Not just a milestone, but a celebration of teamwork

We spend a lot of time and energy searching for and recruiting talent. Few things are more vital to success – whether at a company or anywhere else.

But while we build a great team, we sometimes need to step back and remind ourselves what makes that team great in the first place. Yesterday was one of those days for me when I helped an incredible colleague celebrate 30 years at Microsoft.

Little could people predict when Mary Snapp joined the small software company in 1988 that she would play such an important role over the next three decades. She was the first woman to join Microsoft as a lawyer at a time when there were few women in any part of the company. She went on to work on virtually every product we created and to serve as our second most senior lawyer. And for the last three years, she has taken on a non-legal position as the leader of Microsoft Philanthropies, one of the largest corporate philanthropic organizations in the world.

In my almost 25 years at Microsoft, there are few people I’ve partnered with more closely than Mary Snapp. We were colleagues together in the 1990s, each leading the two largest parts of our department. When Steve Ballmer, our CEO, asked me to become General Counsel in 2001, I said yes. And in the next sentence I said I wanted us to promote Mary to an even more senior level. Happily, Steve said yes to that too!

Over three decades, Mary has been the type of leader who so often has helped pave the way for others’ success. She leads by the sheer power of great example, which was critical, especially in the earlier years when there were so few other women on our legal team. Today we have more than 500 lawyers at Microsoft and more than half are women. That’s a testament to many things, but it would be hard to point to anything more important than Mary’s great example.

For me, Mary also provides a great reminder of the virtues of long-term teamwork. I’ve asked her to take on so many different challenges over the past 17 years, when she started reporting to me. She has always said yes and then risen to meet them. As you’d expect when two people work together this long, she has a good sense of me as well. Among other things, she spots when I’m about to make a mistake and knows how and when to provide me with the advice I need before it’s too late.

Success in life is about a lot of things. Sometimes it makes sense in your career to move somewhere else. And adding new people to your team is a constant. But a day like today reminds me of something else as well: there’s also a lot to be said for valuing the people who are around us already. We might just find ourselves working with them for a few decades!