The Craft of Efficiency: A Conversation with CJ Spice

Recently, we sat down with?CJ Spice, a Senior Partner Technology Strategist (MSP) at Microsoft. In his spare time, he and his girlfriend run dog training clinics and are the proud owners of a German Shepherd and rescue Border Collies. He’s also a passionate woodworker, making and renovating furniture (his own and those of his friends). Oh, and he also finds the time to refurbish vintage audio equipment. Needless to say, his time is tight, and efficiency is key. So how does he do it? Let’s find out!

CJ Spice:?Hi, my name is CJ Spice.?This is my third year with Microsoft, but I’ve spent roughly 30 years working around Microsoft in the partner ecosystem: in IT, Distribution, Manufacturing and Business Consulting.?I come from a formal project management background, so I'm hoping efficiency might be something I know a little bit about.

?GPS Learning Lounge:?Between your dogs, your hobbies, your family life and, of course, the demands of your job, how do you maintain any balance? What’s the secret?

CJ Spice:?Well, if I look at my woodworking as an example, efficiency is super important (but not always achieved). When I’m making something—whether it's batch-cutting, batch-sanding, batch-gluing, batch-staining, those kind of things—it’s all about getting everything ready, rather than doing one thing, then another, then the next thing. I also have 2-3 projects on the go. If I'm procrastinating about one thing (which is often) I have something else to do.

I have a carousel that sits on the end of my bench. I've got many of the things I use on all projects. Glue, squares, scrapers, sanders in their holsters and 30 other things. I can just turn it around or pick something up. I’ve sort of taken that approach through my life as it were.

GPS Learning Lounge:?Everything in its place.

CJ Spice:?Quite literally. In my office, my desk has everything in a very specific place. It doesn't change. And, my office?is?my office: work is not done outside of my office. Well, there are some exceptions—I may take my laptop out to sit at the dining table and reply to email or put some notes down—but they’re rare.

?GPS Learning Lounge:?How do you apply that approach to the working hours? Working hours can be a pretty nebulous term these days.

CJ Spice:??I have an ethos: I work when I need to. Now, that doesn't mean I don't work for 10 hours a day. But it means if somebody needs something out of hours and it's worth doing, I do it. If I'm on holiday—and this will break a lot of people's rules—I would much rather scan an email and answer it there and then. That takes me 30-40 seconds, rather than waiting maybe two weeks ‘till I get back and have 175 email waiting.

?GPS Learning Lounge:?So how do you unplug?

CJ Spice:?Part of my unplugging is coming back knowing I've moved things to my To Do List. If it's in there, I'm doing it first. If it's elsewhere, fine—because I've scanned it; I've decided what needs to happen with it; and I've moved on. So, it doesn't take me one 2-3 days to play catch up. I'm not saying I'm going online every five minutes. But when I do, I'm scrolling through, answering some things, sorting others, and deleting the rest. Unplugging is a very subjective term. I can spend 10 hours in the woodshop, 8 hours detailing my truck or a day sitting in my listening area to 300 different tracks. That's unplugging for me, not always sitting and doing nothing.

?GPS Learning Lounge:?I’m guessing you're a zero inbox person.

CJ Spice:?I?am?a zero inbox person. Well, right now, I have four messages in my internal inbox—so that's anybody in Microsoft and I actually know three of them personally. The messaging thing for me is really important because, having worked for partners, it can be really frustrating when people don't get a response; when they don’t, it gives them a different view as to how to deal with you in future. So, for the partners I work with, I use a lot of folders.?I make sure every time something comes in, it goes into their specific folder, and I do my best to answer it—and I mean overnight, that's the goal.

?GPS Learning Lounge:?That must take some diligence.

CJ Spice:?Well, I have an unwritten rule about email: If I'm in the first three people on the “To” list, that means somebody wants my input. But if I'm on the CC list, they only want me to know. And if they ask me a question about it, I don't need to know the answer. So, I look at it: am I in the first three? No? OK. I'm CC-defined. I’ll move it to a folder and leave it. Periodically, I go back a year and delete everything that is over a year old. Not for partners or some internal people, but generally. Because if I haven't used it, do I need it now? In the market we work in—with cloud and hardware and infrastructure—if it hasn't changed in the last 20 minutes, there's something wrong. So, looking at something from a year ago, it's going to be out of date anyway.

?GPS Learning Lounge:?But working so closely with partners, you must have to decide what they might find informative too.

CJ Spice:?Sure. That’s why I have Distribution Lists for comms. Coming from a project management background, communications are hugely important for me. Let’s say we've got a?Windows 365?partner readiness session coming up. An email comes in. I’ll add it to my learning folder— that I?don't?delete; I can go back and look however long I like—and I’ll add it to my Skilling and Training Distribution List. That list includes people internally (Partner Development Managers), so they know it's gone to their partners, and it goes to partners who choose to receive it. Will they get more emails than they need? Sure—but that’s OK. They certainly won’t miss anything. So, for me, doing some things immediately actually makes a lot less noise.

GPS Learning Lounge:?So that’s email. How do you handle the deluge of virtual meeting invitations today??

CJ Spice:?If I have focus time or lunch booked out, and somebody invites me to something, I generally decline—because I would hope they give me the courtesy of looking at my calendar. If my Calendar is free, fine, but if they don't include an agenda, I will usually accept tentatively, because I want to make sure my time is productive.

?Let’s say I finish a meeting and I've got 20 minutes. I don't feel I can get meaningful work done in 20 minutes. So I usually reply to email or messages because those are one-time things, rather than say, finishing a presentation.

?GPS Learning Lounge:?You bring up messaging—yet another thing to keep on top of. Any tips there?

CJ Spice:?If you want to message me on teams, that's OK, message me! But don't just say hi—ask me a question—and then we can talk. If I'm green on Teams, call me. If I see someone else is green on Teams, I call them. I don’t message them to say, “Can I call you if you're free?” I grew up with a rotary dial in the hall (yes, I really am that old). If it was busy, it was busy.

With the number of people I work with, I try and make sure they understand: this is how I like to work. These aren't necessarily massive things, but they are efficiencies.

GPS Learning Lounge:?So, do you have any advice for efficiency on a business scale?

CJ Spice:?I try to use my background to pay it forward to partners or to enable our sellers. Whether they’re building a practice or developing an offer for the commercial marketplace, I leverage my experiences to guide them on how to be efficient—because I've done them badly.

?I can provide some of those insights to say, “If you do this, these are the things that could happen. This, on the other hand, is a better use of your time. I’m always thinking about how I can provide information so my efficiency goes out to our team. I have?infographics?and flowcharts?to say,” This is how partners think when we do this. This is the kind of thing they're looking for. Hopefully they can use those things to be more productive.

GPS Learning Lounge:?Which would help make you more efficient in your role too…

CJ Spice:?I hope so. There you go, a whistle stop tour through the inside of CJ's brain… which isn't always a great place to be. But really, I didn't prep for this; this is just stuff that I do. I do hope it can help others be a little more efficient in their work.

?GPS Learning Lounge:?Or work-room…

CJ Spice:?Correct!