2020 was a year where I expected to just entrench and work on establishing myself at IBM. It was a really good year for that, and (thanks to a lack of travel and a bit of a COVID slow period) also allowed me to set some pretty ambitious fitness goals. That leaves me feeling pretty good about what I was able to accomplish, making it possible for 2021 to be more about refining and doubling those successes.
Specifically, I have set three goals:
- I want to really focus on working with CIOs/CTOs to make their “Infrastructure and Operations” teams in to a value add part of IT. As I spend more time with more companies I see them consistently able to articulate how a better customer experience or using AI can bring value to their bottom line, but then they are unable to understand why they can’t securely and efficiently create the platforms necessary for those innovations to occur on top of. I am intending to spend 2021 moving beyond the containerization, cloud, and automation discussions I’m leading customers on now and pull that together in to a more strategic view of the organization. You’ll see this in more frequent observations on Twitter, some blog posts, and (if you’re lucky enough to be a client) in a new model we’ve been working on for how to change your culture and tooling.
- I am planning to be much better about keeping up with my professional contacts. I realized yesterday that I haven’t done an inventory of my contacts since very early 2020. My plan will be to do better at connecting with people I’ve worked with on LinkedIn and reaching out to folks I worked with a few years ago to see how they’re doing.
- I managed to finish 2020 in reasonable shape. I have not traditionally been good at staying in good shape once I reach it. I tend to yo-yo back and forth between in shape and out of it. My goal this year is to stay around my current level of fitness for the whole year.