Essential Career Tips for Success – The Series: Rand Morimoto, Ph.D., MBA, MCSE, Award-winning Speaker, Author and President/CEO of Convergent Computing

This is the next blog post in the career tip series from noted IT professionals. The last ones were from Mike Stonebraker widely regarded as the world’s foremost pioneer on RDBMS and Richard Giles, a noted author and leader in Web 2.0 media and blogging.

Rand Morimoto: "The IT industry is full of opportunities, still the Wild West where someone who wants to take a few chances can make quite a name for themselves..."

"As the IT industry matures, the experts that are emerging have a blend of both technical skills as well as professional skills such as communications, project management, and inter-personal relationship skills."

"Some industries you have to work in the field for 20-yrs before you reach a point of seniority, in the IT industry, some of the top experts have only been involved in the industry for a few years. It's an industry where skills and abilities are recognized as rewarded..."

Rand Morimoto’s profile:

Rand has been in the computer industry for over 25-years and is an internationally known public speaker and author of several books ranging from security, Microsoft Windows networking, Microsoft Exchange messaging, and B2B business transactions. Rand has a Ph.D. in Organization and Management and an MBA in Strategic Planning. Rand creates and oversees the business strategy of the organization, and leads the public awareness and public relations operations of the business. Rand is also an advisor to the White House on Cyber-Security and Cyber-Terrorism, Member of the Board for the NASA and Smithsonian Institute affiliate Chabot Space and Science Center, and a Regent on the Board of Regents for St. Mary's College. Rand is also the recipient of the 2004 NPA Awards for Professionalism, Career Achievement Award, the highest international professionalism award for the networking industry founded in 2002 and supported by the NPA, Network Computing, Network World, Networld+Interop (Interop) Conferences, Pearson Publishing (Que/SAMS), and Microsoft.

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In my dialogue with Rand, he provided these career tips, which I also spoke to at a career conference this year.

For my view on Rand’s first tip: It is important to seek out new challenges and not treat them as risks. You learn and grow by doing no matter the outcome. Often people worry too much about failure and so are hesitant to take on new tasks.

My view on Rand’s second tip: I have blogged about his before. Developing your people and communications skills are essential to career success. You can have all the technical content and abilities however if you can’t communicate it, its value will be largely lost.

My view on Rand’s third tip: IT is a land of golden opportunity however you must combine your IT skill set with other attributes such as in Rand’s second tip and you must take on challenges as in Rand’s first tip.

Have a look at the related links and comments generated in this blog:

Eight Career Tips {Life Lessons}

I encourage you to share your views or send me an e-mail at sibaraki@cips.ca.

Enjoy!

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