I believe that making your intentions known is at the core of honesty; a trait which I value deeply. So, in the spirit of honesty, here is what I’m working on and what I am working towards.
The activity that I have managed to keep at the top of my priority list is actively inspecting and adapting my career plan. I have had several mentors over the past few years that have been a great help in pushing me to create a career plan. Recently, I was pushed to look ten years in the future and attempt to see where I wanted to be and even more profound, who I wanted to be. That experience has given me the drive to not only actively manage my career plan, but to invest focused-time in researching career planning and introspection techniques. This pursuit to gain knowledge about the subject and experiment based on my learnings using my own career will stay in the top three of my focus areas until I retire. (if that actually happens)
Another area of focus for me is helping large corporations optimize their cost centers (aka IT). Most of my work experience has been in Fortune 25 and larger IT shops. I have seen the high level of complexity and volatility that is inherent in these companies. Most of the organizations I seek to help are not in the software or technology markets. They did not choose to invest in large, expensive IT shops. They were forced to by the continuing advances in technology and its infiltration into almost any major business function. These days companies cannot survive without technology. So, my goal is to help them optimize their IT shops with a holistic approach. I have recently been introduced to the Galbraith’s Star Model of organizational design. This is my starting point for research and experimentation in this focus area. The five substructures I will be focusing on are Strategy, Rewards Systems, Structure, Process, and People. This is obviously a large undertaking and I expect that my underlying focus areas will change with time and experience. However, my larger goal of helping large organizations optimize their IT shops will remain unchanged… I think 🙂
My last area of focus is personal development. This is intentionally vague because I expect the development goals I work towards will vary wildly. For instance, I am working on my coaching skills such as facilitation, training, influence, coaching, mentoring, and conflict navigation. However, I am working on more personal goals like giving gifts and becoming a great parent and husband. You could even say that the two focus areas mentioned above would fall under this category as well. However, that is not how they are organized in my brain.
Now, given that I like to practice what I preach, I know that I need to actively manage my WIP or I will fail to accomplish anything. So, my goal for this month is to come up with a strategy for managing or allocating my focused-time. Wish me luck 🙂
Agile Sean 
alexanderkeenan
May 1, 2012
“helping large corporations optimize their cost centers (aka IT).”
This is how many companies see IT. When they do, they focus mainly on controlling costs.
However, there is not a large corporation that has not automated key elements of their organizational functions. The large corporations that understand this fact set themselves up to focus on using IT to produce value. For the focus is getting the most value out of the processes that IT is now a part of given the limited resources available in order to meet strategic goals and objectives.
When you hear IT referred to as a “cost center” you must ask if the focus will be on reducing costs and or on producing value for the organization.
alexanderkeenan
May 1, 2012
“helping large corporations optimize their cost centers (aka IT).”
This is how many companies see IT. When they do, they focus mainly on controlling costs.
However, there is not a large corporation that has not automated key elements of their organizational functions. The large corporations that understand this fact set themselves up to focus on using IT to produce value. For the focus is getting the most value out of the processes that IT is now a part of given the limited resources available in order to meet strategic goals and objectives.
When you hear IT referred to as a “cost center” you must ask if the focus will be on reducing costs for a necessary evil or on producing value for the organization.
Sean Heuer
May 1, 2012
Excellent point Alex. I was speaking from the viewpoint of many of the large IT shops I have worked with. I share your belief that IT shops should be focused on value delivery, not cost reduction. I will do a better job in the future to match my wording with my intent. Thank you for the feedback!