How do small companies with initial success and a good business plan grow to become bigger companies without choking on their growth? They hire people like Alex in lead operational roles! Why? Because they need someone who is capable of driving the company towards repeatable "calm" processes that can scale - and who is equally capable of rolling up the sleeves and taking care of the "hot" crises that are the lot of smaller companies.

I've found Alex to combine these two skills and to keep his calm in doing so. He's able to perform the deep planning and due diligence to source a vendor/partner (e.g. managed hosting) and make sure processes, SLA, and pricing are compatible with the current and future needs of the business. He's also capable of learning and solving the short-term and intermediate problems that crop up (server down; new web app needs deployment, etc.). He knows how and when to delegate - which means that as a company rises through an s-curve in its growth he won't become a bottleneck.

I brought Alex into a company where I was doing strategy and technology consulting that had operational issues related to meteoric growth. Throwing servers at the problem wasn't going to work any more - and having the developers tinkering on the production environment at a colocation facility wasn't going to permit further rapid product innovation. Alex had exactly the right mindset and experience to create release management and production operations that would allow innovations to "flow" from development into production where they can deliver value for customers. He acquitted himself admirably in an environment that wasn't always sure it wanted to give up what was holding it back. Alex is firm without being abrasive and has a professional manner with colleagues, vendors, and customers. He's one of those operational folks that salespeople are happy to expose to key customers!

Alex has the skills necessary to succeed as a VP IT or CIO for SMB companies; he's also able to kick-start a startup that's bringing on its first "professional" IT management. Don't lock him in the server closet (away from strategy) and don't lock him in "mahogany row" (away from operational problems) and both the company hiring him and he will be happy and productive.

To answer the common recommendation question... Yes - if I had an opportunity to hire Alex again, I would.

Alex was a great team player at Xpertuniverse.. His interpersonal and communication skills have allowed to develop productive working relationships with both the clients and the staff. Alex demonstrated solid senior management and leadership skills on various projects. He also made himself available to assist anyone, in addition to being intelligent, savvy and thoughtful when problem solving. It has been a great pleasure to work with Alex.