When IT stops surviving and starts leading

For most organizations, IT is where requests go to wait and budgets go to shrink. Kurt Shriner, Vice President of IT Infrastructure Management at Capital Bank (https://www.capitalbank.com/), has spent nearly two decades working to change that equation. On this episode of Go Beyond the Connection, Kurt lays out a practical framework for transforming IT from a cost center to a growth enabler. His plan starts with retaining great engineers, runs through a transparent 18-month roadmap, and ends with IT earning a permanent seat at the strategy table.

Kurt’s path to IT leadership ran through 15 years of live-event operations and a degree in psychology. These two experiences shaped his conviction that soft skills matter as much as technical depth. His servant-leadership model is built on genuine interest in his team’s well-being, a single-channel intake process that shields engineers from distraction, and a culture of honesty where saying no is expected and respected.

A roadmap as a marketing campaign

Kurt’s 18-month technology roadmap is the centerpiece of his growth strategy. Rather than treating it as an internal project tracker, he publishes it to department leaders and executive stakeholders as a living record of IT’s contributions to the business. Every initiative is linked to a specific strategic goal. Every project milestone is visible in Asana. When a department requests a major launch that conflicts with an existing milestone, Kurt opens the roadmap and negotiates from data, not from memory or goodwill.

That transparency does more than manage expectations. It positions IT as a growth partner in resource conversations rather than a cost center on the chopping block. As Kurt puts it, IT leaders who stay invisible are the first ones cut when revenues dip. The roadmap is his proof of relevance: updated, public, and tied to the metrics executives track.

Speaking every executive’s language

One of the sharpest insights in this conversation is Kurt’s argument that IT advocacy is fundamentally a translation exercise. A network refresh is not a capital expenditure, it is an OpEx reducer for Finance, a revenue accelerator for Sales, and a reliability story for Marketing. Kurt learned this framing from a CFO mentor who pushed him to lead every proposal with numbers, not diagrams.

He reinforces that fluency through regular one-on-ones with every department head. Those sessions surface operational pain points that leaders have quietly worked around for years – problems they never thought to bring to IT. When Kurt’s team solves them, credibility compounds.

“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, Vice President of IT Infrastructure Management, Capital Bank

Episode Highlights

• 18-month IT roadmap published and shared as a business marketing asset
• Psychological safety drives both retention and higher-quality information from engineers
• Centralized intake model shields engineers from context-switching and burnout
• Executive advocacy requires translating IT value into the language each leader tracks
• Four-quarters leadership model balances people, projects, finance, and strategy equally

If you are trying to reposition your IT team as a business partner rather than a support desk, Kurt Shriner offers a clear and actionable blueprint. This conversation is worth your time whether you are an IT leader working toward that first strategic seat or a veteran looking to sharpen how you communicate value.