The cliché answer would be when I found out I made Partner, but there are a few others. I’ve been with the firm for ten years, and I still remember the first meeting where I was looked to as the subject matter expert. I was a Senior Consultant at the time, and I was sitting in a meeting with Andy Armanino and our client’s CEO. To have your Managing Partner bring you into a meeting as the expert, and then recognize you for your performance in that meeting, that was a pretty cool feeling to get so early in my career.
We’re going to continue to see the globalization of businesses, increased innovation and increased regulation. Cloud computing will be a large contributor to each of these areas. Cloud will continue to reduce the barriers to entry for many markets by making leading class software available without large capital investments. Additionally, this push to cloud is also driving regulations and how risk is assessed and managed when the ownership of risk pushes outside of your organization.
It’s the same thing that keeps a lot of the other Partners up at night, and that is, “What’s next?” Whether it’s staying ahead of the curve on client delivery and operations, or maintaining our innovative/entrepreneurial status in the marketplace, we want other businesses to look at us and say, “We want to be like Armanino.”
I tend to think I’m very approachable and very results-oriented. I don’t thrive on structure like some people. As a result, I focus more on the result and less how you got to the result. I expect my colleagues to be professional, drive the process forward and let me know when issues come up that warrant my input and assistance.
My parents, and more specifically, my dad. He was always very even keeled, and he was the epitome of a family man. He always put his family ahead of everything else. He sacrificed a lot for my brother and me. I feel like with my generation, you don’t see enough of that, so he was very influential in my life.
Be ambitious and go after what you want. Don’t be afraid to be aggressive. That doesn’t mean you step on people, but once you have an idea, go after it. No one should care more about your career than you. I see too many people waiting for opportunities to be dropped in their laps. You need to be ambitious, find those opportunities and capitalize on them.
