in turn raises the cost exponentially. So while you define success criteria for the initiatives of the program and commit to value delivery targets, include steps to adapt the company culture—the thinking-way—and find ways to be intentional about moving forward in a way that models the behavior your organization needs to reduce friction and change for the better.

    Modeling Change from the Top

    There is not going to be a formula for this because every company is different. It begins with ensuring the executive leadership team is willing to be painfully obvious and take bold, unfamiliar steps to lead the way. Identify what the cultural behaviors your organization should be as a target, internalize them yourselves, model them, and make very clear to the organization that the new normal is here. There will be friction and pushback, but the more you push through with tenacity, the more you will begin to see a shift.

    If you can begin to operate and emulate the new behaviors while you’re transforming, your organization will see how to solve problems and achieve results in the new way of working.

    Unfurling the Sails

    Don’t let the invisible anchor of company culture sabotage your transformation or slow your value delivery—unfurl the sails of culture change and chart a bold new course. It’s time to hoist up the anchor and set sail.