It's a new beginning

Hi there. I never considered myself a blogger, but I decided to do it for two reasons: 1) (the good reason) it will force me to keep my critical strategic skills alive by continually analyzing different situations I deem interesting and 2) (the not-so-good reason) maybe someone may find some value in it and even think: “Wow! This guy is pretty bright! We should contact him and pay him lots of money!”

Don’t worry. I’m not holding my breath on the second reason.

Just a little background: I started my IT career more than 13 years ago. Since that time, I’ve run systems, run networks, developed software, run collaboration tools, installed firewalls, run my own IT consultancy, started up a IT solutions practice in a mid-sized firm, created frameworks and methodologies for deploying offshore IT, run an IT department, managed several budgets, led large IT programs, and work with lots of really smart people.

In that time, I’ve learned as much from education as I have through experience. I’ve seen a lot of technology go right and plenty more go wrong. I have observed countless mistakes and made countless mistakes myself. I have also been a student of ITIL, PMI, COBIT, Agile, and a whole bunch of other acronyms and catch phrases and discovered one thing: There is no silver bullet.

I’m also a student of business strategy, although unlike IT where I’ve been fortunate enough to get paid to do something I enjoy, no one has paid me for my business strategy skills because they are mainly untested. I am currently an MBA student at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan with a focus on corporate strategy and finance. I suppose this blog can also serve as a test to the school’s action-based learning approach. If my approaches to a variety of problems seem too theoretical or wrong, it’s either that I didn’t understand the frameworks I was taught or another case study on how MBAs are taught “pie in the sky” frameworks that aren’t applicable to the real world.

Only time will tell.