A good business colleague and friend once told me, “Dude, you just took off like a rocket!” This comment was made just a few years following my departure from the same company he remained in employment with. In just a few short years I went from being a peer with a similar resume and similar credentials laboring away in the same cubicle, to being the Chief Information Security Officer of a very large financial institution. I’ve never truly appreciate the metaphor he used. Not that I don’t appreciate his intended meaning, but in my mind, taking off like a rocket implies a expending a lot of energy to move very quickly only to sputter out and subsequently crash and burn in a fiery heap of debris.

No, I would much rather explain things as a deliberate, concerted effort to earn the right credentials, work with the right people, pay my dues, and know where I’m going so that I don’t waste any time getting distracted along the way.

As if I don’t have enough on my plate, I’ve been pondering authoring a book about the subject and it looks like I may have just typed the introductory statement.