Hitting Refresh - Celebrating a Decade at Microsoft!

Time flies. Or does it? It seems to go at different speeds depending on the day, season and quarter but by any measure - 10 years is a long time. This week I celebrate a decade of working at Microsoft, more if I include the internship that started it all and gave me the confidence that this would be a special place to work. And boy did that turn out to be true!

Starting here as someone with student debt, to now having students running around my own home, I've had the opportunity to hit refresh countless times in the last 10 years. Across 12 managers (13th just announced!), 7 distinct roles and countless customers and partners I have found or been forced to find ways to do things differently - and at a company that is approaching it's own massive milestone anniversary in 3 months - I'd say that's par for course.

Instead of a post only about my time, I wanted to do shine a light on some invaluable big company lessons that some of my greatest managers have taught me. To them, and the 8 others that I've worked for over 10+ years - my career enduring gratitude. This is also by no means an exhaustive list of what these people are great at - just what I managed to learn at specific times over the last 10 years.

1. Art & Science of Forecasting by Paulo Fernandes . One of the first things I picked up from Paulo, the finest generalist manager I've ever had the pleasure of watching at work, was how he called a sales forecast across a vast swathe of geography and a mix of highly developed markets like New Zealand, Korea, Singapore, to hyper emerging markets like Maldives, Cambodia and Laos. His focus on driving a balanced portfolio of business, an eye on year over year growth and the questions that drove our new business portfolio are things that I imbibed like a sponge. While the geography that we cover now is now a modified portfolio of those early days of our segment, those principles have founded the core of my forecasting philosophy;
2. Business Planning from John Hennessey . Large companies spend material amounts of time on their fiscal planning processes, a truly remarkable series of steps that encompass critical functions like Segmentation, Blueprint, Territory Planning, Budgeting and Quota setting. The single best proponent I've had the pleasure of observing at this is John, whose over 2 decades of experience have honed what can be a complicated series of disconnected steps into a symphony that centres around minimising risk to resources and marrying growth expectations with investments so the area as a whole can thrive. I continue to seek inspiration from his structured approach as I forge my own path on resource allocation and growth across a complex business;
3. Rhythm of Business watching Jon Tuttle who above all else embodied the corporation's philosophy on running a consistent and repeatable business by focusing on the details of the 'daily run'. For a company as complex and broad as Microsoft, his success corralling the entire company towards running a Sales Engine in a predictable way set the tone for generations of sales leaders. His secret sauce was to focus on the metrics that mattered whilst ensuring there was consistency in how sales operations ran across clouds, countries and areas. It is thanks to his influence that I shaped our own rhythm of business which subsequently got adopted by other areas in Asia as a best practise by bringing in critical teams from top of the funnel to post sales consumption in a focused meeting that drove our business forward from a common page;
4. Systems & Tools with Donal Barry . As my first permanent (but third actual!) manager and a legend of the Commercial Operations world at Microsoft, Donal's deft touches at getting everyone to use and leverage the myriad systems & tools at Microsoft helped me understand and appreciate the underlying benefit of everyone leveraging them in the most efficient way. Whether it was encouraging me to land a new partner feedback listening tool which then got adopted globally, or the push to leverage the sales CRM all the way through the order to cash process - I find myself channelling Donal's consistent refrain to our sales org now!

So much to reminisce, but it's the sign of a remarkable company in an amazing industry that it can all change and evolve immediately. I hope that some of these lessons stay with me through thick & thin and while it's easy to focus on specific highlights - it's the balance across everything that has been so enriching and rewarding. It's the spontaneous drinks, the Secret Santa's, the cupcake Friday's, the celebrations, the farewells, the all hands, the partnerships across the company, the MGX's, the quarter ends, the midnight calls, regrettable and unforgettable emails, MACH cohorts and calls, the reviews, the hit & missed deals, the phenomenal customers, the inspiring leaders, Happy New Year over calls closing deals, the long quarters, multitude of forecast calls, team meetings and so so much more.

There are plenty of others who have made the last 10 years special, and while it's impossible to call them all out, I would be remiss if I didn't thank Rachel Bondi , Andrea Della Mattea , Sandy Gupta , Pablo Galilea , Haroon Qureshi , Ahmed Kaddour , Fabiano Siufi , Michele Marrapese , Pietro Scriva , Melanie Sharpe Nseir , Robbie Taylor , Sindhura Sunkara , Noel Murray , Mini Bhondwe , Mike Chan , John Fernandes , Aditya Biswas , Alvin Yong , Gary Chan , Gary Chng , Ruo Yun Chong , Joanne Hau , Skandesh R. , Aaron Krol , Jessica Krol , Glenn Woolaghan , Meera Bangi , Zaid Alkadhi , Harsha Randeny , Andres Ortolá , Kevin Wo , Vincent Chin , Tan Bin Ru , Weng Pui Lam , Avinash Mishra , Chaminda Radalage , Gerald Leo , Vincent Wong , beewah lim , Elly Tan , Enzo Ta?edo , Quyen Phan Tu , Pakdee Aunyakamol , Vivek Puthucode, GAICD , Arun Poojari , Nicharath T. , Hock Eng Tan , Valerie Beaulieu-James , Swee Thong Ong , Lisa Seah , Rohit Chowdhry , K Raman , Dharma Simorangkir , Jill DiMaggio , Dmitry Butko , Rosalind Quek (郭玉玲） , Vinod Muralidharan , Sukhdev Singh , Guillermo Guzman-Barron , Alexandre Babakoff , Keane Johnson, HCS , Foong Chee Ngiam , Fahmy Ali for the company, counsel and conversations over the years that make wearing the blue badge a source of pride and joy every single day.

To the amazing team I work with everyday - Thomas Decant , Ram Muthu , Tanja Berber Giordano , Kavya Kanchana , Amit Pradhan , Thet Htun Aung , Gagan Deep Kaur , Gitanjali Kurup , Charmaine Seah , Joanna Lim , Keng Meng WONG , Sammie Han - thank you for accepting me as I am.

Finally to my acquaintance, colleague, friend, partner & spouse in that order - Ritika Gopal (Tapuriah) - as my anchor for the years that came, and years that will.