I totally agree with your tips. I think that the most successful people have the vision to see beyond the short or long term. The success attained in reaching your goals is often the road taken to get there.

Many thanks for sharing the tips. Which is more valuable, more education, certifications, or experience?

Warm wishes

Jason,

I checked out your site. You have a good collection. Nice work!

Cheers,
Stephen Ibaraki, I.S.P.

add 6) i think once per day is too much. there are allways some days, where you didn't done anything to come closer to your targets, but they are needed to get thru the stuff that comes in daily. i have 2 lists. one of the short goals, that i'm reviewing maybe 2 times a week, and one with my big targets, that i rewiev twice a month. depending on how fast the actual time goes by. i think thats a good time. too much reviewings of your goal list makes me nervous, if nothing changed.

EEM,

There is definitely a benefit in the process itself and the lessons attained from this. Jung says, “Knowledge is rests not only upon truth alone but also upon error.” I would like to extend this to include “and working through the challenges.” It’s a common theme in the dialogues I have had with more than 240 leaders in business and technology since 2001. However, you have to be open to watching and examining the journey itself. If you do this, you will gain valuable insights daily.

Cheers,
Stephen Ibaraki, I.S.P.

Ami,

Education, certifications, and experience—that is a question I’m often asked.

My background involves all three:
1) Having designed educational IT curriculum as a college educator for 25 years including setting up the first client/server labs;
2) Obtaining certifications by the major vendors [Microsoft, Novell, IBM] and professional designations, CIPS I.S.P. and NPA CNP;
3) Setting up academic programs providing academic education, industry certification and supporting professional designations;
4) And finally by working with computers since 1965 and advising thousands of companies worldwide – hinted at in my blog post.

About a month ago, I received a call from the US Department of Labour and their O*NET Research program about my perspectives in this area—it was a good long discussion.

So, I am speaking from this perspective. I believe all three have value with experience having the edge. If you can show me what you can do backed by proven experience, this means a lot. This experience must be a minimum of 3 years but with a preference for 5 or more years. However I see the trend is to have more—experience backed by traditional education, vendor certifications, capped by a professional designation. Building high technical competence in multiple areas combined with a sound business knowledge is a good target. This speaks to the blogs you have seen on being a “versatilist”.

Vendor certification provides validation of technical competence in an area and it is often a requirement in specialist jobs. Professional designations show competence over a broad range of areas and mastery of a body of knowledge, provide a code of ethics, standards of practice, demonstrated professional development, and all of this is complemented by a proven professional experience component. Moreover there is recognition and support of education. Finally a solid of understanding of business is an embedded reality with professional designations. It’s for this reason that I have an I.S.P.—a professional designation from CIPS that I obtained in 1991.

It’s an interesting question and the more you have, the better today.

Cheers,
Stephen Ibaraki, I.S.P.

Christoph,

Those are some good points you are making. It definitely works to tailor your goals list to your preferences. Your idea of two lists, short and longer term, is a great way of keeping on target.

It also helps to have S.M.A.R.T. goals:
Specific – pinpoint and not too general
Measurable – so you know that you have attained the goal
Achievable – the goal has to be reasonable and not so big that it would be impossible to achieve
Relevant – the goal has to make sense to the position you are in
Time-bound – the goal should have a time frame or end-date

These SMART goals come from strategic planning. Often, elements that apply to business and corporate goal setting, also apply to career goals.

Thank you,
Stephen Ibaraki, I.S.P.

Graham,

Those are very good points you make.

What appears as roadblocks or chance events stalling your career in one direction produce new opportunities along a different path. There’s a saying from Vince Lombardi, “Luck that’s where preparation and opportunity meet.” By investigating other paths and having the willingness to build diverse skill sets, you in essence create your own “lucky” opportunities, since you are more ready for them when they appear.

There’s also a story from the famed Steve Jobs [the force behind Apple, Pixar, …], that I would like to share:
*****
“… 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting. It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating. None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later. Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life…”
******

Cheers,
Stephen Ibaraki, I.S.P.

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." - Robert A. Heinlein

Specialization is the bane of a IT career, especially, in my humble opinion.

I suspect, Stephen, that you would not debate me with great vigour on this assertion.

Graham,

Those are very good points you make.

What appears as roadblocks or chance events stalling your career in one direction produce new opportunities along a different path. There’s a saying from Vince Lombardi, “Luck that’s where preparation and opportunity meet.” By investigating other paths and having the willingness to build diverse skill sets, you in essence create your own “lucky” opportunities, since you are more ready for them when they appear.

There’s also a career tip from the famed Steve Jobs [the force behind Apple, Pixar, …], that I would like to share:
*****
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating. None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life…”
******

Cheers,
Stephen Ibaraki, F.I.S.P.

DJ,

:-)

You are right! No argument here to the contrary to your fine quote. Diverse interests and background creates a mesh effect almost like MetCalfe's Network Effect however in this case the value received is the square of opportunities taken to grow/learn. The more experience you have, the better the problem solver you can be and the easier it is for idea creation/generation.

Interestingly research now suggests that actually as one ages and expecially post 45, these kinds of integration capabilities improve. So you actually get better at decision making since the whole brain is involved in problem situations. Experience and diversity of background has a similar impact.

A fine discussion.

Cheers,
Stephen Ibaraki, I.S.P.

PingBack from http://www.accountancyservicesonline.info/quotignite-your-careerquot-webcast-series/

Earlier this year, MSDN Canada and the Canadian Information Processing Society (CIPS) decided to try