The Scion Group

Jesus Salgado

IT Leadership Steward

Leading an IT support and network operations team is rarely glamorous, but it is foundational. Nobody notices when everything works and that is kind of the point. But the moment something goes down, you hear about it quickly. The work is technical at its core, but at the end of the day, it is just as much about people as it is about systems.

Lead by example and get out of the way

The principles that have mattered most are simple: lead by example, build a team-first culture and resist the pull toward micromanagement. When a team feels trusted, they perform. When they feel watched, they comply and there is a world of difference between the two. Nobody does their best work with someone hovering over their shoulder, constantly refreshing the ticketing dashboard.

IT professionals do not just want to close tickets; they want to contribute to something larger. Matching people with work they care about is not just a feel-good bonus; it is a retention strategy and a performance driver. People work harder when they care about what they are working on.

Stay ahead of the problem

When you are fully cloud-based, you do not have a server room to babysit, but that does not mean you can assume everything is fine. You are dependent on platforms outside your four walls, which means proactive monitoring matters more than ever. When you are supporting more than a hundred sites and endpoints that could be anywhere, early warning tools are not a luxury; they are a necessity.

  ​AI is enormous in both potential and risk. Teams need to understand that it is a tool to elevate their work, not replace them.  

The goal is to know about the problem before your users do, rather than reacting to a frustrated Microsoft Teams message about an email that stopped syncing. Less firefighting, more building. That is the trade you are always trying to make.

The lesson that changed everything

Early in my career as a consultant, I was often placed in front of clients with technology I had never touched. I could usually work through it, but when clients pushed for ETAs, my nerves would show. A manager sat me down and shared advice I have carried ever since: project confidence always.

Not false certainty, but the steady assurance that you will figure it out. The moment I applied that mindset, clients relaxed and I found I reached solutions faster. The advice was not about pretending to know things you do not; it was about trusting yourself enough to get there.

The challenges ahead are real

AI is enormous in both potential and risk. Teams need to understand that it is a tool to elevate their work, not replace them. Leaders who get this right free their teams to focus on higher-value contributions. Those who get it wrong risk losing their best people to uncertainty and then having to ask AI to solve that problem too.

Security is the other constant. The most sophisticated threat in any organization is not always a misconfigured setting; it is an uninformed user clicking an email that promises a tax refund from a Nigerian prince with surprisingly good branding. Phishing and social engineering are becoming more convincing by the month, often powered by AI themselves.

Keeping users trained to recognize these threats is not a one-time checkbox. It is ongoing work that evolves alongside the attacks. When users know what to look for, they become your first line of defense. When they do not, they become the unexpected twist in an incident report.

Where IT operations are headed

The future belongs to teams that are proactive, not reactive. Teams that use automation to resolve routine issues faster and build systems scalable enough to support growth without breaking.

For those hoping to lead one day, my advice is simple: never stop learning across AI, security, cloud, infrastructure and frameworks like ITIL. Share what you know. Learn to delegate. Build a team you trust, then trust them.

The best IT leaders are not the ones who know the most. They are the ones who build teams that collectively know more than any one person could. Occasionally, they are also the ones who remembered to check if it was plugged in before escalating.