144 - Applying Mindset, Just Cause, and Agility to Achieve Your Greatest Results

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A Top Microsoft Partner Leader Joins Ultimate Guide to Partnering®

Applying mindset, just cause, and agility to achieve your greatest results working with the tech giant, Microsoft.

My next guest for Ultimate Guide to Partnering® is a leader who’s driving great success with ISVs at scale. Alvaro Celis is Microsoft’s Vice President for Global ISV – Commercial Solutions and Breadth. Alvaro and his team lead the ISV strategy for the different Microsoft Commercial Solution Areas, and the global relationships with the most iconic ISVs in each of these markets. Creating a holistic approach and engagement with the ISV ecosystem that enables deep transformational partnership at scale. Alvaro encourages partners to apply mindset, just cause, and agility to achieve their greatest results working with the tech giant, Microsoft.

Alvaro has been a leader in the transformation of the enterprise business around Cloud, Mobility, Big Data, Social and Security & Privacy, and for the consumer business around Retail, OEM, and Online channels. He is a well-versed speaker on several industry topics including cloud computing, IoT, Mobility, and national competitiveness. Lastly, Alvaro has been given 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021 HITEC 100 awards for his influential and notable contributions to the Hispanic Professionals in the Technology Industry, among many other accolades, Alvaro is also the Executive Sponsor for HOLA the Hispanic and LatinX employee resource group at Microsoft.

I was so excited to welcome Alvaro as he brings this rich experience to a wide-ranging conversation that includes how to best engage with Microsoft, what makes a great partner, his career journey in various leadership roles, and his just cause.

What You’ll Learn

His mission to drive ISV Solutions at scale across Microsoft’s subsidiaries.
What makes a great Partner-to-Partner (P2P) engagement.
The Kryptonite of Partner Engagement.
His professional journey and amazing personal philosophy.
How Partners can optimize for success – clarity of purpose, capabilities,

It was great to feature Alvaro Celis. I hope you enjoy and learn from this amazing business leader as much as I enjoyed welcoming him to Ultimate Guide to Partnering®.

Quote From This Episode

“But you need to earn that trust, right. And trust is “consistency over time”. You cannot earn that in one meeting, you need to work on it, and be sure that you keep working on it, it will never be perfect. But I think that you can earn that when you have high integrity, and high consistency in the way you behave.”

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For 2022, I am excited to announce PartnerTap as the Founding Sponsor of Ultimate Guide to Partnering. PartnerTap is the only Partner Ecosystem Platform designed for the Enterprise. Their technology makes it easy to align Channel Teams with automated account mapping, letting you control what data you share while building a partner revenue engine. I’m so excited to have them on board and for our exciting year ahead!

Transcription – by Otter.ai – Expect Typos

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

partners, microsoft, customer, organizations, partnership, venezuela, question, company, people, absolutely, leaders, work, global, create, alvarado, friends, isv, business, capabilities, years

SPEAKERS

Announcer, Alvaro Celis, Vince Menzione

Announcer 00:00

Welcome to The Ultimate Guide to partnering in this podcast Vince Menzione. A proven industry sales and partner executive brings together technology leaders to discuss transformational trends and to deconstruct successful strategies to thrive and survive in the rapid age of cloud transformation. And now, your host, Vince Menzione.

Vince Menzione 00:23

Welcome to or welcome back to The Ultimate Guide to partnering where technology leaders come to optimize results through successful partnering. I’m Vince Menzione, your host and my mission is to help leaders like you unlock the leadership principles and learnings of the best in the business to get partnerships right. Optimize for success and deliver your greatest results. Applying mindset, just cause and agility to achieve your greatest results working with the tech giant. My next guest for ultimate guide to partnering as a leader who’s driving great success with SAS software companies and independent software vendors in this community. Alberto CLS is Microsoft’s Vice President of Global ISV solutions for the worldwide global partners solutions organization, an organization that supports some of Microsoft’s largest partners that are globally managed. But more importantly, Alberto is looking after how Microsoft can better scale with SAS software companies and independent software vendors of various sizes across this vast ecosystem. I was so excited to welcome Alberto as he brings 30 years of experience to this wide ranging conversation. That includes what makes a great partner his career journey in various leadership roles across technology marketing, sales in general management, and lessons he’s learned along the way. Alvarado is also from Venezuela. And as a Latino American, he has been a very strong voice for this community, and is helping to drive the discourse on diversity across all communities. How perot is just an amazing human. And I hope you enjoy this episode. As much as I enjoyed welcoming Alberto see less. Before we dive into the interview, I’m happy to announce that partner tap has become a founding sponsor of ultimate guide to partnering. I’ve been friends with the founders of partner tap for many years, and partner tap is the only partner ecosystem platform designed for the enterprise. Their technology makes it easy to align channel teams with automated account mapping, letting you control what data you share while building a partner revenue engine. Alvarado welcome to the podcast.

Alvaro Celis 02:54

Thank you for being here. It’s an honor to be here. I’m looking forward to talk to you and your audience.

Vince Menzione 02:58

I am so delighted to welcome you to ultimate guide to partnering. You’re Microsoft’s Vice President of Global ISV solutions for the worldwide global partner solutions organization. That’s a mouthful, right? And new to role two. And we’ll talk a little bit more about your history of Microsoft. But I’m really excited to welcome you to share with our listeners the importance of working with your team, how Microsoft cares and CO sells with partners why partnering is more important now than ever, and your personal and professional journey. So delighted to have you here today.

Alvaro Celis 03:30

Well, thank you so much for being so late. It’s been fantastic. As I told you, I have the utmost appreciation for what you’re doing for awesome for the industry, then it’s fantastic to have this opportunity to have these conversations. And I know that we’re gonna be running out of time, because it’s a rich agenda, the one you have. So let’s get going. I’m looking forward to it. All right,

Vince Menzione 03:49

let’s go. So as you might know, I came from a career where which included a stop for almost a decade at Microsoft. In fact, I got to work closely with your leader, Casey McGee, when he was in an earlier career role. And also, I’ve worked with large ISVs independent software vendors for those who don’t know, and so I’ve also worked with your organization in the past, I wanted to dive in today on how we and partners can more effectively work together. But for our listeners and partners that might not know the function and mission of your role in organization. I thought maybe you’d spend a few moments here with us there.

Alvaro Celis 04:27

Thank you beings. And so let me give you a little bit of context on that. So our team does have three superpowers three things that we do for Microsoft that number one is we partner across engineering sales marketing, to ensure that we have clarity on what is our ISV why should we overlap ISV strategy by solution area, every one of the ones that we have in the commercial space and how the ISV capabilities will enhance and strengthen that long range planning that we have. Once we have that strategy. You landed, we select our segmentation of partners who should we be managing globally, regionally locally through our digital channels and all that fun stuff. So that’s one part. The second part is for those partners were given the context, given the plans, given their capabilities, our needs and the Win Win opportunity. We decide to engage at a global level, and my team has the distinct pleasure and honor to engage with them directly. So we also manage this set of global ISPs. Number three is my team. Also part of my team is also working on our scale business, how we do that, how we develop that capability to manage the 1000s or 10s of 1000s of ISPs that when I work with Microsoft, through different engagement models across the globe, those three things are part of what we do for a living.

Vince Menzione 05:54

It’s a very important mission. One thing I’ll say, first off is that being globally manages a big deal of Microsoft. That’s for the top at the top of the tear, but I’m really excited to hear you say about the scale business. And I’ve gotten to spend some time with other leaders on this because I do think there are my friend Jay McBain has said, I know 180,000, SAS software companies out there and you can’t obviously manage all of those. How do you create a very effective model? Tell bring more of those organizations on board?

Alvaro Celis 06:26

Absolutely. And we can talk more about that if you want later on. But yeah, that’s absolutely a fascinating area and is one of the true privileges that you have when you’re working in ecosystem. How do you think at that level of scale, so you can serve partners of all size industries, countries, is a fascinating challenge. But it’s a rightful work, it will help progress a society and our thing, only ecosystem. So it’s a great mission.

Vince Menzione 06:50

So I get to work with organizations that work across all three of the hyperscalers, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google and some of these organizations don’t necessarily know. And I think for all of our listeners, we’d like to know, how does Microsoft’s approach differ from the other hyperscalers? With regards to supporting partners on the platform?

Alvaro Celis 07:11

Yeah, that’s a great question. And again, I I’m pretty sure every every company have their own answer to this, let me tell you, what we stand or that Microsoft will stand for is an end to end partnership, we want to be assured that we look at a holistic and durable way to engage with our partners and be sure that we can make them very successful in the service of the customers that we work together for. So think about three big motions, how do we build the products? How do we help them, you know, realize on the magic that they want to play out there in the in the market? How do we go to market together? And how do we sell and transact together, right. And we put all all those three elements in our plans. We have the teams on the engineering side on the marketing side, and also the front of the customers, both enterprise and mid smaller, medium sized, depending on the on the channel that cosell with our partners to ensure that we can drive that level of differentiation. But the feedback that we have getting from the partners, the ISPs that we work with is that that holistic approach, the comprehensive approach from deal to sale, and creating that virtuous cycle to make the differentiation and the value sustainable over time, has set us apart and has earned us the preference and we’re honored for that.

Vince Menzione 08:27

Yeah, I would agree with you here. And sometimes I get criticized as being a Microsoft fanboy. But I’ve been inside the four walls. And I’ve seen how some of the others work as well. And having that integration across build with go to market and sell, which is really, I think, a differentiation, would you I’d like to peel it back here a little bit on the global distinction versus the more the subsidiary level, I think a lot of organizations struggle understanding how Microsoft operates. Could you help us there in terms of letting our listeners understand the difference between the two?

Alvaro Celis 08:57

Yeah, no, absolutely. And the one premise I would love for us to, to put on the table, because that said, kind of the guiding principle for us is, we got to be sure that we partner with our ISPs or with our partners the way that they need us to be. So depending on the partner needs and the other opportunity. Now, when you unpack that, and based on my experience, and let me just give you a little bit of context on the way Why am I selling this way? I invest 23 years in front of the customer and partners building organizations across Latin America, Asia and other parts of the world, right and the last seven years in global roles, and it’s a continue, when we look into what is the level of maturity of the partnership, what are the offerings, what are the target markets, what is the partner strategy, and how that correspond with the Microsoft strategy. You can make the decision as I was mentioning before, that it’s good for us to have a global engagement, but that’s a big commitment from both parts on resourcing on timing on scale. In order to work to gathered towards customer impact value and a win win for both companies. But even at Microsoft, we have a finite number of resources. So you always try to keep that in a very selective rule where you can, you can really honor that expectation, that commitment of the experience of having a global process and a global partnership. Now, when you look at the continuum that I was mentioning, we also have great partners that are very important, but they need to operate mostly at a pan regional or regional level, we are at Microsoft organized around 14 different areas. And some of the partners can be managed, or we are managed at multiple of them. They are not global, but there are pan regional or they are big partners in a given geography. And some of them will tell you a look, we just want to have a relationship with Microsoft. But we want to be we want to go other one on base, because of the level of maturity that we have, because of the industry that we’re serving. So we just want to make sure that we have a relationship that you are there for us. But I want you to empower us, and we take our own path. And that’s where we engage through digital channels on the scale Indians, do we show that we can also work with them, we respect and believe that every partner is important. We just want to have the right engagement model, depending on the partner needs, and the opportunity that we have to go. And that’s kind of the way we think a lot of things.

Vince Menzione 11:15

I love what you have to say here overall, it really makes a difference, because I think organizations always want to have like that next level, but they don’t recognize like being locally managed. And one of the 14 subsidiaries is equally beneficial. In fact, sometimes it’s even more beneficial because you’re closer to the ground with the teams, correct?

Alvaro Celis 11:32

Absolutely. And I probably will tell you, the when you have this global engagement, the most important part of the global engagement is security, you have local coverage, right? I mean, they I mean, when you look at why do we partner, right, and it’s to serve the customer, the closer you are to the customer, the closer you are to that action, the more powerful the partnership is. And of course, when you have a global relationship, there are long range planning some products and things that we need to get in the way that to build in order to create that success. But that local COVID actually is at the heart of us wanting to market together and making a difference for the world share customers.

Vince Menzione 12:10

And some of the organizations like the US business are pretty significant. Right? The the US GPS organization is a pretty significant organization under Tyler Bryson.

Alvaro Celis 12:19

Now, the global partner solutions is is a massive organization. Again, Thunder is a great partner and and absolutely the the theme is, is extremely relevant. But also I would like to say, you know, I don’t want to sound pedantic on the air, but I will tell you, I personally am very proud of the leaders that we have on the parachute that we have all over the world as in that we have extremely strong teams that are leading partnerships all over the world, different markets, different size, of course and different complexities. We are multi country, or you’re a single country or a single region. But parity has been a capability for Microsoft since I’ve been in the company for almost 30 years, it will be one quarter away or for a year. So I think I want to make it really didn’t go as planned. And um, Tara has been the core and will be at the core of how we who we are and what we do.

Vince Menzione 13:09

You’re too young to be there. 30 years, what were you 12 When you started that? No, are we really good friends? Thank you for your kindness. year it’s a really, really, absolutely I’ve of a similar age bracket. So I have to compliment you there. So we’ve had so many amazing guests come to this platform, Microsoft leaders and this podcast is focused on partnering its ultimate guide to partnering so I need to ask and we’ve got Lonnie Phillips and Carlos de Torres, Rodney Clark, Heather Diegans Gimli. Many other amazing guests come Can you tell our listeners what you believe Alvarado makes a great partner,

Alvaro Celis 13:46

though. Well, first of all, you have like all my friends in the podcast. So it’s like at least for reunions? It’s awesome.

Vince Menzione 13:53

I’m very blessed. No, it’s

Alvaro Celis 13:55

fantastic. So good job on that. Now, on your question. So limited, or the way I think about this. And this is my personal perspective, based on my experience and under View. For me, our parents are our best teachers, because they spend so much time in front of the customer day in day out, they don’t have the resources and the capabilities that a company like Microsoft will have. So they keep you grounded on what the customer is saying what the reality is looking at what was going on in the market, the things that really impact and affect them. And I always have learned a ton. And my work with partner has allowed me to be smarter about the business are more accurate or not. How can I help? How can we make a difference? So partners that teach that share that provider theme that are that’s a great component of what I believe that the partnership needs to base on

Vince Menzione 14:41

how do you ensure that they that they give you the feedback, is there anything special you do there? But I think

Alvaro Celis 14:46

that you need to have genuine interest and you need to put your quasi. Listen, you need to be an active listener. I mean, I think that when you there’s people and there’s people right, so I want to introspect everyone else approach but in my case it’s a true I’m truly curious, genuinely interested to understand what is important for my partners who are having their experiences in front of the customers. And I think that more you show that genuine approach, and the more you show that you’re going to do something about it, and you close a feedback loop with them. And they see that this feedback and these conversations are really making a difference, the more that will be inspired and confident to provide you with the gift of that feeling. But you need to earn that trust, right. And trust is consistency over time. You cannot earn that in one meeting, you need to work on it, and be sure that you keep working on it, it will never be perfect. But I think that you you can earn that when you when you have high integrity, high consistency in the way you behave,

Vince Menzione 15:40

I refer to trust is the lifeblood of the partnership.

Alvaro Celis 15:44

Absolutely. Absolutely. So that’s one piece, right? I mean, that feedback that inside been our best teachers on the opportunity, and how can we the partners, I also have observed that companies that have a clarity of mission and purpose, are incredibly great partners. And let me in my many years working with partners, my favorite questions to founders and CEOs, is what I call the fundamental question, which is, if your company ceases to exist tomorrow, you cluster up? Who’s going to miss you? And why. And that question is such a rich platform for an incredible good conversation on the right of the company to exist, right? What differentiation do we have for the customer? Why are we unique? Who will who is really our competition, etc, etc. So that clarity of mission and purpose, I have found that is extremely useful, and a North Star in how the UB will the partnerships, then and I might you have an update on that. So let me let me finish and then I’ll pass it back to you. But the second the next element is culture is what is the culture of the company? Are you willing to build a culture of partnership? am I building this relationship that takes time energy, and you need to be purposeful, of course, we have a joint interest, that is a benefit of the customer. It has to be a win win. They might be elements in the partnership where you will need to give some more business what you get, and in others will be the country buddies, I we better together? Can we get to a question when one plus one equals three or four versus separated? Right? Can we get to that level? Can we find that formula together, partnerships are co created. They are not they cannot be created unilaterally. And in that culture of partnership. I think it’s also super important to observe the ability of the company to learn, unlearn, and relearn, because the only cost in this industry is change. So having durability, so we can iterate fast and find our path forward. When you combine those elements that I just just mentioned, I always see great partnership when the things are present, or this elements are present in our relationships.

Vince Menzione 17:56

I love her dad to say or it’s almost like you and I are speaking the same exact language I talk about, first of all, the effective communications part, many partners are not deliberate enough in their communications just cause right that’s what you were talking about. What’s our why, like, why are we here? Why are we locking arms in a shared relationship? Right? How do we get and then the mindset, I talked about growth mindset. I love the work that Satya has done on growth mindset within Microsoft. But partners need to come to the table with the right mindset. I think you use the term partner mindset in the discussion. And then you loop it around with what I refer to as agility, which is we have to recognize that things change, we need to pivot when we need to together, we might need to adjust the plan. But we understand that intuitively, we need to do that together. Is that what I heard you say?

Alvaro Celis 18:46

Absolutely. I think that we’re in the same wavelength. And then we all have our way to tell the story. But the principles are there. And I love the fact that we can share that with the audience. Because I think that the more we have a shared understanding of these elements and what effective we can be together. So thank you for reinforcing that.

Vince Menzione 19:01

So we’re hopefully coming out of a time like no other, right? I mean, the world is opening up Microsoft’s campus is opening up and there’s still some call them outbreaks of part of the Coronavirus. But we’re coming out of this time like no other and finally getting out and traveling. And I know you were out traveling recently, as well as I was How have the last two years impacted you and your leadership style almost 30 years at Microsoft. And what is the best thing you learned or took away from these last two years?

Alvaro Celis 19:31

Thank you these. Yeah, I’m back from traveling before the pandemic before you know this situation with COVID. I used to travel 250,000 miles a year. Right. So I was a road warrior because I love to be in front of the customer in front of farmers and they know they’re having a global role was a perfect excuse for me to be on a plane massively. I learned that a lot of what I did was personal choice and you could have done it in different ways built on meetings, etc. But when when I reflect over the last couple of years, I mean the first thing thing that I would like to acknowledge is the amount of loss sadness and the tragedy on the on the human side on what happened with Khalid, right, and what has happened with Golden State going on in a different level, but still going on. And you’ll see that the news in some parts of the world is still a very real problem, what I have on the Silver Line, the things that I have rescued from all this tragedy that has gone in the world and all the but all the changes that have happened, and we have talked tons on the business side about how much have we accelerated data transformation, due to the systemic changes on the economic context and hybrid work and all the things so I’m not gonna go there. I think those are being very well discussed in many forums that are certainly the one thing that I observed that he’s been inspiring to me, and is very close to home is how the workplace has been humanize. I love it before the pandemic, I think that we all have our brave faces. And the moment that you connect with senior leaders in our companies, we were all in in, in that position, my team, your team, etc. And they will good conversation. But there was a lot of you put your game face on and you go on represent a role. These days, I have calls with very senior people in very important companies. And they’re like, Hey, I’m walking the dog, my kids in the car and say, Hi, this is my friend, Ella, is such and you can see the smiles you can see the relaxed how they work life harmony is finding a new path, and how have been more open. I’ve been in meetings where people are like, hey, I need to take a break, do you mind if I take the second part of this call taking a walk because I want to get the fresh air. And it’s human, it’s real. And I believe that allowing us having that permission to be our true self. And bringing that to work is making us better. So that I’m very, very grateful for that we have that permission. And I hope that this will stay long after the pandemic ends and all they are the 10 year we will do a new normal, whatever that is. But that element has been a fascinating change that I have observed. I don’t know your opinion base, but in a very particular way that that this has just talked to me, I’ll make an impact to me in a very material way.

Vince Menzione 22:08

Yeah, from my perspective, as well, we’ve become so much more human with one another, right? The kids coming in waving and hugging mom and dad, the dog barking. And I suspect and I hope we won’t ever go back right the genies out of the bottle now,

Alvaro Celis 22:24

that’s a sure the shutter speed ratio, my friend, I think that that will be great. And I think also the level of stress is less. Because I mean, you bring your true self to work. And you really worry about the real things. I mean, things got in perspective. So anyway, so you’re quite thank you for that question. And at least that’s my, my silver lining from all the things that have happened with a pandemic. Yeah,

Vince Menzione 22:43

I agree with all of your sentiments here about how tragic this last two years have been for so many people. And hopefully, we will never go back that way. Either. I want to pivot back to the business discussion a little bit. One of the topics, always here at Microsoft, when we talk a lot of partners about as the partner to partner play the ISV community, of course, providing software that requires in many cases, either a partner to sell it or to implement it, or there’s some other type of partner engagement here. And I’ve worked with a lot of these organizations on PDP. And I know it’s so important to ultimate success working with Microsoft, what do you believe is true here with regards to P to P? Why is it important? And what does your organization do to enforce it?

Alvaro Celis 23:27

Yeah, I think that’s a that’s a great question. p2p has been like they need to run out for parallel ecosystem when you get your parents to work together, when I talked to parents about that. So that’s the three things that you need to consider on why do you want to be more bearish, right? Because again, as with this call, you need to have energy, you need to have the right culture, you need to be intentional. And you need to be strategic on how do you build those, I think that the three elements are, how do you create more value for the customer? How do you drive scale for your business? And how do you gain agility or time to value depending on the case. So let me go talk a little bit about the three in a brief way. So when you think about value, customers are moving from away from problems for a long time, it’s all about solutions. And we do that information is about outcome is every time that that transformation gets accelerated is harder and harder for one company to be able to be the one stop shop to do everything and have every capability to solve that customer problem to generate that outcome. So then you need to make an aesthetic choice. Do you build more capabilities? So you make the you do you grow your your portfolio you change the company? Or you Yes, go partner with people that can be world class on that element that you need to complement your solution, your cloud service, your superpower, whatever that is. And by working with them in a flexible way, are you doing better by the customer? And I think that’s a very important question. But that generation of value in front of the customer by you know, aligning yourself with our partners is a very important consideration and It’s a true generation of value. When you look at the exchange across Microsoft partners, that happens every year, then the second element is when you look at the growth planning, or our partners are like, I want to go to a different geography, I want to go to a different industry, when I move on, I want to expand. And when I want to increase my time, well, one way for you to do that you need to have a relationship with customers. And you need to have that engagement is actually working with other partners that may have that relationship or in those markets. And you want to get in either industries or geographies. And that way, your time to present your time to impact is actually more agile. So he helps you with your scale. And he helps you with your speed and your agility too. So you need to consider these three elements on that. I personally believe that again, going back to my point of clarity of purpose, that was why your company exists, and who’s gonna mission why if you’re not there, you need to be sure that you’re true to your mission true to who you are. And then surround yourself with other companies that complement that mission, always in service of the customer, I will leave the companies that are customer obsessed on how to generate value are the ones that will find very quickly the right level of other partnerships to create, we foster that when you look at the programs that we have the way that we do to differentiate partners that Microsoft Partner Network, the programs that we have, for partners create a curated list that allow people to understand who who has the same level of quality relationship with us. And that’s a way to also create a closer bridge between both companies that then they need to just arrange the commercial terms, etc. But it’s a critical critical element on the strategic development of any any borrower in my opinion,

Vince Menzione 26:43

he said something that was really fundamental to me, it was around the customer and the customer being the North Star. And we’ve been talking about this, how the evolution of procurement has changed, right, we used to talk to the CIO used to talk to the IT shop. Now the customer decisions being made in the line of business and the five seats at the table, the customer is relying on its most trusted vendors to help them make those decisions and having those relationships and whether they be influenced partners, systems integrators, reseller partners, and the like, is just so critical to success. Would you agree?

Alvaro Celis 27:20

Absolutely. And in all industries, and all customers size, right? I mean, it’s not only enterprise for so when you go to a smaller medium, is even more predominant. But the fact that you’re gonna talk to the business owner and talk about outcomes, it changes the game, and it will force you to find the right complements to ensure that you can have the right answer and a genuine answer. So you can have a customer for a long time, hopefully for life.

Vince Menzione 27:44

Someone asked the opposite of the question I asked you earlier. Right. So we talked about partnership and how critical and fundamental it is. And I’ve seen it from both sides. I’ve seen also when organizations have failed partnering, what would you say, for organizations failing? What have you seen what has been the kryptonite you’ve seen? I know,

Alvaro Celis 28:03

that’s a great question. And I don’t I don’t know being said, I will tell you this one thing, what I have observed is the winners are the companies that learn from those setbacks, and find a way to recover and come back stronger. I think we all have our history, enterprises and diverse initiatives, programs, pilot offerings that have won have not gone the way we want it. And that is okay, look at this business, you need to take some race you need to go. The question is where are you gonna do about right? Are you if you let them, if you go repeat that, then it’s ego. And normally, that’s really a failure. If you use it as a platform for learning, it’s a very different energy. I also have found companies that have the resiliency to absorb that setback, but are obsessed with the customer and with clarity of mission will find their way to curiosity of fast iteration to really find the right path forward. So it’s not really a failure is a setback, right? Or is a way not to do it. Okay, now, let me go explore another one. I learned how not to do it, right. But those elements of learning resiliency, curiosity, of fast iteration, really allow a partner to come back from any setback that you may have, and come at the end of the process stronger and better, because you just got way more way stronger and more directed on what really adds value to the customer. The one thing that I will say that characterize when there is a real loss is when the company is too much in love with their own ideas and cannot accept or process the setback and get stuck in that mindset that just keep trying the same thing and expecting a different result. That’s a recipe for failure. For sure.

Vince Menzione 29:45

You said, you said a lot here. And I gotta say I say it again. I love what you had to say here because I think you brought up resiliency and I’ve seen organizations actually changed their partner model. I mean, change their business model from the old days being a SharePoint partner to being an ISV. And then the organizations that struggle I think what you mentioned I refer to as hubris, right organizations that gets stuck and fall in love with their own model and aren’t willing to really be open to new ideas and really seeing or getting feedback that the model isn’t working.

Alvaro Celis 30:16

Absolutely. I think that trait is one way that you can upsell companies that don’t do well.

Vince Menzione 30:21

Yeah, I am in so an agreement. I’m so excited to welcome athletic greens as the latest sponsor to ultimate guide to partnering friends who know me well know I’ve made taking a green drink supplement, part of my health ritual for over 20 years now. And it has made all the difference to my health and well being. About five years ago I added athletic greens. And now their product ag one has become my go to green drink supplement. I take this literally every single day. Ag one is packed with 75, high quality vitamins, minerals, Whole Foods source superfoods, probiotics and antigens. It literally is replaced every vitamin in my cabinet. I take it at the start of the day, and often have a second serving on days when I really need it. If you’d like to give ag one a try. Athletic Greens is giving away a free one year supply of vitamin D, and five travel packs with every new purchase. Check them out at athletic greens.com forward slash Vince M. So Alvarado I would love to pivot here, if you don’t mind. As you might know, I’m fascinated with the career journey and helping early and career professionals get to a spot in their career. And so I’m a student of high performance as well. And I also mentioned to you earlier that I had been a diversity lead, it was a diversity lead at Microsoft, I helped to lift all voices. And so you have a great pedigree history and story here. And I was hoping you could share that with our listeners, your journey to vice president, vice presidents a big deal at Microsoft, and also how you got here from your background and your roots. So would you mind taking us through that?

Alvaro Celis 32:14

I’d like to make a long story short, thank you for the question means what I will tell you is I am the most unlikely sales leadership or some marketing leadership career that you might find over there. Actually, the long story short is I am at the university, I am doing my the subject for my Master’s in Computer Science. I have three jobs I’ve working in the oil industry, I’m teaching at night in a university, I’m doing my Masters, Microsoft Office in Venezuela, one of my former teachers become the sales manager to all my friends got a job on technical support. And they call me and say, Hey, this is super cool. And Microsoft blah, blah, blah, I get a hold of the book inside Windows NT, by Dave Cutler. I read the microkernel architecture. I was a very, very deep technical person, you might call me a geek, which is absolutely fine. It was a different term back then. But you got my point, right? And I’m like, Oh, this is so nice. I mean, I want to do this. So I went to Microsoft and asked for a job in development. Of course, there was no development in Venezuela back then. And that okay, well give me a job with technical support. Sorry, your two friends already took the two jobs that we have. I’m like, damn, okay, so No, not for me. Well, we have a word, we have a job in brand marketing for Windows and three. I’m like, Oh, I can do that. I know, operating systems. I was an assistant teacher and I went to the teacher so I can make a pitch. I don’t know what problem it is. But if you can’t be offended that I know you’re making pitches, I can do that. Why not? And this is how I started. If you tell me right back in the day that I will be ended up leaving Redman having a multi billion dollar business that I manage through partners or customer and origin. I will read I really like you’re crazy. I’m a technical person. And I will be developing stuff in a room somewhere because I that’s what I do, right? I’m a technologist, but happens to be that we were eight employees, we have more countries and people and very quickly we realize that and they’re like, hey, Andrew, we realize we have more countries and people in the office. Can you help us open subsidiaries? Look, you’re 2220 years 23 years old, and what do you say? Sure, why not? So I started my commercial career right? And then you start doing a little bit of everything because there’s so few people, and I kind of got good at that. And eventually a start like God more more encouraged to actually partners was my first leadership we have on Microsoft of all things, because happens to be that I had an instinct for those that which I didn’t absolutely have no idea I had until I tried. So one thing to to another. The long story short is I am planning to retire from Microsoft as a GM of Venezuela. I got a job at 29 After being the GM in Central America, in the Caribbean, I was sorry, I was in in Guatemala for one a year. And then I said, What I don’t think I think I’m too young to retire at 29. So that might be a bad idea. I think I’m putting a limit on myself, I just want to go for it and see what happens. I have fun in the process, right. And my, my point has been, if I keep growing, I keep learning and making a difference. I’ll stick around and go for the ride to see what happened. And it’s been an incredible opportunity that took me from Venezuela to Florida, multiple roles in product partner, and general management that took me to Asia, of all places, Singapore, I spent four years there as the vice president for the region. And it was it was interesting, because it was by, by actually, not planning for the next year, but planning to three jobs on the road that I could really break through the lineal progress and really break through into the VP ranks. Because I was more interested on the show that in the midterm, I was a more qualified leader versus being the best on the next step. So I took a different approach to that. And that change of energy and, and more strategic approach really helped me out to step up and become a vice president. And then the rest was history. There were there were great leaders who believe in me and gave me opportunities. And that took me to red moon, and here I am now. Lina USB. So it’s been a, it’s been an incredible career, I never thought I will spend 30 years in a place, and I will I still my two premises are the same. But if I keep learning, I keep growing, I’ll stay around. And the moment that that’s not true, I’ll do something else. But the company has been extremely kind to me, and I’m a very fortunate person, I will tell you,

Vince Menzione 36:39

it’s a great story. And I actually know a GM who retired when he was like 29 years old. And he came back because he recognized like he was too young to retire. And there was so much more ahead of him at Microsoft. So you reminded me of that. Thank you. So you mentioned work brought you to the United States on multiple occasions, Fort Lauderdale, which is the last time or Miami which is the Latin region for Microsoft, and then to Redmond into the main campus to the mothership, as we sometimes referred to it as a Latino male, and what is still a white male dominated industry. Right? Were there any barriers that you faced or you had to overcome?

Alvaro Celis 37:17

Yeah, what what I will tell you is I never understood that until i i move seven years ago to the Pacific Northwest. And I went deeper into the experience of being part of corporate America, not only at Microsoft, but working with the local partners and getting deeper into what the reality was. I think that my times in Florida, the culture was different all around the state and also was so focused on Latin America that I really I was living in the US, but my my day to day was mostly in the Latin American countries, right. And what happened to me was, there was one data point that changed my life and my approach to the whole Latino Latin X course in the US and the responsibility that people like me have to make a difference. And what happened is that I learned that 76% of Latino Hispanic in the US, right, in general, corporate America, hide their ethnicity and their roots, because they believe that’s going to be detrimental for their careers. And that data point really became such a, I mean, I, it’s hard for me to explain the emotional reaction I had to that because I think it’s an it not only an injustice is yes, it’s a tragedy, because of the amount of energy that you need to put to hide who you are not to mention how happy you are trying to pretend to be someone you’re not. And I don’t think anyone deserves that. I think that everyone deserves an opportunity to be who they are been there to serve the work and have a level playing field and compete fairly for the opportunities and call me a dreamer. But I think that’s what we deserve. So my, my quest has been on, how do I make the difference? I mean, for me, like, I think that I’ve been very fortunate to get to this role, and I had done better than I ever dreamed. So again, I I can call it a day and I will be wildly with young whatever I either am when I was a young kid in in Venezuela, America what I was born, but I owe that to the generations that are following me and to my kids, I want to create a very workplace for them. That’s what motivated me to become the executive sponsor for Allah, the Hispanic Latinx, ERG at Microsoft and work inside the company to start changing our own context. That’s what motivated me also to become part of the board of directors of high tech, which is a nonprofit organization that is focused on the development of a Latino Hispanic talent in the chronology for the US and that is a course that I’m totally committed to to keep working on till my last days even after I retired from you know, day to day work. That will be assumption I will be very active because I believe that we can do we have made progress we have a long way to go to ensure that what industry we all have, we have that level playing field as this stereotype lives on, biases are eradicated.

Vince Menzione 40:03

Just I just love what you have to say here. I, as we talked about this diversity, like my mission and passion around diversity and inclusion and also around the fact that we’re that are privileged in the tech industry can help guide the way and lead at this time. I love what you’re doing here. I want to provide links, it’s high tech, is that the organization?

Alvaro Celis 40:23

Yeah, high tech, or high tech global.org. And actually, there’s a Yeah, that’s the company. And if you don’t find it, I’m happy to give you that. And we can post that as part of the podcast for your audience. But I will invite everyone to join the call Sunday show that we work on it is not only a man is, of course destined to the development of a Latino, Hispanic, but we’ll welcome everyone you need to inclusive, and we welcome allies from all directions in life. Everyone that shares that passion to create a level playing field is welcome.

Vince Menzione 40:52

And I think what I heard you say here is recognizing people’s diversity of all types. All right, I think he made a big bold statement there that I think there are a lot of people that have different levels of diversity or how they identify themselves. And they hide that right from others.

Alvaro Celis 41:07

Yeah. And as I told you with that thing, I think is a tragedy and energy is an injustice on people is yes. I mean, we’re in the 21st century, there’s no reason in the world, at least in my view, why we should tolerate a working environment that is like that. I know, we’re not perfect, but I also know that we can do better. So I just want to ensure that I, I left, I leave the workplace in a better place, and I found it. So it becomes a better place for the generations to come.

Vince Menzione 41:36

You’re reminded me we have had Dr. Michael Turvey here on the podcast twice. And I know you probably got to know him a little bit when he worked at Microsoft. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And you brought up something here. And I was going to ask you this, but maybe you just said it. Like, is there a just cause or personal philosophy that you bring to your life, and you carry into business and personal life?

Alvaro Celis 41:56

Yeah, thank you for for that question. The inside I do. Look, I have the pleasure to work with auto advice, too. And the power of having that personal philosophy is really deep. So here’s the story about this will take me three minutes, or two minutes, in 2000, I will say 2004, I worked with a coach because I was struggling to lead the highly distributed teams across the region in Latin America. And one thing that this coach helped me understand is I look the problem is when you’re remote, people will only see small pictures of who you are. And in the human mind, you will just create a movie by taking those pictures and trying to make sense of them. And everyone can have a different opinion. If you don’t take control and you tell people who you are and what do you stand for, it will be very hard for them to be able to connect with you and to follow you. So you need you need to help them know who you are. And that was a very powerful advice I go by, by that coach, I still have a great friend, Stan Slap. So the way I frame it is who I am is I am a leader that lives by three values, family integrity, and passion. And I reflect them in the way up in the workplace in the in the in the way I create environments for my team where everyone can be the true self, or I mean, respecting the boundaries of the others. Hopefully I ended up being like my grandmother, which I’m very tough inside the house, I will challenge you to be all you can be. And I will be the first one defending the team outside integrity in the way that our war is over bound. If you commit to something you follow through, or you offer the same and it doesn’t happen, you come back. But I need to be able to trust you and you need to trust me and everyone in my team start with 100% trust. And it’s for you to prove me wrong that I shouldn’t be trusted. And the last one is passion. For me passion is about putting the hard on what you do. If you’re going to be away from your family and the things that you carry in your personal life to work they show that you do that and you for something that relates when a turn your heart and it’s gonna help you find your own fulfillment in the professional side, I learned that when you have passion for things you can you can make things happen that become magic. And those three values are my guy. My personal philosophy is that I improve people’s life to technology. I build legacy. I enjoy a lifelong journey of learning and growth. Am I caring for the loving father, husband, son and friend, this is who I am.

Vince Menzione 44:28

I love it. I love it. We’re gonna post it in our show notes. And I love the family integrity and passion like I just love the thought in the fire there.

Alvaro Celis 44:36

Thank you. And I have been doing this since that time to every time I come every time my first light is let me tell you who I am first and foremost. And then we can go on to business and other stuff. And it’s been such a powerful way to create a human connection because people like to work with people.

Vince Menzione 44:52

I so agree with you and I happen to know some people who have worked for you and I don’t want to. I know you’re a modest individual but I’ve heard nothing but amazing things about your leadership style. So it’s obviously working. So I’d like to pivot this is a fun question. I love to ask this question. And we’ll have a little fun with this. So you’re hosting a dinner party and dinner party could be anywhere in the world, by the way, you’ve done a lot of traveling. And so we can discuss venues in a moment. But you can invite any three guests to this dinner party from the present, or the past, to the dinner party. So one person even said someone in the future, who would you who would you invite to this amazing dinner party and why ye views

Alvaro Celis 45:35

you’re getting coffee here. Okay, so let me work on this. A. So that’s a great question. Now, I will tell you, there comes to mind three personalities that I will love to pick their brains and learn more from them as a Venezuelan, I have absolutely no problem confessing that I will love to have the opportunity to get to know better understand the motivations and the leadership of Simon Bolivar. The fact that he took upon himself to not only break the slavery in Venezuela, but the core part of the content that South American continent, leaving behind a life of luxury and privileges is inspiring to say the least learning from that will be a blessing for someone like me, the second guest, I am, I will have a hard time picking between Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi, which are people that have created deep societal changes in a non violent way. And connecting to our previous conversations, we need change in our society. How do we do that in a constructive, non violent way, I don’t think there’s a space or reason for violence in the world at all. So learning from those leaders that have done that, in an incredible way will be a gift for life. And number three, I as a technologist, and again, because that’s part of who I am, right, I’m still a geek at heart. I try to keep up I love to have a chat with Elon Musk on his mental model to simplify, deconstruct, and this Rob, I think is being fantastic. When you see what he has on with cars on Tesla or the space exploration Space X, there’s something on the way he frames he finds a complexity, he reduces, he creates that differentiation and then create disruption to preference. That is a very, very interesting, and I love to learn more on how it was around that. Those were my three guests.

Vince Menzione 47:28

Fascinating. I didn’t know the first one. So Simon belieber is

Alvaro Celis 47:33

Simone believers, I’m a believer he was he’s the person that led the independence of Venezuela and a lot of the South America countries bargain the from the Spaniards in in the days of the colony,

Vince Menzione 47:45

make sure we have a link to him in the show notes, Nelson Mandela and Gandhi, both amazing leaders, Nelson Mandela being in prison for 26 years and then coming out and forgiving his captors, right and just crazy. And then Elon Musk. He’s like a hot knife through butter, like use the term simplification, right? What he has done with SpaceX and Tesla, and now Twitter, right? Well, he’ll soon have Twitter under his wing.

Alvaro Celis 48:09

That’s it. We’ll see how that pans out. But when you look at space Acentech slide. I think it’s fantastic. I mean, the the mental model and the approach for you to manage the level of complexity. I think that we need more simplification in the world. There’s too much complexity going on. And I whatever he’s doing, how he’s thinking about it is working, at least for those two, so that there’s something to be learned in there for sure. Absolutely.

Vince Menzione 48:31

However, you had been an amazing guest Alvarado. I just want to thank you. I’m so excited to have you come here today, we had to wait a little while to get you and I’m so glad that you are feeling well and back where you need to be. Do you have any closing comments or advice for our partners on how they can best optimize their success working with Microsoft and your organization?

Alvaro Celis 48:52

Well, thank you for being so as I mentioned at the beginning, thank you for the mission you’re in to connect us to give us a platform to have these conversations and the value exchanges with your audience. These attendees greatly appreciate it for us in the industry or for your audience as well. So keep doing what you’re doing. And we will be here supporting your cause. When I think about our partners, I will say that there are three things that I will invite them to keep working on that clarity of purpose, mission and culture is so important for your own company for your own direction. So please keep working on that. That is a Northstar that because that want to be centered on the customer and who you are in the marketplace or having that clarity help us be better partners with you. We didn’t talk much about this but I also believe is fundamental that we keep modernizing and the utilizing over capabilities when you when you look at the the Deep Impact that technologies like the marketplaces are having in the world. How do we go around having even technology assisted sales even in the Manage space? How do you go and generate demand to digital channels, all that those capabilities have to get to a whole different new level as an industry, for us to win and serve the customer better, and which has a completely different, deeper conversation. But my invitation for our parents will be to keep investing on that modernization and breaking new ground on the adoption of digital tools and processes. Last but not least, is please keep teaching, sharing your feedback telling us what you see how can we do better, I believe that continuous feedback loop is critical for us to have the views on the input and get iterative, better in the way that we approach the partnership. Things keep changing. And we need to keep the ensure that we’re hopefully ahead of the curve on those changes and everything our partners realize their potential and you’re generating the value for our customers. That’s how we win. So you’ve

Vince Menzione 50:43

been an amazing guest, and you touched on this whole automation marketplace. How we will scale I guess is what I would say here. I would love to have you back. I’m inviting you back again, I want to have another discussion with you. We could do it 234 Or five months from now. But we’re all seeing this evolution, right? This we’re calling a decade of the ecosystem. And I believe that we’re at a point now a seminal point where things are really going to change and the way we partner and work together,

Alvaro Celis 51:10

I believe. So. Again, thank you so much for the invitation. I’ll be more than happy to come back as many times as you think it can be of value. And it’s been a blast to have to chat with you. And looking forward to hear the feedback from your audience on this conversation. What are the topics might be of their interest? So we are here to help and partner so thank you.

Vince Menzione 51:28

Thank you so much Alvarado and I might join you for a glass of wine at that dinner party. So expect me to show up in Redmond for one of these days. Absolutely. Welcome. All right. Thank you.

Alvaro Celis 51:39

Thank you. Thank you, everyone. It’s been a pleasure.