Visiting Mister Softee*
Posted: August 17, 2015 Filed under: Technology | Tags: Microsoft, Power BI Leave a commentA few weeks ago I visited Microsoft’s Redmond campus for the second time. August 2007, a short eight years ago, was the first. Some things had changed—the presentations were more business solution focused and demonstrated some impressive capabilities (more on that later). Some things hadn’t changed—the experience still seemed impersonal and feature/function focused.
It made me think how different our technology landscape is today than it was then. Here are a few highlights.
Microsoft and their leadership team is pushing rapidly to drive user adoption to a full cloud Microsoft offering. During our meetings it was all about online experiences across productivity tools (Office 365, operating system, PC and Mobile devices) as well as backend systems (corporate applications, databases, and related tools like email, security, identity, access management, etc). They provided two powerful examples of leveraging this technology, one from their legal department and one from their finance department. Matter Center demonstrates collaboration across organizations leveraging multiple communication and collaboration tools. Checkout the video in the link above. This is the environmental context for thinking about how our technology expectations have changed.
PowerBI is their cloud-based data visualization platform. The technology was most impressive and demonstrates next generation of tools coming available in this space. Key benefits included the ease of use, its catalog method, familiar features and natural language query. Even more impressive, however, was how it has remade their finance function into providers of high value consulting to their business leaders. No longer do they spend countless low value hours assembling slide decks and canned reports. Now, they help the business decision makers formulate questions and insights backed with a robust visualization of data. See Power BI for Finance and Microsoft Finance Leverages Power BI to Transform Reporting.
My takeaways from this Redmond visit were twofold. First, it really brought home how rapidly and radically our expectations for technology have shifted (as noted in the table above). Secondly, it painfully portrays the difficulty a company with Microsoft’s legacy, financial and talent resources has in changing its products, business model, organization and culture to meet the new expectations. This makes me examine the challenge of being in professional services (accounting, tax and consulting) and the resulting shift in expectations for an I.T. department. Do our clients (external and internal) realize the shift in expectations? Is there a sense of what is possible? What is our role in leading and facilitating change?
It reinforces my motivation of getting exposure to different industries, areas of the country and world, and different cultures. We must challenge our perspectives and work to understand how others have approached them. How does it map to our own personal, professional and organization’s outlook? As always, I have more questions than answers, but questioning the status quo is a solid first step toward transformation.
*Microsoft’s nickname of Mister Softee comes from its stock exchange symbol: MSFT.
Weekly Download 15.13
Posted: August 14, 2015 Filed under: Weekly Download Leave a comment
Here’s a recap of news and notes from around the Web that caught my attention over the past week or so.
Who doesn’t love a good list? 30 business books every professional should read before turning 30 does a great job of reflecting my tastes. The few books that aren’t on my shelf already probably won’t make it there—I have a hard time agreeing with their inclusion. Perhaps I should compile my own list!
Innovation Isn’t Dead, it just becomes more obvious only in hindsight. This is so true: “The typical path of how people respond to life-changing inventions is something like this:
- I’ve never heard of it.
- I’ve heard of it but don’t understand it.
- I understand it, but I don’t see how it’s useful.
- I see how it could be fun for rich people, but not me.
- I use it, but it’s just a toy.
- It’s becoming more useful for me.
- I use it all the time.
- I could not imagine life without it.
- Seriously, people lived without it?”
Addicted to Your Phone? There’s Help for That highlights a new industry that has arisen to provide solutions for this affliction. There are apps that limit usage, a “Light Phone” that only lets you make and receive calls and the option that really takes the cake for me: the NoPhone. This piece of plastic ($12) makes it so the sensory feelign of having a phone in your hand isn’t lost. Can’t we just go back to chewing on swizzle sticks? It’s worth a visit to their website to see their schema that shows no camera, no music, no screen and no phone.
When Vaguely Right is Good Enough
Posted: August 12, 2015 Filed under: Leadership, Misc. | Tags: choice, decisions, Marshall Goldsmith, Triggers Leave a comment
Too often it is easy to fall into a trap of perfection—many of us experience this challenge from time to time. Simple decisions, such as what to wear or what to eat, can become daunting due to a proliferation of options. But is perfection always required? When is a decision good enough?
Recently I read Triggers: Creating Behavior That Lasts–Becoming the Person You Want to Be by Marshall Goldsmith. Essentially it is a book about the incredible challenge of personal and organizational change. Goldsmith cited one example that I found quite interesting. Goldsmith coached a senior executive who stated that one thing that would make him happy was to improve his golf game. In his late fifties, he had a lot of demands on his time, was never an accomplished athlete, and disliked practicing. Goldsmith asked, “Why don’t you quit worrying about getting better at playing golf and just enjoy it?” His point was that “marginal motivation produces a marginal outcome,” further elaborating:
“If your motivation for a task or goal is in any way compromised—because you lack the skill or don’t take the task seriously, or think what you’ve done so far is good enough—don’t take it on. Find something else to show the world how much you care, not how little.”
My personal take away is that what is most important is to choose what matters. Where do you really want to strive to be the best and make a difference? In comparison, when does being vaguely right and good enough get the job done? You will be much happier and healthier if you choose carefully where you spend your most valuable and limited resource: motivation.
For more on the topic of decisions and choices, see these earlier posts:
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