Shownotes
What does it take to reposition IT as a driver of revenue—not just a responder to outages?
Kurt Shriner, Vice President of IT Infrastructure Management at Capital Bank, has spent nearly two decades in technology leadership. But it’s his background in psychology and live events that shapes his leadership style today. In this episode of Go Beyond the Connection, Kurt shares how psychological safety, internal marketing, and strategic roadmaps are helping him turn IT into a high-performing, growth-aligned force within the bank.
Here’s what you’ll learn from Kurt’s roadmap:
- Psychological safety is a growth strategy. When engineers feel safe speaking up, retention improves and issues surface earlier—before they become costly.
- IT must market itself. Kurt treats his 18-month roadmap like a campaign—public, strategic, and tied to specific KPIs. It earns trust, headcount, and budget.
- Leadership starts with listening. Kurt leads through mentorship and empathy, building trust through check-ins, ownership, and collaborative decision-making.
- You can’t be everywhere—so control the intake. By routing all support requests through himself, Kurt shields his engineers from constant context-switching and keeps projects on track.
- Tailored advocacy earns a seat at the table. Whether talking to a CFO, CRO, or COO, Kurt speaks their language—connecting tech outcomes to the metrics they care about.
“When I talk about transforming IT into a growth enabler, I’m not saying we stop break‑fix. We still keep the lights on. I’m looking for value‑add that proves we’re more important to the business than before.” – Kurt Shriner
If you're an IT leader looking to shift how your department is seen, this episode is a playbook for reframing IT’s role—from reactive support to proactive growth partner. Learn how Kurt earns trust across departments, retains top talent, and builds transparency into every project milestone.
Listen now and start building your own roadmap:
Transcripts
Kurt Shriner Bigleaf Podcast Full Episode Transcript
[:[00:00:29] Steve MacDonald: We're going to talk about a roadmap for transforming IT from a cost center into a growth enabler—a center where you want to invest because you get so much back.
[:[00:00:55] Steve MacDonald: Your perspectives are so interesting. I want to dive right into this, but I want to tell people a little bit more about you to begin with. You have a degree in psychology, which is going to lead to a lot of interesting conversations that we have today.
[:[00:01:24] Kurt Shriner: Thank you very much. I appreciate being on this podcast. I've worked in IT for almost 20 years, but I've held other jobs in my time. I've done other things, and to your point about customer service, I did not learn those soft skills by working in IT. I learned them through working in a service industry, by having that servant's mentality.
[:[00:02:07] Kurt Shriner: As they say, the best-laid plans don't always go as expected, and this helped hone my ability to take a hard left or hard right, change, and modify how I assess the situation and what my next move might be.
[:[00:02:45] Kurt Shriner: Psychology has taught me to be very sensitive to the needs of others and to recognize that we are all humans and we all have our own issues and problems. Everyone is working through their own issues, even if it is not on their face at the moment. At the same time, they still have a job to do.
[:[00:03:19] Kurt Shriner: They might have personal problems at home; they might be feeling overwhelmed at work, and I have to be ready to deal with that in addition to why I was hired in the beginning, which is of course my technical acumen. My soft skills and my attention to detail with my employees are important because we want them to stay. Employees are an investment in the business, and poor leadership is often the cause of attrition within an organization.
[:[00:04:00] Kurt Shriner: Yes, and I want that. Both myself and my boss have worked very hard to communicate that expectation to the rest of the organization—that all problems go through me. My team is ready; they stand by and are ready to help in every way, shape, and form. But I am there to run interference because I know what's going on with them.
[:[00:04:46] Steve MacDonald: Absolutely. Here's a couple of things that are really important about what you just said. One is you're protecting the team because you want the highest performance out of the team, right?
[:[00:05:14] Steve MacDonald: You talk about protecting them once they're on your team, but getting them— we're all about high-performance teams. If we don't have high-performance teams, we don't produce. What's your philosophy on attracting and retaining high-performance teams?
[:[00:05:44] Kurt Shriner: Sometimes people go online and find a generic job description and just say, "Fine, this'll do," but if some of the bullet points on there are not relevant to the role, then I'm asking potential candidates to spend a lot of time preparing for questions I'm not going to ask, and that's not good for anyone.
[:[00:06:17] Kurt Shriner: I don't want it all the way at 100, and I don't want it at zero. More important are their soft skills—how they deliver information. For example, I sometimes like to ask them how they would explain something to me, the boss, to a peer, or to someone lower on the totem pole.
[:[00:07:00] Kurt Shriner: I don't want someone who's just going to run in every day, head straight to the server room, and stay there with their laptop all day, never interacting. We must be collaborative; we must learn from each other, because that's how we grow.
[:[00:07:36] Steve Macdonald: But if the goal is to create high‑performance teams, I think about it like venture capitalists or private equity firms: they invest in the team first, the idea second, because you can’t execute without the right team. Tell me a little more—you scratched the surface about your team culture. As the leader, what kind of culture are you trying to instill?
[:[00:08:22] Kurt Shriner: In general, I’d describe my leadership style as managing personnel through collaboration, mentoring, and guiding. I give my team the chance to truly own systems, projects, and responsibilities to help make the organization more profitable. This trust is earned over time through regular one‑on‑ones, collaborative problem‑solving, providing assistance, and supporting their professional development.
[:[00:09:19] Steve Macdonald: There’s this term in psychology—psychological safety—making decisions independently without fear of repercussions. Is that part of the team dynamic and culture you like to instill?
[:[00:10:04] Kurt Shriner: I’ve been in IT for 20 years as a generalist: help desk, server builds, architecture, engineering, leadership—I’ve done it all short of software development. I’m good at what I do, but I’m also 10 years removed from hands‑on engineering. Leadership is my focus now.
[:[00:11:03] Kurt Shriner: They won’t feel comfortable being open if I’m not open and honest myself. If they fear getting their hand slapped, yelled at, or written up for speaking their minds, they won’t share the best information. They stay longer when they feel safe, and I get better insights.
[:[00:11:54] Kurt Shriner: Absolutely. The first ingredient is a solid technology roadmap. At Capital Bank, mine spans 18 months with 13–14 major projects and initiatives. I share this roadmap with department leaders so they know what we’re doing to transform the business and maximize efficiencies through technology.
[:[00:12:57] Kurt Shriner: I also create high‑level project plans in Asana, organized as a portfolio and shared with executive leadership. Start dates for all projects—even planning phases—are clearly labeled so everyone stays on the same page. I believe in full transparency: we live in a glass building.
[:[00:14:12] Kurt Shriner: Let me just pause there. In a well‑functioning IT department, all leaders should advocate for one another. My boss should advocate for me to the CIO, and the CIO should advocate to the CEO, and so on. But we can’t rest on those laurels. We can’t expect that to be a given.
[:[00:14:59] Steve MacDonald: So, if we're going to be good marketers and advocate for ourselves, we’d better really understand the people around us. If I'm advocating to the CFO, my story is going to be very different from the one I use with the CRO, the head of operations, or whoever. That's not part of IT-school training. How did you learn to do that, and how important is it?
[:[00:15:34] Kurt Shriner: She would often focus me on the importance of really being plugged into the business: What does the business need? What do the other departmental leaders need? I know as an IT leader what my department needs—that's table stakes—but it's much more challenging to understand what, for example, FP&A needs from me, or, if you work in manufacturing, what manufacturing needs.
[:[00:16:22] Kurt Shriner: I come knocking; I have regular one-on-ones with them. Once we establish rapport and a great professional relationship, they start to feel confident coming to me and saying, “Actually, Kurt, I’ve got this issue that I never thought had anything to do with technology, but the way you describe it, it might.” I’ve solved many problems like that simply because I was in the right room at the right time and they felt comfortable enough to tell me.
[:[00:17:06] Steve MacDonald: And those relationships earn you a seat at the table again and again. There are a lot of folks in the industry who feel they don’t have a seat at the table, but more and more IT leaders, as they accept new positions, are asking, “How involved is IT in strategic business decision-making for the organization?”
[:[00:18:12] Steve MacDonald: In your opinion, if every leader agrees with that, has it translated into an elevated role of importance for IT internally?
[:[00:19:07] Steve MacDonald: Right. That means our roles as marketers, salespeople, advocates, consultants—we’ve just added a big, important chunk to our responsibilities that won’t be on the CV or in the job description.
[:[00:19:48] Kurt Shriner: My number-one goal as a leader is to recognize that my team won’t stay forever—they’ll move on. If they leave with a much better résumé because I mentored, coached, and guided them, then I’m successful. So I do whatever I can. For example, their yearly goals always include educational aspects—certifications, learning new technologies. If someone shows an interest in leadership, I take them under my wing and teach them as much as I can. Maybe leadership is in the cards for them someday, maybe not, but I have to give them that opportunity.
[:[00:21:29] Kurt Shriner: Yeah, I do have a story, and I like telling stories because it’s an effective way to communicate. Years ago, I consulted for a printing company— I don’t know if you’re familiar with Net Promoter Score.
[:[00:22:00] Kurt Shriner: The print organization couldn’t figure out the issue, so I was asked to help. I’m not a printing expert—just to be clear. I didn’t know what the problem was going in; I only knew there was a problem, and they were stymied.
[:[00:22:47] Kurt Shriner: We all learned something. The experts trained the staff, we squashed the problem, and our Net Promoter Score jumped because we were producing higher‑quality prints.
[:[00:23:31] Kurt Shriner: Over time, people gain confidence to say, “I saw this happen; I don’t know if it’s relevant.” An expert may reply, “That’s exactly relevant—thanks for mentioning it.” If they weren’t comfortable, we might never have gotten there. I’m there to facilitate, negotiate, and keep things on the rails.
[:[00:24:06] Steve MacDonald: It’s a critical KPI. That’s one example of how you helped the business grow. I’d love to know your definition of turning IT from a cost center into a growth enabler—how you define it and how you do it.
[:[00:24:45] Kurt Shriner: Those goals outline how the business will grow—reducing errors, improving marketing, cutting overhead, and so on.
[:[00:25:22] Kurt Shriner: Conversely, an IT leader who stays out of the spotlight—like the archetypal manager in the TV series The IT Crowd—avoids business leaders, sticks to IT tasks, and clocks out at five.
[:[00:26:41] Steve MacDonald: Absolutely. You’ve laid out being a marketer, salesperson, consultant, advocate—understanding the business and other departments, and proactively helping.
[:[00:27:26] Kurt Shriner: From a leadership standpoint, transitioning from engineer or architect to leader is tough. Few go straight from school into leadership—you have to cut your teeth and learn how the wheels spin.
[:[00:28:08] Kurt Shriner: My leadership style follows what I call the “four‑quarters philosophy”: 25% on leadership and people management; 25% on pure IT and project management; 25% on FP&A, budgets, contracts, and vendor management; and 25% on long‑term strategic planning.
[:[00:29:06] Steve MacDonald: Thank you. People will have questions. May I share your LinkedIn profile so they can reach you?
[:[00:29:19] Steve MacDonald: Kurt, thanks for helping us rethink our roles and their connection to the business’s growth. You completed the story. I appreciate you coming on.
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