I was recently tagged to share my 2010 Goals by Ted (blog | Twitter) in his 2010 goals post. I want to thank him for that, as I believed I had a good long term goal until I went to write down my goals for this year and realized that all I had was a vision without a plan. The initial act of thinking up a career goal is difficult, and after I completed that goal I fell into the trap that so many businesses do: I forgot to communicate and build plans for that vision. A well communicated vision allows everyone in a company to start facing the same general direction, but only provides a direction to wander towards, not a driving force or well-planned route. I believe there is a similarity with career goals, having only a vision means I will consider opportunities that come to me in light of my future goals, while a plan forces me to build or seek opportunities that will help me achieve my goal instead of relying on chance opportunities.
What this all means is that I am once again using solutions from one problem space (business) and applying them to another (my goals).
Vision
To become responsible for a diverse set of business and technology challenges that will require me to develop and implement strategic solutions while continuing to execute or drive improvement at the operational level.
I believe the common career paths that would allow me to reach this vision are the Executive IT and Enterprise Architect career paths, though having concisely worded my vision I now have the ability to go see what other options would satisfy it.
Strategic Goals for 2010
I’m not going to come up with a plan on a Sunday morning while typing a blog article, and randomly creating strategic goals does not help me any more than it did the dozens of companies that have gone out of business recently. Instead I am going to focus on building the steps I need to better understand my vision, my current state, and some potential strategic goals that would help me achieve that clearer state from where I am now. In short, I am going to build the plan I should have built but haven’t.
2010 Strategic Goals: Analysis and Planning
- Current State Analysis
- Just as I have done in business situations, determine the current state of my career, skills and experiences
- Revise Vision
- Go through a process of brainstorming, then refine the results back down to a single sentence to create a revised and more accurate vision
- Research and Plan
- I am not the first person that has decided to go down this career route, add a few items to my reading list on the careers of others and on career paths in general
By accomplishing these goals I feel that I will be making a major step towards my long term goals and towards creating the next set of strategic steps necessary to reach those goals.
Process Changes for 2010
An article I read recently describes the importance of staying “tech savvy” as an IT Executive (Fits and starts: staying “tech savvy” as a CIO by Peter Kretzman). I believe this carries further than the IT executive role and really includes any technology role in an organization. Technology is a major business driver and, if your role is to communicate or provide technology solutions, than staying up to date on technology is critical. I also believe that the concepts of Process Improvement, Business Analysis and Business Architecture are important to achieving and executing my goals. My current position has a much narrower scope and area of responsibility (for the moment, at least) than prior positions, allowing me to focus on career and life goals, but I cannot allow myself to stop practicing skills that were once part of my day-to-day environment.
Areas of focus: Business and Enterprise Architecture, Lean and Process Improvement, Business Analysis, IT Management, Management and Leadership
Read 15-30 blog technical or focus articles weekly
Read 6 in-depth books on technology, architecture, lean, or other similarly useful topics
Re-Read 6 previously purchased books from above
Measurement
The last part is the hardest to consider. If I build some measurements around the items above, then I will know if I am achieving them or how well I am achieving them. And the lazy, procrastinator part of me dislikes the idea of actually having to follow through on some sort of regular scheduled task. With a business or software solution I would be among the first driving to put some measurements or a visual process in place, so my immediate goal for this week is to find a method to track the articles and books I read against my process goals above, and build more defined and measurable goals for the strategic items.
Outgoing Challenges
I am going to challenge Alex (blog | Twitter) and Remou (blog) to follow back up with their 2010 goals. I expect to see plans for doctorates and MS Access world domination, so hopefully they won’t let us down.
My roles have included accidental DBA, lone developer, systems architect, team lead, VP of Engineering, and general troublemaker. On the technical front I work in web development, distributed systems, test automation, and devop-sy areas like delivery pipelines and integration of all the auditable things.
