444 - The Leadership Shift That Makes IT Scale w/Demetrios Xarhoulakos

Demetrios Xarhoulakos began his career producing CAD drawings and became the person colleagues called when technology stopped cooperating. That curiosity eventually led him into application support, global team management, cloud migration, and technology leadership for an international engineering business.In this conversation with host Mike Kelley, Demetrios explains why solving every problem personally limits a leader's reach. He shares how he trained support teams to handle specialized tickets, connected technical groups that had been operating in silos, and aligned IT priorities with organic growth and acquisitions.The discussion also covers follow-the-sun licensing, vendor scorecards, unused contract value, role fit on lean teams, and the difficult decisions that come with people leadership. Demetrios closes with a practical look at governed AI adoption, the support burden behind employee-built applications, and a future where IT spends less time reacting to tickets and more time enabling the business.