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Welcome to the 79th episode of the Ultimate Guide to Partnering™.
If you’re in the world of tech and partners, my guest for this episode needs no introduction. I’m excited to welcome back to the podcast Gavriella Schuster, Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President for the Worldwide One Commercial Partner Organization, and it’s Channel Chief.
Gavriella Schuster is a C-level Microsoft leader passionate about recruiting more women and minorities into the technology sector.
At Microsoft, she has grown a P&L greater than $6.5B and currently leads their global portfolio of channel partners that reached $1 trillion in ecosystem revenues.
She leads the global recruitment, enablement, and engagement of Microsoft’s fast-growing partner ecosystem. Additional areas of her specialization include licensing models, digital marketing, and global routes to market.
Gavriella specializes in starting up and turning around businesses by inspiring a vision for future customer relevance and engaging the team in developing the roadmap.
For Gavriella’s second appearance on Ultimate Guide to Partnering, we covered quite a bit of ground, including:
- How our lives and work have changed since the pandemic.
- The transformational opportunities, and how she’s advising partners to lead through this change.
- Her advocacy for gender equity, including her recent TED Talk.
- How she is also steering Microsoft’s efforts to solve the gap in Black and African American owned technology businesses.
- The capstone honor she recently received, the prestigious Athena Global Leadership Award.
I am a huge fan of Gavriella’s work, and I had the chance to work with her at Microsoft when she was a GM focused on the Server and Tools business. In my opinion, she is one of the most authentic, empathetic, and passionate business leaders I know.
As leaders in the technology sector, I’ve often said that we have both an opportunity and perhaps an obligation to lead during this time. Gavriella embodies that leadership.
HOW THE PANDEMIC HAS IMPACTED HER BUSINESS
- Personal Level – It’s a significant disruption. You need to have empathy and be mindful as it impacts people in different ways, whether alone, living with small children, balancing work, or a large family.
- The Business of Managing Partners – How do we continue the business and stay connected to partners? The pandemic is requiring people to check in a lot more than before using Microsoft Teams. It requires more connection with different people in these organizations to ensure a full view of the business.
- For Her Teams – leaders need to be more planful, ensuring they touch base and check-in with everyone on the team. It requires mindfulness and a deliberate communication plan to ensure the readiness is conveyed in multiple modalities for maximum alignment on business priorities. We all need to be more inclusive and respectful of boundaries.
- How Partners Can Align and Embrace the Change – Businesses that learn to pivot and embrace the opportunity have the best chance for growth and survival.
- Advances in Partner Center – There is now one place where partners can engage and continually grow a sustainable business with Microsoft.
CAREER BASED ON ADVOCACY AND SOLVING FOR EQUITY GAPS
- Advice She Gives Others – do the things you believe need to be done, help grow, and impact others. What is stopping you? You need to be creative, committed; what does success look like for you?
- Driving for Gender Equity – Only 27% of IT comprises Women In Technology, which is down from 36% in 1991. We need to create greater awareness of the variety of roles open to Women in Technology and create greater access.
- Making the Invisible, Visible – Men in the room need to be allies and proactively ask women, “what do you think, what is your opinion?” making space for their input. These Male Allies need to ensure they are mentoring and intentionally hiring people that are not like them.
- Microsoft’s Approach to Solve for the Black Owned Partner Gap – Satya and Microsoft announced a commitment to increase African American and Black-Owned partners by 20% over the next three years. Microsoft’s efforts will include outreach through the IAMCP and several other organizations.
- Advice for Microsoft Partners on D&I – Think about how you intentionally create connection and access for women and people of color. Are you hiring, promoting, and what is the composition of your board of directors? How does your work support and build stronger communities?
HOW SHE GOT TO THIS SPOT IN HER CAREER
Here are some key takeaways:
- The impact on her father’s job loss after 27 years, and how it informed her career choice as a generalist versus a specialist.
- A self – described “experience collector,” – this propelled her to explore, then go into new business areas, collecting new experiences over six disciplines at Microsoft.
- Advice for those she mentors – “Don’t put up artificial barriers, push yourself to do things that you feel uncomfortable doing. “
I hope you listen to this interview. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I enjoyed spending time with Gavriella Schuster.
LINKS & RESOURCES
- Connect with Gavriella Schuster Linked In, Twitter,
- Melinda Gate’s Book – The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World.
- Athena Leadership Award
- Satya’s Commitment
- Microsoft Partner Network
- Becoming a Microsoft Partner.
- Ted Talk
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Ultimate Guide to Partnering™ is a rich compendium of what makes successful partnerships.
This episode of the podcast is sponsored by Ultimate Partnerships. Ultimate Partnerships helps you get the most results from your partnerships. Get Partnerships Right – Optimize for Success – Deliver Results – Ultimate Partnerships.
Transcription By Oteer.AI – Please Pardon Typos.
Vince Menzione 0:30
Gavriella, welcome back to the podcast.
Gavriella Schuster 2:27
Well, thank you for having me, Vince,
Vince Menzione 2:29
it is such a treat to have you back as a guest on Ultimate Guide to partnering you are an early guest, Episode 43. And we had the chance to work together years ago at Microsoft and also on the other side when I was with a partner. So really great to have you back today to talk to our listeners, a lot of great partners out there who listened to this podcast, about your journey and your business. So thank you,
Gavriella Schuster 2:52
well, it’s always a pleasure, always a pleasure to connect and, you know, share whatever, whenever I can, with our with our partners out in the ecosystem,
Vince Menzione 2:59
you’ve done such a great job of connecting this year, we talked about this time like no other. And as you might recall, we had a meeting planned in building 121, just as the world was shutting down in early March. And I believe a lot of partners, a lot of people in general are struggling with the uncertainty and change that we’ve all faced these last eight months. I encourage people to dance with it. What can you say about the events of the last eight months? And how is your organization learning to pivot? What advice would you give partners struggling with this transformation?
Gavriella Schuster 3:32
Well, you know, I think there’s really three parts to this. There’s the the internal work that we do with our teams. There’s the business that we do, and in our case, the business we do with our partners. And really the third part is the personal impact that this has. And so I’m going to really start with the personal impact, because it’s important to understand that I think, for context for everyone, as you go through this, it’s really important to have empathy for your teams for your people as you go through this time, because it’s hard, and it hits different people in different ways, whether they live alone, whether they have small children, whether they you know, live with a very big family and somehow they still have to do work, you know, it really hits everybody in in very different ways. And knowing that it’s a big disruption, that not only that it’s very anxiety producing, and we you know, it’s a it’s a level of uncertainty. You know, many people are getting kind of anxious and frustrated having to curb their lives pretty much for so yeah. And so there’s also just like level of kind of burnout. You know, initially I think people were up for the challenge, right? They were gonna sprint through it, but realizing that this is really going to go on for a lot longer even from now, it you know, people have to pace themselves and figure things out. And so the very first thing as we’ve been going through this Just be really mindful of the impact that it has on people individually and helping them to set boundaries create the flexibility that they need, take the timeout, and not just work, like through every hour of the day is really important. I think the second thing then is to say, Okay, well, how do we continue the business that we do? So, for us, you know, that business is with partners. So how do we stay connected to the partners, we would typically do a lot of traveling. And so we rely a lot on Microsoft Teams, we’re pretty much on calls and Microsoft Teams like all day, and what it means is, you know, when we’re working with a partner, generally, if we go to visit with them, you know, we’re we’re going to, we’re going to walk around, and we’re going to visit with different people within the organization within the partner organization, we’re going to understand and see the business that they’re doing. And so it requires us to check in a lot more than we would have before and check in with different people within the organizations to see what’s going on. And then internally, you know, it’s it’s very similar, we rely a lot on that water cooler talk, you know, passing by somebody’s desk and remembering to ask them a question. And instead, you have to actually plan you have to be more planful, you have to think about the air, you know, have I chat touched base with everyone in the team? Am I putting enough office hours out there? Am I setting up time for kind of just general unplugged Qa? Are we making sure that we are communicating our plans, our strategy, our execution, our results multiple times, because in, you know, typically, you would rely on Okay, we’re going to communicate it auditory, you know, in an auditory way, we’re going to communicate it in email, we’re going to communicate it in a meeting, you know, you’d have these moldable ways of really communicating what you want, and knowing that it landed with somebody, and you can’t rely on the fact that maybe they’ve just read their email. And so you have to think through like, what are that now going to be my multiple media ways of landing, you know, and checking in and making sure people understand and doing the readiness that’s required for the for the things in the business that we have to keep going? I think we’re about to start down a path with our, you know, with our fiscal year planning, and generally, that is a time where we get everyone into the room and we we brainstorm like, what are the key opportunities in the market? And what do we see? And what’s working and what’s not? And where do we need to invest? And we’ve got to be really creative about how we do that, so that we are inclusive, and getting everybody’s ideas on the table, and then, you know, going through that priority process, so that we can get to what our plans are. So it’s definitely challenging. You know, it does require the managers of every team to be checking in with their teams and their workday schedules and, you know, really being very clear about, you know, what are the boundary conditions that each person has? And how do we make sure we respect that. And then, and then also supporting each individual as they go about doing their business and connecting with partners and, and making sure that we’re supporting them there, too.
Vince Menzione 8:28
I think I heard empathy, mindfulness around around others and your own mindfulness, right. One of the things I find is just this whole fatigue that sets in after maybe the 10th hour, the day that you’re on a team school versus when we were in a building, you know, you go, like you said, watercooler talk, right, you go in between meetings, you observe, have conversation, hallway conversation, we don’t get a chance to do that. And I think what I’ve heard you say is that the leaders of the organization also need me to be mindful of people’s boundaries, and ensuring that they’re giving them enough room and enough space, to rest be restful, to be mindful to continue to be productive and creative, I guess, is what I would say.
Gavriella Schuster 9:06
Yeah, to refresh, right, because you’ve rushed, yes, rushed and energized every day and trying to figure out how to do that. And there’s, you know, a lot of people they were relying on going to the gym as a way that they would, you know, keep themselves energized. Now, they can’t do that they have to find other ways. I mean, it’s all challenging for everyone.
Vince Menzione 9:26
is, it’s a crazy time. What do you say to your partners? Specifically, do you coach them up as well? On this change and dealing with it?
Gavriella Schuster 9:33
Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, you know, I, we spent a lot of time also talking about, you know, what are best practices, I share what we’re doing. I learned from our partners, what they’re doing, you know, and then we’ve done a lot more these virtual sessions, office hours with our partners, you know, we just finished the partner advisory councils. And, you know, again, we had to do those remotely, so we really have to set up more time for network I think one of the challenges in this time is finding enough time in the day. Because what you could have handled maybe as a two minute flyby or a five minute flyby turns into a 15 or 30 minute conversation just because it because you’re coming out of the cold to somebody when you call them. And so it just takes more time.
Vince Menzione 10:20
Yeah, there’s the warm up right to the conversation. And then there’s the conversation.
Gavriella Schuster 10:25
Yeah, yep.
Vince Menzione 10:26
So you have been super busy. As Microsoft’s corporate Vice President for the worldwide one commercial partner organization. You’ve also been a board member, China’s soft the Bothell School of Business at the University of Washington. And now recently, you won a prestigious award, the Athena Global Leadership Award, which by the way is a big deal, right? You’re the first woman in it to win this coveted recognition. previous winners included Condoleezza Rice, deceased former Supreme Court Justice, the Honorable Ruth Bader Ginsburg, it’s a pretty big deal. Would you say, a crowning achievement in a career built on service? What would you say to our listeners about this honor? And what advice would you give others that wish to follow in your footsteps? Well, I
Gavriella Schuster 11:10
mean, as you said, Vince, it was an incredible honor. And it was, it was a surprise to me, it was probably one of the most impactful moments of my life, receiving that award was very overwhelming, definitely not something I ever thought that would happen to me. I so I was I was incredibly honored. And and very humbled, I guess, if I, if I was going to give advice on this to someone else, though, I would say, you know, it’s, it’s not necessarily about the recognition, it is about doing things that you believe are the right things to do, making a difference and having impact every single day, helping others to grow and empowering others. And, you know, for me, in this particular instance, it was about the work that I’ve done to drive for gender equity in in the tech industry, the work that I did to create the women and Technology Network and the women in cloud and, and really try and drive access for women and the connection between women who are in technology, who often feel like they are alone, and give them allies, so they don’t feel alone in the organizations in which they work. For others, I just say, Well, you know, what’s stopping you if you have a passion, if you have a goal, if you’d like to make a difference, just what’s stopping you. Because, you know, there may be, there may be things, barriers in front of you, but there’s always a path to achieve what you’re trying to achieve. And you just have to get creative, and you have to be committed, and just drive through to the road ahead. You know, I I do always tell people I mentor, I’m like, you have to know where you’re trying to go. If you don’t know what the destination looks like, you will clearly never get there because you don’t know where you’re going. So you do have to know what the destination looks like, what would success look like for you? For me success, we are far from success. Success to me looks like we have 8 million women in technology, because that’s what it would take for us to get to gender equity in that. So that’s what success looks like. And we are far from it. So I’m not done. But But I am very intentional about trying to move in that direction.
Vince Menzione 13:25
So 8 million, how many do we have today?
Gavriella Schuster 13:27
We have about four.
Vince Menzione 13:28
Okay, we’re halfway there. There’s a lot of work to be done.
Gavriella Schuster 13:31
The industry today has about 16 million people in it. That’s just in the high tech industry itself, not like tech in other industries. And the curious and not good part is that when I started in the industry in 1991 39%, of the computing workforce was women. And in 2019, that number was 27%. So we’re not going in the right direction. We’re actually no wrong direction. And so we need to, we need to get to 50%.
Vince Menzione 14:04
So this is a topic that’s also near and dear to me as well, as you might know, I’ve interviewed a lot of leaders, women leaders in technology on this podcast is a way to spotlight the great work that they do. Why have we gone in the wrong direction?
Gavriella Schuster 14:17
Well, I think that there’s there’s probably a number of reasons. You know, I if I were This is just my opinion about why potentially but I think one it’s there’s still a lot of bias in the education system that makes it harder for young girls, women to achieve. You know, I know my own daughter was in the stem. She was in a STEM program in high school. And when she went to college, she decided not to pursue that because she was like, I do not want to be the only girl in the room with all the voice right I mean, so like it just just that alone. And you know, like that just kind of beat makes it a foretold thing that then when you go into the world First, it’s going to be the same. And, you know, so I think that’s challenging. I think that there’s not a lot of awareness of the multiple roles that are available in the tech industry. You know, there’s thousands of different jobs people can do. But that’s not really what they teach you, when you are considering your career, they don’t really highlight the different program managers and product managers and product planners, all you learn is about coding, which I think is, you know, just a small fraction of the jobs in tech. So I think a lot of people get discouraged off the bat and don’t really know what’s available.
Vince Menzione 15:38
So let’s stay on this topic of gender equity. I know that you recently made a trip to Denver to speak at a TED talk event. And I actually got to see your Facebook posts of the masks and the visor and all the protection right to make that that journey. It feels so foreign right now to get on a plane to me personally, but we’ll talk about that. But let’s talk about because I understand this was part of your topic, your TED Talk topic. So can you share more about that topic? And that event with us? Yeah, absolutely.
Gavriella Schuster 16:05
So yeah, it was it was very, the scariest part about it was getting on the plane and, and leaving my house, I haven’t really left the last eight months.
Vince Menzione 16:17
None of us have.
Gavriella Schuster 16:19
But I have, you know, I did, I did everything possible to safeguard myself. And then I took a test as soon as I came back, just to make sure I wasn’t gonna infect my family,
Vince Menzione 16:29
or move.
Gavriella Schuster 16:31
So I’m all good now. But ya know, so the TED Talk itself was, for me, it was about this topic of driving for gender equity, and sharing my own experiences, my own lived experiences, of what it is like to be the only woman in the room. And, you know, my experiences of the last 30 years, and how, in many circumstances, you know, when, when you’re when I’m not heard, it makes me feel invisible. And so you know, what, what I try to communicate in the talk was how do you create an environment where you help people not feel invisible, where you help them feel included, where you hear what they have to say, you see them, and you help them find their voice, and you make the invisible visible. And I think that that is a big part of helping us close the gender equity gap is for for the men in the room to really be allies, and to, you know, step into that by, you know, asking, you know, proactively asking the women who may be in that room who may feel completely outnumbered or invisible. What do you think, what’s your opinion and making space for their voice to be heard, and then also making taking intentional action. So you know, all of this is about being intentional, and we’re never going to close this gender equity gap, we’re never gonna, you know, meet the needs of this crisis, until we do the right thing in terms of giving women access, bringing them intentionally bringing them into our network, connecting with them, driving through, you know, in the hiring process, making sure that we are actually creating diverse candidate pools of qualified talent intentionally and waiting to fill those gaps in your hiring, until you have a diverse candidate pool to choose from. Because there’s a lot of research that shows unless you have at least two members of any minority in that candidate pool, you will not overcome the bias that you may have.
Vince Menzione 18:48
And what about your interviewers, the people that are on your interview loop or participating in the loop
Gavriella Schuster 18:53
interview panel also has to be diverse, because you candidates have to see that there are people like them in the organization today. And so you know, you have to have both of those, you have to think about your supplier selection process. similar kind of bias exists there. You know, people really need to step up into mentorship roles, you know, intentionally helping women moving beyond kind of their own maybe network of friends that they may mentor people who feel more comfortable asking someone to be a mentor, because it looks they look like them. And think about damn i mentoring diverse candidates. Am I mentoring people who don’t look like me? Yeah. And then empowering people by creating that inclusive environment and, and bringing them intentionally bringing them into the dialogue. You know,
Vince Menzione 19:42
this conversation reminds me of a conversation I had back this summer with Lani Philips. And it seems like a framework that can be used for more than just the gender divide could be used. You know, we talked about racial and ethnic inequality. We talked about social injustice, and we had an authentic conversation. On several topics relative to this, and I also know that you’ve been involved as well, and the lack of representation of black and African American own partners in the Microsoft ecosystem. Can you talk to our listeners about Microsoft’s approach to black and African owned partners?
Gavriella Schuster 20:15
Absolutely, yeah. And you’re right, the the approach is really the same. The work that I’ve done for the Women in Technology Network and the women and cloud is the same one we’re, we’re using to approach this, the same dimension, this new dimension of diversity is, you know, how do we create a community of black tech owners of black founders? How do we enable and support those individuals in their organizations to build businesses, and you know, so in June, Microsoft announced its commitment to increase African American and black owned partners in the US partner community by 20%, in the next three years, and what we’re working on is first building the community. So we’re doing outreach to a number of organizations, we’re outreaching, we’re doing outreach through the International Association of Microsoft channel partners. And, and a black owned community program that they’ve initiated, we’re reaching out to black women talk tech and black men talk tech, and a number of other organizations that already exists to, you know, make them aware of our intention to invest and support them in building their business and, and the kinds of things they can expect from us from a training and technical support perspective, from giving them access to capital and access to the network and really bringing them into into our marketplace so that they can have a long term thriving business with with us.
Vince Menzione 21:53
And I recall from the conversation with Lani, the numbers are, the inequality here is striking, right? There are so few black and African American owned businesses in the ecosystem today. So it looks like you’re doing a lot of recruiting sort of helping bootstrap some of these organizations as well as that one, you would say?
Gavriella Schuster 22:10
Yeah, I mean, it’s similar to the work that we’ve done both with the other two women on organizations that I did, right, they didn’t really exist, what we did is we pulled together a handful of super passionate people who were willing to be the community leaders, and, and said, We want to build a community around you, we want you to be the center, we want to, because we want to do this with you, as a community, we know every community needs something different. We want to make sure we understand what it is you need, and then build that around you. And so that is what we’re doing. You know, these these organizations I talked to you about, they’re small, they really largely if not coalesce, as a community, they do largely more events, right events in connection, what we’re going to do is help them actually become full fledge community support networks, where then we can funnel a lot of the resources through them. And we can get that feedback, just like the partner advisory councils on what’s working and what’s not what else they need.
Vince Menzione 23:13
So you might know that I had our mutual friend Dux, Raymond sy on the podcast just a couple weeks ago. I love ducks. He’s just amazing. But yeah, and we were talking about a host of conversations on several topics, including branding, but we got around to the conversation about diversity and inclusion in his workforce. And you speak to two partners quite a bit about what you’ve been talking about diversity and inclusion, the work that Microsoft is doing, how would you coach up our partners in this area, ducks had some great advice that he shared about what his organization is doing, and how they’re embracing DNI across their business, what do you coach our partners? How would you coach our partners in this area?
Gavriella Schuster 23:52
Well, so there’s a number of things the way that I would coach our partners. One is to first think about that framework I was talking about before, think about how do you how do they more intentionally create connection, networking and access for women and people of color within their organization and within their network? How do they then bring more diversity into their organizations in the way that we were talking about with hiring and supply chain? And then, you know, are they sponsoring women? and people of color? Are they promoting them? What does their board of directors look like? So it starts with them first, right? In thinking about that, then, you know, what we’re doing is we’re rolling out this initiative called channel inclusion, which is really aimed at helping our partners develop solutions and services to support an inclusive economy and really build for impact. And that’s thinking that’s then helps them think about what kinds of products and services are you building are the products you’re building accessible, and we have accessibility guidelines for them. Are you thinking about the customer customers, you serve in ways that your products and services really drive for that inclusiveness and remove any bias that may exist, particularly as you build out things around machine learning or artificial intelligence, you know, and then thinking about this concept of an inclusive economy is really a shared framework where inclusive growth strategies lead to shared prosperity. So it’s thinking about community, how do you think about community? And how do you think about the barriers that are keeping people from becoming stronger communities? And how does your work support that, and engage that and and build for stronger communities because that that level of it of inclusion, cool drives this idea of this inclusive economy, and then creates shared prosperity? So it moves away from the concept of, you know, every man for himself? And you think about like, how am I contributing to a system, and then what are the products and the services that I’m delivering that contribute to that system. And so it leads very naturally into a lot of the work that we do around peer to peer networking, and peer to peer partnerships, you know, where a partner themselves may be very, very good at one part of the technology or one part of the customers lifecycle, and they want to build an ecosystem around themselves, a community where they can deliver that end and value to the customer. And so it all comes back around that this, this is really what we mean by a channel inclusion and an inclusive economy.
Vince Menzione 26:39
Yeah, it also reminds me about partner to partner, right, because the customer buys a whole solution, not just a partner’s solution area, and this partner to partner play helps to build or helps to accelerate what you deliver to the market and to the customer.
Gavriella Schuster 26:55
Yep, absolutely.
Vince Menzione 26:56
So it seems like it’s been 100 years now. But you hosted the first virtual inspire back in July, talked about your priorities for the business. we’re rounding the corner on a new year. How do you think we’re doing so far? How are our partners doing? What How would you coach them up on the priorities and staying aligned with Microsoft going into the new calendar year?
Gavriella Schuster 27:18
Yeah, no, it’s a great question. You know, I would say that, you know, things have continued down the path that we, that we started last, you know, February, when the whole when the pandemic started, really, the pandemic changed everything, it accelerated the customer’s drive towards digital, it accelerated the flexibility required in the workforce today, the way customers interact with business and organizations operate has really been changed forever as a result of having to work through the pandemic. And what we’ve seen is that years of digital transformation have taken place in a matter of months. And the customers need the solutions and the services that our partners are delivering now, more than ever, you know, and that’s what we’ve continued to see. So, you know, from a business executive standpoint, 97% of them have sped up their digital transformation 79% have increased their budgets for digital transformation initiatives, and 74% of business leaders intend to permanently shift to a more remote work for their employees. And so, you know, that really changes the the nature of the business and creates a tremendous amount of opportunity for our partners, right? remote work solutions are a huge opportunity, solutions and services around business continuity, around security, around cloud migrations, all things that customers know they need, where they’re putting more of their dollars right now. And, and will lead to long term value for the customer and long term profitability for our partners as they continue to actually deliver managed services in the cloud, to those customers that they help make that move. So you know, that’s, that’s a lot of the opportunity we’ve seen, we’ve seen a lot of our partners already taking advantage of that and supporting our customers. tremendous growth, and really dramatic change on the part of our customers as they work through this crisis. What we’ve learned, I think, is that no business is immune to what is happening right now. Even organizations that thought they were already digitized or thought they were already flexible and had a lot of work from home, realize there was still more work to be done. But those that already had started on that digital transformation have shown more resilience they have been able to more rapidly pivot and respond and you know, enter more of a recovery state.
Vince Menzione 29:51
You know, you mentioned a few things here reminded me of Satya his comment two months in line with your two years of transformation in two months. I guess we’ve seen Here’s a transformation in eight months. And it seems like there’s a huge opportunity for partners. And you mentioned that other partners, maybe there’s some that haven’t pivoted yet is what I thought I heard you say? Or maybe I inferred from the conversation. Is there anything else specifically, you would say to them to get them on the right track?
Gavriella Schuster 30:15
I, you know, I think what I would say is now is the time right now is the time to make that shift in your business, you’re, it’s a tough time is a tough time anyway. But the faster you do that, the faster you’ll be able to take advantage of this unique period in time with your customers, and really help them to drive a level of loyalty and engagement that your customers need, and are looking for from from you. And then, you know, you’re it’s always hard to shift business models, but in time of transition in a time of crisis like this. It is a good time, especially if you’re a public company, because I think that, you know, investors aren’t expecting high, you know, they don’t they don’t have high hopes for what you might be doing right now. Right. And so if there was ever a time to make a shift where you know, things might be at a low for a bit, now would be the time. Yeah, I
Vince Menzione 31:14
would agree with you. I think this, I’ve been saying that we are on the precipice of a Renaissance, I really believe that in my heart, I do think that we’re going through a dark period, we’re going to come at a bit bigger and stronger. as a as a technology industry. I also believe that we in the technology sector have an opportunity to lead you are in fact a leader here. I commend you for that. I want to peel back a little bit about your organization and the work they do and maybe the some of the technology behind it, because Microsoft has probably the strongest and largest partner ecosystem in the industry. You’ve been investing your team’s been investing in building out platforms and tools to help partners better collaborate with your organization. Can you talk to our listeners about the work the team has been doing?
Gavriella Schuster 32:00
Yeah, sure. I mean, you know, when I first started in the in the partner team several years ago, what I realized is that we had a fairly antiquated platform. And we we had just kind of built, we had purpose built systems. And the challenge with purpose built systems is that it’s complicated. And it required our partners to have like 710, sometimes 12 different places that they would go, and very frequently repeat the information they provided to us. And so we needed to harmonize and consolidate. And so we we made investments in what we call partner center, and partner Center is a platform, which is the one stop shop for our partners to manage their entire relationship with Microsoft. So if they are doing business as a cloud solution provider, they can do all of their transactions, access the marketplace, upload applications or services into the marketplace, manage and follow what they’re doing. There’s dashboards, you know, they can manage their membership in the Microsoft Partner Network, they can manage their membership benefits, they can go there for training and certification, they can get all their their referrals, or lead share with our Microsoft sellers, or even with each other, they can see they can get their incentives, they can manage those incentives and see the dashboards, and it really gives them this one stop place for everything they need to do with Microsoft. And that’s what we’ve been working on. Of course, it’s been a transition, right, because there’s been systems that have been in place for say, maybe 15 or 20 years that they were using before. And so there’s a bit of a relearning to go to this one place. And then as we transition different partners in, you know, we’ve had stages where partners had to have both systems up at once. But I think at this point, everything is in that one place. And, and so I feel, I feel good that we do have that one stop shop. And it enables us to really engage with our partners help them expand their business with continuous selling, and, and helps us to continue to grow their business in a much more consistent way.
Vince Menzione 34:12
Yeah, really great work here. I coach partners, I work with partner organizations, and it’s great to see the progress that you and the team have made. Thank you. I would like to pivot here. As you know, this podcast is the ultimate guide to partnering I have to ask you at least one question relative to what it takes to work with Microsoft what coaching or advice would you give to a partner looking to improve their engagement with you in your organization?
Gavriella Schuster 34:37
So the advice that I would give is, you know, it’s come to the Microsoft partner network site, dig into the programs that we have, you know, we we have a breadth of technologies to build your business on and you know, we can help you guide you through that. You know, make sure that your teams understand what’s available. We have tutorials through partner center. commercial marketplace and how do we engage? So, you know, what we want to do is help you find the right path through the technologies through the training, and then help you figure out how do you effectively go to market so that we can co sell our solutions together. So, you know, there’s a number of things that we can do to help successful business expand geographically, to expand into new practice areas. We have practice development playbooks. With there, we have ebooks on digital transformation, and cloud migrations, artificial intelligence teams. And, you know, we can really help an organization go step by step on either how to get started from fresh from New, or on how to transform, and then how to grow and intentionally grow the business either through expansion of practice, expansion of geography, or just building more complete end to end or industry solutions. So you know, that’s, that’s what I would say to our partners, we really have. We’re like the Costco for technology, we can help you find anything you’re looking for. And so you know, we can help you build a really sustainable business on that.
Vince Menzione 36:14
I used to love to say Home Depot and Lowe’s because you know, you bought your lumber, your hammers your nails. And you went and built the house, like Microsoft gives you all the platforms and tools to be successful with your business. But I like Costco as well. So, Gary, I’d love to pivot now. Because as you might know, I focus on helping early in career professionals to get to a particular spot in their life. And I know that many people are interested with your career journey. Was there a pivot point or an inspiration that propelled Gabrielle on the path to what we see today?
Gavriella Schuster 36:47
I think there were probably many, I mean, very early on, when I was just in, in college, my dad lost his job after 27 years. And it was pretty devastating to him. And watching him go through that I decided that I wanted to be a generalist, I did not want to be a specialist, I didn’t want to get 20 some years into my career and realize either I didn’t like it anymore, or that I was so specialized, I couldn’t find another job. And so, you know, that was one pivot point. I think when I started working, I realized I am very much a experienced collector, I really like to go learn new things. And so what propelled me was to continually go push myself to go into new areas that I didn’t know anything about, and learn new things and collect new experiences. And so I you know, have crossed six different disciplines. And I’ve been lucky enough to be able to do that all within Microsoft, because the business is just so constantly changing. I think what I, what I encourage people early in career is don’t scare yourself. Don’t put up barriers to your own success. Don’t try to focus on perfection. You know, keep an open mind, be an experienced collector, push yourself to continually learn new things. Push yourself into places where you feel uncomfortable, and that will push you to continue to grow and learn and be a leader
Vince Menzione 38:30
be uncomfortable or push yourself to do things that you feel are uncomfortable. Yeah, yeah. Reminds me of a quote by Dr. Michael Gervais. In fact, I think he’s he said that as well, or I’ve heard him say that before. Yeah. So you were having a dinner party. And you can invite any three guests to attend this party, either from the present? Or from the past? Who would you invite? And why?
Gavriella Schuster 38:53
Hmm. Well, I would invite Bill Gates. Because in every time that I have sat down with him, I learned so much, and his passion is infectious, the way he thinks about the world and changing the world is tremendous. But obviously, I would also invite Melinda Gates, because I don’t know if the listeners have read her book. But it is incredibly inspiring. It’s called the moment of lift. And it is talking about empowering women around the world, in the things that she has learned relative to what it takes to empower women around the world and how much it unlocks societies by doing so. And I would love to continue that conversation with her in person. And I would invite Oprah Winfrey because I also think she is an amazing woman. And I would love to learn from her. You know, she has gone through many trials and tribulations in her life. And yet she is one of the most successful women on the planet and so, you know, would love to have a conference With her and and really explore her stories,
Vince Menzione 40:05
that sounds like an amazing dinner party, I just have to say, I would love to be at that dinner party with you. Also a fan of all three of those people. In fact, by the way, we are going to provide links to everything we’ve talked about in our show notes, including Melinda’s book, so that people can access that, you know, you have been an amazing guest, Gavriella, you always exceed my expectations, I got to meet and work with you. And I got to see your rise to the corporate Vice President and channel chief level, Microsoft have been a big fan of your work. so grateful for you to be here. Is there any closing remarks or advice you have for our listeners? Yeah,
Gavriella Schuster 40:42
I mean, I think kind of maybe going back to where we started, which is, you know, this is, this is a difficult time. This is one of those times that it tests your grit. And, and you have to learn how to take care of yourself and take care of those around you in a different way. You have to really work intentionally to connect to people and to stay connected. And you really have to be very intentional with the time that you have. And so I guess my closing remarks to everyone listening is take care of yourself. Make sure that you are getting the right amount of sleep and exercise and that you are creating the connections where they may not exist because you are homebound and make sure that you put on a mask if you outside, stay healthy. And we will see you on the other side.
Vince Menzione 41:34
I love that advice. Gavriella, thank you so much for being a guest on Ultimate Guide to partnering.
Gavriella Schuster 41:39
Absolutely My pleasure.
Vince Menzione 41:42
As with each of my episodes, I appreciate your support. Please subscribe on your favorite platform, like comment, tell your friends about Ultimate Guide to partnering and where they can find us and i’d love your feedback. Please like the podcast and provide comments or reach out to me at Vince Menzione on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. You can also like and follow Ultimate Guide to partnering on our Facebook page, or drop me a line at Vince m at ultimate dash partnerships.com this episode of the podcast is sponsored by ultimate partnerships. Ultimate partnerships helps you get the most results from your partnerships, get partnerships right, optimize for success, deliver results. For more information, go to ultimate dash partnerships.com
Announcer 42:34
thanks so much for listening to this episode of The Ultimate Guide to partnering with your host Vince Menzione online at Ultimate Guide to partnering.com and facebook.com slash Ultimate Guide to partnering. We’ll catch you next time on The Ultimate Guide to partnering
Transcribed by https://otter.ai