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Google’s Ecosystem Leader for North America Joins Ultimate Guide to Partnering®
Jim Anderson, Googles Partner, Channel, and Ecosystem Leader for North America, Joins Ultimate Guide to Partnering® to share with our listeners how to optimize for success working with Google. Jim shares where he is investing, why a value mindset is important to customer success, and why one plus one equals one when it comes to client success. This is a MASTERCLASS achieving your greatest results partnering with Google.
In Jim’s words
As an Executive on Google’s Cloud team and a board member for Altair (NASDAQ:ALTR), Jim has more than 25 years of experience with some of the world’s leading technology companies, including Hewlett Packard (HP), Dell, and Cisco. Jim works with customers and partners to leverage emerging Cloud, AI/ML, and Data Analytics technologies to accelerate Digital Transformation through driving data-powered innovation.
Jim is known for his experience in helping businesses, at an inflection point, take advantage of market transitions. He has been described as a thought leader with the agility to make an impact that matters. Throughout his career (including 6 years with Global responsibility), Jim has successfully run businesses that help customers leverage digital technologies to drive efficiencies and enter new markets. He has been selected as one of the “Most Influential Black Americans in Corporate America” (2020 Savoy Magazine) and a “Best of Biz 2015” awards winner in the Executive of the year category.
What You’ll Learn
- The mission of his organization and how he organizes for success (2:54)
- The importance of partners to the execution of the mission? (7:54)
- Why do partners and customers choose Google? (14:03)
- What does it take to be a great partner working with Google? (17:57)
- How to avoid the kryptonite of partnering? (21:41)
- Partners that didn’t get it right with Google (23:30)
- Career journey and advice as a Black Male leader in technology? (24:57)
- How partners can drive their best results? (31:56)
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
“…really focusing on the customer? And how do we come together? Take the principles I talked about one plus one equals one? How do we focus in on the value we want to bring to the customer and really accelerate the time the value of the customer moving forward? Meaning how do we come together as a joint success model, realizing that neither of us can do it alone. In today’s complex world, we got to bring this ecosystem together and go from there“
Other Recent Episodes Featuring Google
156 – How Sada Taps into The Power of Ecosystems to Drive Their Greatest Results with Adam Massey
140 – One Google Executive Applies 10X Mindset to Improve Healthcare Outcomes with Andria McGonigle
126 – Hyper-Focus as a Growth Imperative to High-Performance Partnering with Tony Safoian of SADA.
107 – One Leader’s Focus, Taking Partnerships to the Next Level at Google.
97 – Focused Growth Investments, Google Premier Partners SADA’S Pioneering Alliance Program.
64 – Twenty Years, Leadership in Big and Meaningful Ways, with Tony Safoian, CEO of SADA.
Links from this Episode
Join our First Ultimate Partnerships Masterclass
LIVE, October 9th & 10th – learn how the best achieve their greatest results HERE.
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Transcription – by Otter.ai – Expect Typos
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
partners, customers, organization, google, partnering, journey, partner ecosystem, technology, leaders, success, world, mindset, leverage, people, differentiated, jim, isps, talked, investing, solution
SPEAKERS
Announcer, Jim Anderson, Vince Menzione
Announcer 00:00
Welcome to The Ultimate Guide to partnering and this podcast Vince Menzione. A proven sales and partner executive brings together leaders to discuss transformational trends and deconstruct successful strategies to help technology leaders like you achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. And now your host, Vince Menzione.
Vince Menzione 00:23
Welcome to or welcome back to The Ultimate Guide to 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. Achieving your greatest results partnering with Google. For this next episode of ultimate guide to partnering, I was excited to welcome Jim Anderson, Google’s partner channel and ecosystem leader for North America who shares with our listeners how to optimize for success working with Google. In this episode, Jim shares where he is investing in the business. Why a value mindset is so important to customer success, and why one plus one equals one. I hope you enjoy this amazing episode, as much as I enjoyed welcoming Jim Anderson. Before we dive into the interview, I am so excited to announce the ultimate partnerships mastermind. Our first event is taking place October 9 and 10th at the gaylord hotel in Orlando, Florida. This first of its kind live event will feature some of the best leaders in the partnership business, the ultimate partnerships Dream Team, and leaders from Microsoft in person to help you achieve your greatest results in 2023. For more details, follow the link in the show notes. attendance for this event is strictly limited. So please register today before it’s sold out. Jim, welcome to the podcast.
Jim Anderson 02:10
Thanks, Vance. I’m glad to join you today. You know you talk about the decade of the ecosystem. So I look forward to very exciting discussion today.
Vince Menzione 02:19
I am so excited to welcome you as a guest on Ultimate Guide to Partnering for our listeners. Can you tell us a little bit more about your role and the mission of your organization.
Jim Anderson 02:30
My name is Jim Anderson, and I’m the Vice President of Google Cloud, North America partner ecosystem and channels, I have the privilege of leading our partner business for North America under Kyrsten cliffhouse, who’s our president for the Americas. Our mission simply builds on the global cloud mission and to leverage the partner ecosystem to help our customers and their ability to accelerate their digital transformation. Our best in class solutions empower organizations to really harness the data to provide actionable insights run apps on the best open infrastructure and really improve collaboration and productivity across their hybrid workplace. We like to also enable industry transformation through AI and ML capabilities, combined with industry specific applications from our ISPs and industry solution implementation partners, leveraging the power of one Google, we aim to deliver differentiated partnerships that deliver on the business outcomes that our customers desire and expect,
Vince Menzione 03:30
Jim, I knew Kirsten clip house, I don’t know if she remembers this or not. But we opened up a Microsoft Store together way back in the day when there was such a thing. So great to hear. You’re part of our leadership team. And I love what you’re doing in terms of embedding partner in the business, I’m going to want to go deep with you here. Why organizations choose Google why Google is a first choice in terms of technology organizations, building out their strategy, building out their solutions, delivering for customers, so North American leader for partners, channels, ecosystems, it’s a big job, right. And I know that Google has made some significant investments here. So can you dive in a little bit more on how your organization is structured? And how do you organize for success?
Jim Anderson 04:17
Yeah, it is a big job. And it’s complex, but we’re organized in a way that tries to provide cohesiveness to the whole partner ecosystem. So really, we can harmonize our efforts in front of the customer. So I really have a couple of pillars that I organize around. First, is our solution lead pillar where we work with our solution lead partners to make sure we can implement some of that technology that we provide to our customers. Second, I have ISP pillar, you talked about the SAS world and how it’s growing. I have a pillar dedicated to working with our SAS partners out there. Third, I have a pillar around resellers and we call MSPs which really work with our partners to make sure that they’re bringing value and wheat together bringing value to our customers, to help them on their digital journey. And last but not least, I have a partner engineering group that really helps work with our partners to build their technical capacity around Google technologies. We try to pull all that together to make that a differentiator for us in the market. And we have the support of people like Kiersten and our other sales leaders, to bring the full force of our partner ecosystems to our customers to drive new and creative business outcomes.
Vince Menzione 05:26
We’ve had Darren Maori here on the podcast colleague of yours and just amazing about business sales partner leader, right his pedigree and his experience now being at all three hyperscalers. And we talked about the SAS economy. We talked about ISPs in general and how we’re going from 185,000 SAS organizations to a million by the end of the decade. Talk to me more about how the field sellers work across you have solution lead partners, ISPs, MSP resellers and this engineering organization. How do you collaborate together to go after and work with a client,
Jim Anderson 06:03
we do that because we work from the customer back in, right, if you put the customer first and you look at the requirements of the customers, they need all aspects of what I just talked about, you actually went on to ISP for a particular solution, you look to Google for technology, and so as a platform provider, and then you look at a partner AI implementation partner to help bring all this together, and make sure that you get the business outcomes that you’re seeking for as a customer, our sales teams realize this. And because of that, they work very closely with their customers to try to once again I used to work harmonize all of this together, a lot of times people talk about, hey, we want one plus one, two equals three, I actually talked about in the partner world, and today’s partner will, we actually want one plus one to equal one for the customer. So they have a frictionless experience, and are able to get to their business outcomes faster, leveraging the many different technologies and partners out there, and the whole partner ecosystem,
Vince Menzione 06:57
one plus one equals one. And simplicity. It’s one organization coming together to solve for a set of challenges the solution area across the customer across a specific need. Exactly.
Jim Anderson 07:11
I know I’m a math minor, so don’t hold me to that one plus one equals one.
Vince Menzione 07:18
did Einstein work on that one? To go back? You went to a prestigious university. So I know you if you were a math minor, you got a pretty darn good degree there. So Google has been on a tear, right? Investing in partners to fuel the growth. I mentioned the conversation with Darren which has gotten a lot of attention lately. And your leader Thomas Kurian, has put a stake in the ground with the announcement that all deals have to be partner attached. Can you share with our listeners the importance of partners to the execution of Google’s mission? And how are you investing
Jim Anderson 07:51
as you can tell from our placement and the organization on their Kiersten our top sales leader, partners are crucial to our success, we realize we can get to where we need to get to from a growth perspective. Without partners in the partner ecosystem, we know that we have to have a thriving partner business to scale our business. And I know Darren talked about that. So they’re very much a part of the journey that we’re going on as we grow as an organization partner attached is for us a way to achieve the scale and depth. And we simply can’t go after opportunities alone in this complex cloud and digital transformational world. So we’re relying on our partners to not just help us grow the business, but also help us provide differentiation with our customers. To do that, really investing in several areas. First, we’ve expanded our sales and technical teams, those teams that reporting to me dedicated to supporting our partners and ISPs. We’ve actually increase MDF to drive further sales growth. I think marketing is increasingly important in this digital world. We have investments in CO innovation with our partners to really build this differentiated offerings. It’s not simply about growth for us, partners help us differentiate with our customers. And we’ve established our partner led delivery approach to services when we’ve been very public, we’re not going to invest in a big services organization, we’re going to rely on partners to do this. And I think this is a big benefit to partners. I know some surveys that say almost two thirds of the imita associated with cloud over the next several years come from services and services implementation. We’re working with our partners so they can take advantage of that. And last but not least, we’ve actually accelerated our goals with training a specialization because that’s very important with today’s customers with a goal to train over 40 million new people on Google Cloud over the next couple of years. So we’re really focused on trying to get it right, not just for us, or for our customers and their digital transformation journey.
Vince Menzione 09:45
I want to go back on what you said earlier about not building out your own services organization. You and I both come from strong partner backgrounds. And I discussed the importance of mindset to an organization and how having the right mindset partner mindset. I call DNA towards partnering. And it sounds to me like you again, this stake in the ground about partner attach addresses a lot of the mindset issues like what did you find after that statement came out, was made into the organization? Did it change your mindset? Did it pivot a mindset to do anything at all to the sales organization,
Jim Anderson 10:25
I think it sends a message from a top, which is important that partnering is non negotiable for us a global cloud, in my previous role is responsible for the South Central region. Now, in that role, we secure countless new customers and drove some transformational deals with our partners. Having seen this success and methodology of support growth, it was clear to me and it’s clear to a lot of my peers, that we can’t grow without a very strong partner ecosystem. And so we’d like to celebrate this success with our partners, we’d like to champion those that are getting it right, and really feature co selling stories in even some of our town halls. So I think the deal that’s really groundbreaking is that we never win alone, when it comes to transformational deals, understanding that mindset will allow our sales team to make sure that they involve partners moving forward, they see the support from up top. And they know it’s not always straightforward. But with a general focus, we can make it right and make sure that we get better outcomes for our customers, leveraging the partner ecosystem.
Vince Menzione 11:25
You mentioned partners, sellers, I think in your team, right? I believe that’s what you call them? Do you provide a division of resources, do certain people in roles have more of a development, business management for the partner, and others actually go and help the partner sell into the field? Yes,
Jim Anderson 11:44
we actually do both. So we call our partner development managers, they actually work with our partners on joint sales plans, go to market plans, making sure they get the technical capabilities they need and those types of things. And we also have specialists that actually work on sell with capabilities, especially with our ISPs to go out there and make sure that we can respond and create market demand with our customers to ensure their success. So we do all aspects of it as varies by the various route to market, how we support it. But that’s part of our goal, right? Understanding the partners, really how we can work with them to ensure their success, making sure that we agree on the right route the markets to leverage their capabilities, and then making sure that we provide the resources and investments so they can be successful along that path.
Vince Menzione 12:29
And you mentioned MDF, and I want to have your marketing leader Kayla on this podcast at some point in the future as we build out this master class and let partners better understand how to work with Google. That’d be great. What type of MDF resources to you Kaitlan the team have available for partners,
Jim Anderson 12:47
we might have a campaign around that particular solution. Today, we have campaigns around data and analytics, where we work with partners to do some joint campaigns, webinars, conferences, participate in forums around some of those areas. We also have various campaigns where we just started sharing some propensity data with customers will actually with target partners were target some customers around key solution areas that we have from Google, like GCP, where we want to leverage that. And we look at customers that might be able to take advantage that jointly with our partners and go after the market that way. So there’s a wide range of things that we do with regards to MDF. And really, it’s about investing in digital marketing, right of how we reach customers where they are, and making sure that they’re aware of our capabilities out there with our partners, jointly them to take advantage of that.
Vince Menzione 13:36
I want to dive a little bit deeper on capabilities. So organizations that come and listen to this podcast come from various backgrounds. A lot of them have come from the Microsoft world, but it has become a heterogeneous world. And they’ve all recognized now that they need to work across multiple hyperscalers. What are the reasons why customers and partners choose to work with Google?
Jim Anderson 14:00
Well, they often ask customers I talk to are you on a cloud journey or technology journey, because if you’re on a cloud journey, you want to take an open approach to your cloud technologies, and make sure you can leverage the best technologies against the best workloads for what you’re trying to drive for your business outcomes. And that’s very important. One of the reasons that customers come to us is simply because of our strengths. And things like data and analytics. I tell people search is about turning data into insights. There’s no company in my mind and a world that’s better at turning data and insights. It’s proven that I then Google. So we have a rich history with AI and ML capabilities to help turn data into insights at scale. If you think about what we do everything from Google Photos, where we can take a look at a picture and help give recommendations are where that is on the internet to get some more information. It’s all about AI, visual recognition and those types of things and leveraging those technologies. Google assists with regards to language translation, and you look Get what we do around security, right, we’re over 20% of all internet traffic is going over some Google Fiber they are. And so we have to provide a very secure environment, we have a zero trust environment for everything we do around security. And we bring that to our customers to make sure that their data is secure. So when you think about it, from a partner standpoint, Hey, you want to take your customer on a cloud journey, now their vendor journey or cloud journey. So therefore, you want to work with open technologies, you want to make sure you’re leveraging what’s really, to me one of the biggest assets that any company has today, that is data. So you work with a company like Google that has a history of turning data into insights. And obviously, you want to make sure it’s secure in today’s turbulent world. So you want to work with a partner that invests a lot of security. That’s what we bring to our customers. That’s what’s unique with regards to the Google experience. And what I tell a lot of people is Google, at the heart of it. We’re innovation company, we’re a technology company. And we leverage our partner ecosystems with some of the technologies I just mentioned, to really bring superior value to our customers, and drive business outcomes. And that’s how you differentiate in the market.
Vince Menzione 16:09
What’s striking to me what you said here around data and ml insights, security, it’s not the traditional lift and shift that we saw a few years ago, right? It’s a reimagining of the experience, whether the customer experience, the user experience and the engineering work, the what you bring in terms of engineering, prowess, I would say, is striking. And it helps organizations really reimagine their business processes.
Jim Anderson 16:37
And that’s exactly right, then a lot of companies now look at digital transformation in the cloud, not simply to lift and shift how they can transform their business, find new revenue streams, enter new markets. And that’s really what it’s all about using technology to make a difference in your business and to accelerate growth. So it’s a very exciting time for us here at Google, we want to make sure we take advantage of this transition with our customers.
Vince Menzione 17:02
I’m happy to announce that partner tap has become a founding sponsor of ultimate guide to partnering 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. I’m so excited to have them on board. But it is a very exciting time. And I’ve been watching Google’s rise through my own experiences, working with organizations and interviewing great partners. As you might know, one of your great partners SADA Systems, as Tony Savoy in their CEO has been a guest here multiple times, I believe he espouses a lot of what it takes to be a great partner. But what do you believe it takes to be a great partner working with Google,
Jim Anderson 17:54
there’s a lot of talk about mindsets out there thinking you mentioned the partner mindset, the growth mindset, what I like to say is, you have to have a value mindset with regards to working with Google, right? Because that’s what we want to bring to our customers. So if you take that value of mindset, right, what we did was work with partners that can build on that understand our culture, and want to lean in with us to help build and actually digital transform our customers and really help them on that journey. So a couple things you need, you need to have agility as a partner to work with Google and to work with customers, because things are always changing. I believe specialization is increasingly important now. So I work with our partners to develop specialization in various areas right now, because no one can be an expert in everything, right? But thing, and you have to have a commitment to accelerating the time the value of our customers, meaning if you put the customers first you work with how do we come together to accelerate their time to value? I think that’s how we ensure success. And that’s what it takes to be a great partner working with Google, right? When we’re working with partners, we’re really just focused on doing what’s right for the customer at the right time, and hopefully, we won’t go wrong with that.
Vince Menzione 19:05
I love what you have to say here. By the way, value mindset. Can I borrow this? I really like it. I’ve been talking about growth mindset for leaning mindset and value mindset is it just brings it’s striking to me right leaning in helping to build. You talked about agility, which is one of my core principles as well. We’ll talk a little bit more about agility because I think that organizations need to be able to pivot quickly. And you talked about commitment. A lot of organizations just don’t have that level of commitment within their own organization to partnering. Do you see that?
Jim Anderson 19:37
Yeah, I think that you have to look at partnering as integral to what you’re doing. It can’t be a separate thing. You have to partner for success. It should be part of your plan, not augmentation to your plan. And you have to figure out how you make partnering, really a competitive advantage for you. I believe tomorrow’s world and the winners of tomorrow’s world will be the people are able to make partnering and leveraging the ECOSYS Some competitive advantage for them moving forward. So it’s definitely about the commitment to make them happen. Listening to your customers listening to your partners, following the trends out there, meaning ie what are customers looking for, and then responding to that in a way that brings value to our customers and creates really joint success model for both the partner. And in this case, Google.
Vince Menzione 20:22
And you also mentioned specialization. And I can’t stress this one enough, because I find that a lot of organizations try to be all things to the partner. And they miss that level of specificity. Like we do this one thing better than anybody else. Do you find that as well?
Jim Anderson 20:38
Yeah. And I suppose it goes back to my theme about the value mindset, right, you got to understand what value you aim to bring to your customers. And I would say double down on that. And then bring that to the customers and make sure that you are aligned as an organization around those value principles so that you can be successful, we all try to just do too much versus focusing on Hey, this is my unique value proposition. Here’s how I should leverage it. And this is how I can be successful in the market.
Vince Menzione 21:07
And I find too, that the organizations that don’t get it, right, the kryptonite for them is when they try to be all things to all people. Yeah, you bring out
Jim Anderson 21:15
kryptonite. And so I’ll stay on the superhero theme there. And there was a concept that was talking about what our friend called so the hero’s journey, and like talks about, really the path, you go down from normal to a transformation, then you face challenges and back to transformation. But the key aspect of the hero journey is that you have a mentor or helper to make sure you go down that path. In many ways. What you have to do is view the customer as the hero and US ie partners, Google’s really as their mentor to help them on that journey. And I think the kryptonite happens when you lose that perspective. And maybe you partner or you Google Bigley, the think that you’re the hero, not the customer, right. So I think a lot of it is about making sure you keep the right perspective, understanding that we are here to help someone who’s going from where they are today, through a journey that’s going to involve challenges. It’s going to involve transformation, when you’re working through that journey. So just remember that we’re here to help the customers on that, as they go through this transformation from starting where they are today. Through the challenges, there’ll be some low points, but then coming out at the end better in that we play a critical role in making that happen. That avoids the kryptonite scenario with any partner.
Vince Menzione 22:32
I love what you have to say here, because I do find that organizations there’s there’s when hubris enters the room, it’s challenging for both the customer and the partnership. And I think what you said there is the customer is the North Star. And we need to keep that in mind. And we need to go through the journey together and recognize that we’re here to help each other, did I exactly I like to
Jim Anderson 22:53
say the customer is the hero. And I borrowed there from Joseph Campbell, that hero’s journey, you got to keep that in mind. And let’s make sure that we make our customers hero as we help them on this digital transformation.
Vince Menzione 23:04
So what advice would you give to our listeners on optimizing for success? Working with Google,
Jim Anderson 23:10
the key thing that I would say, is really focusing on the customer? And how do we come together? Take the principles I talked about one plus one equals one, right? How do we focus in on the value we want to bring to the customer, and really accelerate the time the value of the customer moving forward? Meaning how do we come together as a joint success model, realizing that neither of us can do it alone. In today’s complex world, we got to bring this ecosystem together and go from there. What I like to do is work with partners that have focused in on expanding customer reach, they want to invest in building capacity and the specialization that we talked about, and they’re committed to co innovating with us in the market. One of the things that I believe is still a big opportunity, especially in the partner ecosystem, is innovation. There’s a lot of innovation events that can happen with regards to how the partner, and how to bring value to the customers through our partner ecosystem. And we’re looking for partners that want to go with us on that journey, and CO create and innovate with us as we go down this journey together.
Vince Menzione 24:14
And if partners want to reach out to you, Jim, what’s the best way for them to do so?
Jim Anderson 24:18
The best way is probably the email me at JF anderson@google.com.
Vince Menzione 24:23
So I want to shift gears here. Now we want to continue this conversation. As you might know, I’m fascinated with the career journey. And I’ve also been a big advocate for Dei. And you might not know this, but I was Microsoft’s first diversity lead for public sector. It’s a historically white male dominated tech industry and I have been I tried to stay vigilant in terms of the subject matter here. I’d love for you to touch with our listeners on your career journey as a black male rising to a significant leadership role, a really big role in an incredible In successful tech sector and company, what was your experience like?
Jim Anderson 25:05
Well, that’s my experience is one of I like to say, you have to have a lot of resilience. I started very early in technology, because I believed from the very beginning that technology could make a big difference in our society. So in high school, I got involved with computers. And I’ve really been in the tech world ever since. I remember going to Princeton, where I went to undergraduate school when I was computer science major. And I was only one of three black computer science majors at the time. So my class, and then I follow that up where I went to high tech firm, eventually Hewlett Packard, and 20 years ago, the black plus population for Silicon Valley firms is around 2%. Today, it’s around 3%. So I say that to say isn’t a long and somewhat learnt lonely journey with challenges, but you just have to be resilient. And I live in a world where I am one of one often, then I have to make sure that I know how to deal with that. And I learned from that, and I take on that challenge. And I go from there. I’m very fortunate with my accomplishments, the world I live in, I’ve had a lot of people to help sponsor me, mentor me, and share my success. And I’m very grateful for that. I’ve also learned from many great leaders that I’ve had the chance to work under. But as long as I focused in on success in making a difference with di initiatives where I can, because that’s what’s really important when you get in these positions, how do you make a difference? That’s the journey. So I would tell everyone, hey, it’s not a smooth ride. It’s a lonely journey. Often, however, with resilience, you can make a difference out there. And that’s what you tried to do with any role or position you’re in in society make a difference?
Vince Menzione 26:50
So you went, we’ve gone from 2% to 3%, in terms of representation in Silicon Valley’s way, I think I heard you say, Yeah, and I know, I know, certainly, because I’ve done a lot of work with women in technology that most girls don’t enter the technology arena, for various reasons. Do you feel that there’s any reasons why black males don’t enter the tech,
Jim Anderson 27:13
I look at it. And I think that in general, people pursue opportunities based on what they see in the industry, and hopes they have for success, I was a chairman and make a wish for Central Texas, for a while one of the things I saw was the power of hope. And so what I think is that because there not a lot of examples of success in the high tech world, for the black male, it’s just something they don’t aspire to. So one of the things that I do, when I play my role, I try to make very visible my success and say, look, I can do this, you can too. And that’s an example that can encourage other people to get into the environment. So it’s just not about, hey, taking a look at the environment and programs is about true examples of success. And actually, another aspect is, once you get into the field, you have to create a sense of belonging. When I talk about being one on one, that’s somewhat a lonely feeling, you kind of feel like you don’t belong. So as we encouraged minorities, to get into the high tech field, we also have to put equal emphasis once they get there, creating a sense of belonging, so they stay. So there’s really two things I look at, hey, given examples of success, I think that we’re encouraged people to pursue those careers. And I look to do that myself. And second, as they pursue those careers, tried to work extra hard to create a sense of belonging when it’s a minority or a woman. So they will want to stay in that career and read some of the higher levels that can be achieved
Vince Menzione 28:35
some profound statements there. So what would you tell your 23 year old self, Jim,
Jim Anderson 28:41
I would tell my 23 year old self that success is based on failure. And that many times I think we avoid taking risks, because we’re worried about the failure and those types of things. But true success. The road to it involves failure. So take more risk. Don’t be afraid of failure, and think big.
Vince Menzione 29:02
So this is a question I love to ask. It’s actually my favorite question for our guests. You are hosting a dinner party and this fabulous dinner party could be anywhere in the world. And you can invite any three guests from the present, or the past to this amazing party. Whom would you invite, and why?
Jim Anderson 29:22
Alright, so three people I would invite. So besides my parents, so both have passed, I have one more dinner, I would invite first Martin Luther King, Jr. and I would invite him because of his ability to drive social change through nonviolent advocacy. I think that’s fascinating how he did that. Yes. Next, I would invite Muhammad i Lee because of always fascinated by the mind of a champion, then you know what he did and how we stood for what he believed in. And last, I wouldn’t invite Nelson Mandela because I also was fascinated by his resilience of what he went through in being in prison. And then coming out and leaving a country and this the resilience it takes to manage all that I’d be very interested in understanding that so that was interesting dinner to say the least that I would have
Vince Menzione 30:11
i Is it okay if I come over with a bottle of wine or something?
Jim Anderson 30:17
I think all of them like to talk. So
Vince Menzione 30:21
first of all, I’ll comment on Martin Luther King right. There were other leaders during the movement. But he had a why he had a very strong why. And his I Have a Dream speeches to me like it still brings tears to my eyes. Muhammad Ali, wow, wow, what an amazing. He was a leader in his own right, and what he did and what he champion. And then of course, Nelson Mandela, who was 26 or 27 years in prison, and to come out and forgive all those people was just, it’s astounding. So
Jim Anderson 30:51
they asked, Could we do that yourself? Right? 20 something years and come out. That’s all good. Let’s move forward.
Vince Menzione 31:00
What a great list. What a great list, Jim. All right. Sounds terrific to meet you. You have been an amazing guest. And I just so appreciative of you making the time you’ve got a big role. And you’ve got a big job over at Google. And I just look forward to continuing this masterclass with you and your leaders at Google. Any closing advice for our listeners in this community about driving their best results with you and your organization?
Jim Anderson 31:26
First, thank you for having me today, events. I’ve enjoyed listening to your podcasts and getting the chance to participate. One is quite an honor for me. So thank you for that. And what I would say to partners in general is, hey, don’t sit on the sidelines, it’s a time of amazing change and transformation. It’s a time to actually innovate, not just with technology, but in the whole partner ecosystem and how we come together, I believe partnering three years from now will be a lot different than it is today we talk about things like going from just a channel organization to a partner ecosystem organization to whatever is in the future where those partner ecosystems coming together. And there’s a huge opportunity for people to innovate around that. And to join companies like Google on that journey. What we’re asking for, quite honestly, for our partners is, hey, we’d like you to double down with us scale up your organization, from a technical perspective, build capacity to help customers on digital transformation. At the same time, keep the customers front and center and everything we do. I think every customer’s journey is somewhat unique. And we have to be able to adapt to those different journeys out there and make sure we can bring value. And last but not least, work with us to build differentiated offerings lean into solution selling as we sell more on business outcomes versus sick technology. And we lean into ourselves industry specific solutions. So we’re bringing maximum value to our customers. We want our partners to participate in that. So if we do these things together, doubling down with us skilling up the organization, keeping the customer front and center, adapting to their various journeys, and CO innovating. So we’re bringing differentiated solutions. I think we can have a joint success model between us and our partners that really bring value not just to us, but to our customers moving forward.
Vince Menzione 33:13
What strikes me and what you said, Jim, is we live in such transformative times. And what a better partner than Google to help our customers transform. I agree. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Jim, been a real pleasure having you as a guest here and ultimate guide to partnering.
Jim Anderson 33:30
Thank you keep up the good work and the thought leadership with regards to partnering in the ecosystem.