MVP - Why I never bothered... yet...

It’s been great seeing all the congratulations around MVP awards circulating through the Microsoft Dynamics community as it’s one of those few times you see partners and consultants commending each other on a job well done. Sitting back and watching this community grow and see the new talent come through is a great privilege. We probably still need to do a lot more work to get more females as well as more kids from poor social economic backgrounds to get into a career in tech but that’s a discussion for another day. But today, I want to talk about MVP program and the risk of only focusing on technical skills and the over empathise on technical contributions when considering such awards to high contributors. Sure, we operate in a technology focused business but the practice of consulting is not just about doing cool stuff with software. It’s actually about helping organisations do a better job in what they do. Yes we use tech to solve problems but tech is only part of the solution. What about people, what about processes, what about best practice?

At its core, I believe the MVP award should be about excellence. Excellence is more than just evangelising about the Microsoft platform or building cool stuff. Excellence originated from the two ancient Greek concepts of Arete and Eudaimonia. People like Aristotle and Homer were big advocates of excellence in individuals as well as in society as a whole. The concept is about having an outstanding suitability and aptitude for purpose as well as seeking to live a life that is fulfilled and well-lived. From this it is easy to say that excellence has much to do about the way in which you work as much as it has to do with what you actually create or produce. It is as much as virtue in work and engaging in meaningful work as it in building quality work that solve complex problems.

The reason I got into IT was that technology provides ample opportunity to be creative and work and live virtuously. Many professionals I come across have passion for what they do and usually seek to do the right thing in the contexts they find themselves in.

But one thing I want to flag in this post is that we often find ourselves struggling in the battle between the excellence we pursue in our practices of technology consulting and the institutions desire for success (often defined by financial goals). Think about your own situation where you have had to make compromises with what you believed would be good for the Dynamics 365 practice you work in and the pursuit of success by the organisation via billable hours or competitive selling. The struggle is always there for all of us.

In my opinion, the best thing that MVPs can do it mentor the new members of the Dynamics 365 community and hold fast to the pursuit of excellence. To stand up and say that it's okay to say NO to sales people or to bring back down client expectations to earth. The excellence is best demonstrated in realising your purpose as leaders in the community and ensuring that excellence is not compromised for the sake of success. Internal goals such as continually doing better, having better team members, building better products, understanding clients better is way more important than the external goods of profitability, realisation rates, promotions and reputation.

I guess this is why I love self-organising teams so much in tech, it provided a clear boundaries between the team that practicing our craft (the Development team) and the team that is looking out for the continued viability of the organisation (upper management).

The MVPs are the modern day Guild Masters of our profession and need to be in the front line in this battle. The wise, old men and women who have come far in our industry and represents a recognition of that excellence and not just status… and that's probably why I haven't bothered yet…