88 – Agility and Customer Centricity – Driving Forces for Success in 2021

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For this episode of the podcast, I was delighted to welcome Alysa Taylor – Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President for the Cloud Marketing Business Applications and Global Industry divisions at Microsoft. For 2021, Alysa advises us to keep listening, keep understanding, keep knowing where the world is going. She suggests agility and customer-centricity will be driving forces for partner success in 2021.

In her role at Microsoft, Alysa leads the product marketing teams responsible for Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform (Power BI, Power Apps, Power Virtual Agents, and Power Automate) as well as the global industry product marketing team.

Alysa’s previously led the Cloud and Enterprise business marketing group in Microsoft’s U.S. subsidiary, where she was responsible for the U.S. business, marketing, and operations across the cloud, and the infrastructure portfolio of products, including Windows Server, Azure, System Center, SQL, and Visual Studio. Taylor came to Microsoft with a background in consulting and advertising account management and design.

It was great to have Alysa come share her career progression, the progress of her organization, and the innovation. I also had the chance to work with Alysa in the US Subsidiary and so it was great to catch up and learn more about her career journey.

​In this episode, Alysa and I discuss:

  • The innovation, change and transformation coming from her organization.
  • How data, business processes, and industry are at the core of the transformation in Microsoft’s approach.
  • Her recent announcements – Healthcare Cloud and Retail Cloud and what that means for partners.
  • Why partners are more important now than ever and why they need to drive with agility and customer-centricity.
  • Lessons for our listeners from her amazing career journey.

I hope you enjoy this interview as much as I enjoyed spending time with Alysa Taylor.

LINKS & RESOURCES

As with each of my episodes, I appreciate your support. Please tell your friends about Ultimate Guide to Partnering™ and where they can find us.

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 Otter.AI – Please Pardon Typos Below

Vince Menzione 0:50
Welcome, or Welcome back to The Ultimate Guide to partnering. I’m Vince Menzione, your host. And as we kick off the four year anniversary of this podcast, and leap into 2021, I’m thankful to all of the amazing thought and business leaders who’ve come to this podcast to share principles, success strategies, and best practices that help technology organizations thrive during this age of change and transformation. As we kick off this new year, I’m excited to be joined for this special series by some of those industry thought leaders to help each of us better prepare for what we can do to optimize success in 2021. And for this episode of the podcast, I was delighted to welcome Alyssa Taylor, Microsoft’s corporate Vice President for the cloud marketing, business applications and global industry divisions. In her role, she leads the product marketing teams responsible for dynamics 365, the power platform, as well as the global industry product marketing team, it was great to have Alyssa come share with our listeners, the innovation and change that her organization is driving during this transformation. And all of the innovation that is happening across industries. I also had the chance to work with Alyssa in the us up. And so it was great to catch up with her. And also learn more about her career journey. I hope you enjoyed this conversation. As much as I enjoyed my time with Alyssa Taylor. Alyssa, welcome to the podcast.

Alysa Taylor 2:23
Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

Vince Menzione 2:26
I am so excited to have you today as a guest on Ultimate Guide to partnering you and I got to work together at Microsoft when you were in the us up. So welcome.

Alysa Taylor 2:35
Thank you. Thank you. It’s been a while and I’m so thrilled to be here and get to chat with you.

Vince Menzione 2:39
Well, I feel privileged to have you You are now the corporate Vice President, business applications and global industry at Microsoft, and what an amazing job. And an equally amazing career, your work and the organization you lead, are really at the center of this transformation, and also partnership. But for our listeners who don’t know about you and your org, can you tell us a little bit more about both you your role? And the organization you lead?

Alysa Taylor 3:05
Yeah, absolutely. As you mentioned, so corporate Vice President, I lead to business units here at Microsoft, so our business applications, Product Marketing team, and then I also am responsible for our global industry, marketing as well. And the wonderful thing about the role that I have is I get to partner with our engineering team. So James Phillips on the business side, and then all of our engineering leads across Azure modern work and dynamics on the industry side, and really defines what we’re going to bring to market how we’re going to bring to market different aspects of our portfolio, and then work through the channels of Microsoft to be able to make those come to life. So it’s a really unique place to be in, it’s at both, you know, both business applications and the industry side are just, you know, they’re unchartered territory for us. on the business side, we’ve had, you know, we’ve had a number of kind of MRP and CRM type assets, that almost set in, you know, as a wholly owned subsidiary outside of Microsoft. And we made the decision four years ago to really bring that into the Microsoft Cloud, knowing that the app layer is so critical to kind of the entirety of the services that we provide. And so that’s been a massive transformation for us internally is to is to bring dynamics 365 in the power platform into the Microsoft Cloud services. And then subsequently also recognizing that to be a partner to the organizations that we serve, we must be both customer and industry first. And so I radical shift for us both from an engineering marketing and sales to this industry first mentality and mindset. So both emerging areas within Microsoft very exciting, unchartered waters and so I’ve just been loving Yeah,

Vince Menzione 5:00
yeah, it sounds exciting. And you’re starting to see at least I’m starting to see from the outside looking in some of this Industry Focus, right. So I came out of public sector, we were like the only industry, right government, healthcare, some education. But now manufacturing retail, some of these other segments and teams are now being organized this way. Right? So you’re, you’re leading the the effort, if you will,

Alysa Taylor 5:22
yeah. And it was thrilling for, for us that have been in the Microsoft ecosystem and knowing how important industry is to actually be able to bring to life. In October, we announced the general availability of the Microsoft Cloud for healthcare. And then just last week, we announced our second offering, which was a Microsoft Cloud for retail. And so we actually now have cloud based services that allow the underlying modern work, Azure dynamics power platform, the Microsoft Cloud to be realized in very specific vertical domains for our customer base. So it allows, you know, customers to take what I’ve had historically been horizontal cloud services, and have that industry layer that brings very discrete workflows and processes that are unique to every industry. So it’s a really exciting time for us.

Vince Menzione 6:14
It sounds it and maybe for our partners that are listening today, can you explain what it is and what it isn’t? Is it accelerators like we used to refer to in the in the previous days when I was there? Or is it more specific around use cases? And actually applications?

Alysa Taylor 6:30
So it’s both? And it’s a great question, because we also get the question of, does the Microsoft Cloud for healthcare compete with our partner ecosystem, and not at all it is meant for both our partners and our customers to have access to unique IP that is vertical, that it has that vertical domain aspect to it that allows, you know, both partners and customers to light up their underlying cloud services in the vein of that industry. And so I’ll be even more precise. So in healthcare, being able to do patient engagement, there’s very specific workflows that need to be activated between having collaboration within the caregivers, and then being able to communicate with the patients in a vehicle like teams and using the power platform as the collaboration vehicle and portal for sharing information. And so really, what the Microsoft Cloud for healthcare provides, is those workflows that allow you to create very specific caregiver portals, and then be able to take that information, and seamlessly then provide it out through a team’s channel to the end patient. And so it’s those types of business process layers that have you know, historically, either customers or partners have had to spend a lot of time and energy building, they are now you know, being provided directly by Microsoft to accelerate the time to value that a partner or a customer has using Microsoft technology.

Vince Menzione 8:04
So there’s plenty of work still to be done by these partners, right? You’re also cobbling in other ISV solutions into the equation, other components that may or may not be finished at this point. Is that what I’m hearing?

Alysa Taylor 8:16
Well, and I think partners, you know, particularly in India, most of our partners, our industry first, I think our partners have been, you know, ahead of us in that regard. And so yes, like they work that partners do to figure out what is the end outcome, you know, all of the consulting, integration work, all of that still exists. I look at the Microsoft copper healthcare and the Microsoft cultural retailer, for retail as a way for us to help the ecosystem focus on the higher value added services, and not have to worry about plumbing together our cloud services,

Vince Menzione 8:50
I like that analogy plumbing together the services, the Microsoft services, because you are you’re gonna have disparate solutions across the cloud, that you’re bringing together here in a more cohesive fashion or fabric is that how Marriott?

Alysa Taylor 9:02
Yes, and we’ve been, you know, at Microsoft on this journey of where we’re engineering teams are co building around, you know, teams is the modern UI dynamics as the dynamics 365 is the ability to have a modern way of you know, of work across sales, service, marketing, finance operations, you know, azures, or global hyperscale platform and the power platform is the way to take all of that and automated act on it, and be able to analyze all the data surrounding that, but that that so we’ve we’ve worked really hard to bring those services together in a way that they aren’t so siloed. But they’re but what was missing was that industry layer. So how do you have a team’s channel that’s very specific to patient care and management? How do you have a data model that allows you to ingest the data into Azure, that specific to the very, you know, the entities that are relevant to a health care? How do you have things like, you know, app, you know, application infrastructure within Power Apps? Better pre build apps specific to the healthcare vertical. So that, you know, we’ve worked to bring those services together over the years industry is that next step of the cohesion across our cloud services,

Vince Menzione 10:13
you know, you brought up data here and I want to focus in on some of the work that’s been going on for actually quite some time now on what was called the common data model initiative, right was to create a common fabric or a language, if you will, for organizations to speak with one another, you now have moved to a new name for that, and maybe a little bit more, a little bit more to it, data verse, can you tell our listeners a little bit more about that?

Alysa Taylor 10:40
Absolutely. This is a really exciting innovation for us. And it’s sort of underscores our strategy on but you know, both the business applications and the Azure side and teams as well. So the common data model is just a way for us to organize data, both in a if you think about it from a functional standpoint. So how do you organize your sales data, your field service data, your back end, you know, operations and finance data, so that it is commonly read and exchanged across, you know, our cloud services, that common data model also is the underpinning of the industry work as well. Now, there is two two ways in which that data is then exposed. The what we had previously called the Common Data Service was the operational data store that lived under dynamics 365. And the power platform. So it was the the data platform for those services. That was a subset of the you know, the if you think about the kind of larger analytical data store that is Azure, the Common Data Service was an operational data store. And that operational data store with the common data model is what we renamed to be data verse. And the most exciting part about this is is data verse was unique to dynamics 365. And the power platform, when we announced the new name, which was data verse, we also brought that into the team’s environment, which is really like this allows an organization to build a line of business application, using an inherent data store in teams that can then freely that data can then be merged and leveraged by the, by the unique applications that you might build outside of the team’s environment, in Dynamics, and all of it is a subset of the larger Azure analytical service.

Vince Menzione 12:38
Why is it important for partners to get on board with data verse,

Alysa Taylor 12:42
think of data versus that sort of common thread for any application development, or automating data, or you know, even analyzing data, it being able to have this common data service, that I live with that common data model that allows data to flow between applications, whether it be teams dynamics line of business. And so really, for partners, what this does is it allows them to build very unique experiences, applications, if you will, that show up in the team’s environment that can be integrated into any of the other cloud services across Microsoft. And it’s a common language in which allows the data to be rendered in any in any form.

Vince Menzione 13:30
I love that answer. You know, we’re living in a world right now, where clients are not just picking one solution right there. They’re stitching together multiple solutions in order to solve for a bigger issue. I came at a spending some time in the nonprofit space. You’re familiar with that and some of the effort that Justin spell hog did with the common data model and common data services. I also feel that because of this, right, we need to have that common thread. And I think that’s what you’re solving for here. What are you seeing organizations do? Or what would you say to an organization now to get them on board?

Alysa Taylor 14:02
Well, and I would say this is a fundamental if I back up just a touch, you know, a fundamental shift in our strategy for how we think about business applications. You know, we’ve historically thought about CRM and E Rp. Those applications, you know, where the, you know, when you would ingest large amounts of high value business data, but it also trapped that data. And so, with both the dynamics 365, the power platform, the work we’re doing on teams and data, verse spanning all of that, our mission is to freed, you know, to allow organizations to free their data, to be able because once you, you know, sort of have a holistic understanding of your data state. That’s when you can apply intelligence on it. You can do machine learning, you really have this, you move from a world of reactive to very proactive and data being at the center of that So that’s why the work we’re doing with data verse, you know, our strategy on business applications being grounded in data, you know, when I talked to organizations and I was on, you know, with, with one this morning, it’s, you know, their data, their business data is one of their highest valued assets. And yet, they, you know, most organizations spend an enormous amount of money, trying to, you know, do complex and expensive ETL, creating data lakes, being able to, you know, have to have data scientists, you know, come in, create unique machine learning modules to be able to extract, you know, the value out of that data once it’s been joined. And so we really want to take the friction out of the system, and, you know, allow that data to be more easily transferable among the applications that, you know, bring value to an organization.

Vince Menzione 15:53
So, are you building additional tools or capabilities on top of that in the future? Or is that something you could talk about right now?

Alysa Taylor 15:59
Yeah, so if you think about the way that Microsoft Cloud, if I had a whiteboard, I would sort of show but I’ll do it verbally. You know, Azure is our, you know, global, hyper hyperscale Cloud Platform, we have something called the power platform, which is the extensibility layer of Azure. And then on top of that is modern work, or modern work assets and our dynamics 365 assets. So that’s how the cloud service is composed. And so when we talk about data verse, and synapse, the power platform is the set of tools that allow an organization to take not only, you know, data that lives in Azure, but data from hundreds of other sources. And they can join that data into a Power BI environment to be able to visualize and analyze that data. They can take Power Apps, and join that data into data verse to create very, you know, agile, specific applications, they can use power automate, to automate routine mundane tasks. And then we also have power virtual agents, which allow you to take that data and create augmented experiences through a virtual agent layer. And so you know, really the tooling that you talked about all lives within the power platform. And it’s, it’s why it’s such an important asset within the Microsoft portfolio, because it really is that tooling layer,

Vince Menzione 17:22
it sounds like you’re really I always say I’m unleashing the power of the data with the power platform and all the tools and capabilities we’ve built.

Alysa Taylor 17:30
That is exactly what we were doing. Well, thank you.

Vince Menzione 17:33
So we have to acknowledge we’re living in a time like no other, right? I mean, this has been, we’re just talking about this before we started recording, it’s been maybe even a year since we’ve seen some of our loved ones. I’d love to learn from you like what what have you’re seeing now that you didn’t expect to see, since the start of the pandemic, on the business side?

Alysa Taylor 17:53
Well, I think the duration of the pandemic has surprised all of us, you know, and what I am seeing now is, which I think is actually, if you talk about a silver lining, for both our partners, and our partners that serve our customers, it is really building this, you know, we’re seeing organizations build digital solutions that allow them to be more resilient and more durable for the future. So it’s not just a reaction to a point in time, but it’s really taking digital capabilities. And, you know, organizations that we see that are weathering the storm, the best have built and are leveraging, you know, a digital foundation that sets them up for whatever comes next. It’s not just the pandemic, but it allows them to be more agile, more responsive, more customer centric, and I see our partners, you know, that are really embracing that new world, and that, you know, how do you future proof as the best partners that are working with our customers and the customers that are being, you know, sort of the most successful and the ones that are being the most resilient in this time have, you know, a lot of uncertainty and a lot of change?

Vince Menzione 19:04
You know, it’s also been a difficult time for, for many for the people that we work with, how are you coaching your people differently now at this time?

Alysa Taylor 19:12
Well, you know, it is you’re absolutely right, like we just all of a sudden sort of were shuttered into a world that can feel very isolating. And so for us, we you know, we’ve worked really hard on positive mindset. You know, I know you’ve had Dr. Michael Gervais on your podcast, I think he is brilliant in kind of how you reframe how you both build a positive mindset, but how you recharge. And so I’ve been working with my team, you know, on, you know, positive mindset, what do we need to do to recharge? And then how do we continue to foster this sense of community among us in a virtual world and so we’ve done some really fun things. We’ve tried some new things, but that connection point is so critical. And making sure that people even though there isn’t you have physical hallways that there are still moments where we can pause and connect and understand what’s going on in our lives and take the space and the time to really continue to foster the culture that we work so hard to build.

Vince Menzione 20:13
Yeah, we used to talk about rest as being going to sleep at night. But now we actually need to rest we have to rest our eyes right from the just the constant barrage of being on teams calls all day, and we have to rest our brains like we are constant at this constant charge state I find this Well,

Alysa Taylor 20:29
yes. And we’ve talked a lot with my team of like, what are the things that allow you to recharge you know, if it’s taking, you know, going for a walk around the block or putting on you know, a pair of running shoes and, and going out for a jog or you know, meditating, but you know, just taking that space, because it is what we’ve, you know, surpassed me What, what we’ve surprised everyone in this pandemic, you know, for our teams, it’s, you know, this always on, you know, there is no more commute, there is no more travel. And so you can literally be in meetings for 12 to 14 hours straight. And that’s not, it’s not good for the human mind. It’s not good for the human body. And so really, you know, even little things like taking 15 minute breaks, really making sure for us, we activated a no meetings Friday afternoon, so people could, you know, do whatever, you know, read Ron, spend time with loved ones, whenever they needed to recharge, I love the no meeting Friday afternoon. It sounds wonderful. It has been an absolute blessing for us, because I just, you know, we are on to your point about your virtual calls non stop. And so just having dedicated space to be able to use, you know, how an individual sees fit has been has been fantastic for every level of this organization.

Vince Menzione 21:44
Yeah. And you talked about growth mindset. I mean, I also think that that’s a key ingredient to successful partnering. And, you know, this podcast focuses in on partnering. So for those who are listening, what would you say in terms of your commitment to them to the partners out there who are listening to this podcast?

Alysa Taylor 22:01
Well, I think there’s probably a number of commitments, that they should hold me accountable for you, no one is at the highest level from the Microsoft standpoint is, you know, a lot of what we’ve talked about with like the industry work, like, are we providing a technology platform that allows partners to be successful, and that’s everything from, you know, ease of use to relevancy to innovation. So, you know, the technology platform and providing that out is critical. And then, you know, for a partner ecosystem, what are we doing to make our mutual customers successful? Are we effectively co selling together we can, you know, effectively co marketing together, are we learning from one another, and one of the best I was on with a partner this morning, just learning about kind of the trends in the industry, and what they need from Microsoft, to be competitive and to, you know, meet their customer needs, is incredibly important. And that two way learning, you know, our partner ecosystem makes us more innovative, build better products, be a better provider. And so I think, you know, those things combined the technology platform, you know, ability to effectively go to market together. And then to learn and to innovate together those three things, I think, are, you know, what, you know, what we strive at Microsoft, to be able to provide to our partner ecosystem,

Vince Menzione 23:20
you know, it’s so ingrained in Microsoft’s culture as an organization partner first, and you’ve been around partners for quite some time, what have you seen in some of the best partnerships?

Alysa Taylor 23:28
Well, a lot, you know, I think the, you know, similar to what we talked about with customers, but partners that are able to, you know, rapidly innovate, to change, you know, to adjust to changing landscapes, to changing business models to changing, you know, industries. And when you look at the just sheer number of industries that are in sort of rapid evolution right now, you know, partners that deeply understand the industry can you know, help, you know, customers navigate through change, those are the ones that I think are the most successful. And then, you know, like I said, and then those that are willing to go on the journey, it’s that growth mindset, it comes back to that, and it applies to people, it applies to partners, it applies to organizations, and I, you know, some of the best partners, we haven’t always gotten it right. Many times we got the dead wrong, good partners that are willing to help guide and give feedback along the way. I just, I deeply, deeply appreciate.

Vince Menzione 24:20
I love what you had to say, first of all, you talked about something that I refer to as agility, right? The ability to pivot to Microsoft is going to go in different directions. If you want to stay close to the tech giant learning to pivot along with Microsoft. You also talked about, I refer to this almost in a relationship perspective, like staying close to Microsoft in terms of its plans and understanding where you’re going. So you can more intuitively, maybe it’s a micro investment or micro practice around a specific market or opportunity in order to grow your business effectively. Would you agree there?

Alysa Taylor 24:53
I would and I think if I if you would allow me the one thing I would add is this notion of partners, you know, helping us learn from them. Like I think it’s a two way street staying close to us and us staying close to our partners. So you know, we hear directly what’s happening in the market what they need.

Vince Menzione 25:09
And many cases, some of those partners are even closer to the customer in a specific industry or solution set area, right?

Alysa Taylor 25:16
Absolutely. Most are. For that reason, you know, and I think that’s so critical for us to be able to work hand in hand, I spend as much time with partners as I do with customers.

Vince Menzione 25:27
I’d love to hear that. I love to hear that I’m sure our partners listening today would love to hear that as well. So again, I can’t wait to replay this for them. What about partners that didn’t get it right, either in your previous roles at Microsoft and partners who were along for the journey in many of your roles? What would you say to them? Now, if you could,

Alysa Taylor 25:44
I think I would use your exact words, be agile, whatever your next, you know, adventure is if you’re starting a new company, agility is key. customer centricity and agility.

Vince Menzione 25:55
Yeah, customer at the center of the journey, right? customer agility. So speaking of journeys, as you might know, one of my biggest passions is how to help others learn from amazing guests like yourself. And you know, candidly, being a CBP, Microsoft is a pretty big deal. I would like to peel back, if you don’t mind a little bit about you, and your amazing journey to this spot in your life.

Alysa Taylor 26:20
Yes, always, always happy to tell the story. It’s a it’s a non traditional story, or journey, if you will. So those that are, you know, fanatical about career planning, sometimes hear this and I think, you know, have a little bit of a Twitch, but but it is there’s a method to the madness, I started my career in on the design side, actually, and quickly sort of learned that was what was in my head was not easily transferable to a CAD program. And so I switched to the account side, but knowing that I had this, you know, inherent love for design and the creative aspects, and you should have spent the early part of my career in on the ad side, advertising a PR side, and then on the being doing account management. And then I came over to management consulting, which was just sort of a really nice, natural evolution of being able to get deeper on the business strategy side work predominantly with healthcare customers. And after a decade of being both in the agency and in management consulting, the one thing that I knew that I craved was to see that strategy come to fruition to be able to learn what worked, what didn’t, you know, most of a management consulting is doing the upfront strategy, but you’re long gone before, you know, you know, really what landed and worked and what failed. And so I really wanted that, you know, to be able to kind of see the strategy through to fruition. And so I joined Microsoft, and I joined in a very logical place, I joined as the Communications Manager for an initiative, which was at the time called the Microsoft Java Virtual Machine transition.

Vince Menzione 28:00
Interesting.

Alysa Taylor 28:00
And it was a piece of for those that don’t know what that is, it was a piece of embedded software that we licensed from Sun Microsystems. And we were in this, you know, the sort of platform war of dotnet versus Java. And so we decided that we were going to migrate on all of the web applications that had this dependency off of the Java Virtual Machine. And, you know, probably two or three months into this pretty major career transition of going from the services side to the client side, we realized that, you know, migrating the Java Virtual Machine off of practically every web application on the planet, was not feasible. Hi. And so we had a very nice settlement with Sun Microsystems and the VI team that worked on it sort of disbanded. And I was the full time Communications Manager left. If you’ve ever seen office space, I was the guy in the basement with the stapler sort of lies, what what, you know, what do I do I do now. And this lovely gentleman that, that I worked with, who ran developer tools, said, Hey, you should come and interview we have a position for a channel manager, but you know, running our channel strategy for developer tools for Visual Studio and dotnet. And I wasn’t quite sure what a developer tool was. And I wasn’t quite sure what the channel was, but I thought, well, I should interview and see and somehow I got the job. And I still don’t know, to this day, what in the world they were thinking, but I got the job. I don’t think I spoke for the first month, because I had no idea what anyone was talking about. But luckily I picked it up and some great mentors and great advisors along the way. And I really fell in love with the developer space. And I spent eight years in our developer evangelism or in every capacity from running our technical evangelism platforms to our first ISB team two are actually doing Product Marketing for Visual Studio and MSDN and TechNet. And so it was an amazing and the beautiful thing about that time was The developer division was really the tip of the spear. It was how you incubated new technology. And so every year, it was a new focus. And I loved it. And I parlayed that over to running the what was called the cloud enterprise team. And then switches, I think when you and I met, and remember that, yes. And the primary focus was to incubate Azure, we were predominantly a Windows and Office, first company. And we were expanding to be a cloud platform company, in addition to being a Windows and Office company. And so that was just an incredible journey of just mass acceleration and growth. And from there, I was asked to come over and take that same type of kind of incubation approach to, you know, redefining our business applications portfolio. And then about a year and a half into this role, we did the same with industry. And so the common wallet seems on paper, fairly schizophrenic. The common theme throughout my career is I gravitate to things that are more incubation or more transformational in nature. And I think that’s where I get Garner energy from being able to take new emerging technologies, new emerging businesses, and really build the playbook for them. And I’ve had, I’ve been very, very fortunate that Microsoft has given me so many opportunities to be able to do that,

Vince Menzione 31:17
you know, smiling, listening to this whole discussion. First of all, I was thinking back to the early days when we tried to kill every competitor, and that that didn’t that didn’t work with Java. Yeah. And then, certainly the point where, you know, you TP as it became known as was really, really was very partner centric. And in fact, as you mentioned, the ISP strategy was to help lift up those partners, that portion of the organization wound up now part is one commercial partner. So intuitively, you were working with partners way back in the day. And then this move over here. I just, you know, it’s very interesting to say, Where do you take this, like, How do you stay energized, engaged now? Like, where are you going to take this initiative and this organization forward?

Alysa Taylor 31:59
Well, I think we are just on the cusp of doing some pretty amazing things. You know, we spent the last three years in rapid build cycle on dynamics 365, and the power platform side. And so you know, and laying a foundation for how we, you know, how we both our strategy, as well as our go to market. And so, you know, we’re starting to see, just like we did with Azure, this just rapid adoption of particularly the COVID in the COVID world, just as organizations have to kind of overnight pivot, you know, contactless shopping, and curbside pickup and digital sales and marketing. And so there’s, you know, the business applications dynamics, and that our platform has really been at the center of that. And so that’s phenomenal to see the growth and the acceleration that we’re experiencing on the business application side. And then we’ve just, you know, put our first toe in the water in the industry side, like I said, October was when we announced the Microsoft Cloud for healthcare. So really, I’m at that place of why I joined the client side is I am now in this great place of understanding what works and what resonates in the market, and where we need to continue to iterate and learning from our customers and partners. So this is the fun part of the journey of you know, a lot of hard work. And, you know, that’s gone into the last, you know, three plus years. And now you know, now we’re at a place of, you know, what, what do we what sticks, what works, what’s resonating, and what do we need to adjust?

Vince Menzione 33:25
Sounds like you’re just beginning on the journey?

Alysa Taylor 33:27
Yes, yes. So like it this is really, like I said, this is why you go from a, you know, services side to a client side, because this is where we get to see what works in the market. And it’s exciting.

Vince Menzione 33:38
It is exciting. And you know, you mentioned mentors along the way, you know, I’m certain that you had several. But was there a one best piece of advice you received along this journey,

Alysa Taylor 33:47
so many things to pick from? I actually, I mentioned a customer that I was meeting with this morning. So I was meeting with Cisco and Jerry Elliott is there. Ah, Jerry, Jerry was my mentor at Microsoft. And I was actually telling her, this was 10 plus years ago, she said, just in terms of kind of how you, you know, you organize your day, it was this notion of, you know, if you think about your day as a bowl, and you you know, focus on the big rocks, but the big rocks in the bowl, and then the little pebbles will follow. I was telling her that she was kind of she was laughing that I remember that. But it’s these little things along the way that have shaped me. You know, I would say the other, you know, big thing. You know, Jerry was just she was so inspirational and how she thought about the industry. And she’s always been kind of at the forefront, you know, as we’re going into industry with, you know, her, you know, her really starting that ball rolling for Microsoft years ago. But I think on the personal front, you know, it’s a combination of, I had an amazing gentleman that I worked for that it was kind of right when my career was, you know, at this kind of rapid acceleration at Microsoft and he pulled me aside and I’ll never forget these words. He sort of said, you know what got you here will not move you forward and And he was like you the way that you, you know, what you do is is you are very results driven. And that is your orientation. And he said, to become a great leader, you have to shift you have to become, you have to be people oriented, not results oriented. And, and that sort of stopped me in my tracks because I had, I had gotten to where I was because I delivered I, you know, got shit done and assigned, somebody gave me a sign that hangs in my office back in the braver that says that. And that was like what I was known for, that’s what I was good at, you know, I got a lot of things done, and I got it done quickly. And it was this moment where I was like, Well, what do you mean, and I, and, you know, and I started to realize that, you know, you can get things done and, and burn bridges and burn people along the way. And that’s not, that’s not sustainable. And so it was really a shift for me of, you know, knowing that relationships matter, listening matters, bringing others along with you, those are the things that matter, and then you ultimately will continue to get, you know, I think I’ve proven I you know, like the teams that I get the pleasure of working with we you know, I think we’re known for getting things done, but but hopefully done in a way that is with grace.

Vince Menzione 36:14
So what did you need to do differently at that point, once he said that,

Alysa Taylor 36:17
you know, I think there was, there’s probably two things that I did differently. One was, you know, sort of realize, you know, it was a, it was a lot more of slowing down to speed up, you know, listening, understanding, bringing others along that journey. And then the other which might be somewhat surprising is bringing a more authentic self to work. I was in consulting sort of ingrains this in your at least consulting when I was in the consulting world is there was working, there was your personal life, and the two would never meet. And so I have a friend that called it the the dark sweater days, you know, where I would literally, I have a creative background. My hobby is interior design, I started in graphic design, a lot of the reasons that I spent so long in the developer space is because there’s beauty in, in development in you know, beauty in both development and design. But I sort of never brought that aspect to work. And, and so I had a woman who was a coach that really helped me bring my authentic self in all aspects of my life and really not knowing that there isn’t our whole there isn’t a home and a work that a year there’s one you win, and being true to yourself. And I’ll never forget my first probably first month or so in this job. I marched into, into a Scott Guthrie meeting, our head of CNA, I engineering, our eating pee, and I was wearing a pair of shoes that I loved that had pink sequins on them. And so for people that know me and Vince, you probably remember this, I love shoes and I and it’s you know, it’s again, it’s part of that sort of, you know, being authentic and the design and the creative side of it. And I marched into an engineering review and pink sparkly shoes. And I remember somebody kind of leaning over and looking down and being like, wow. And I was like, they bring me joy. And I and I and there wasn’t, you know, but 10 my 10 year ago self to your question. I would have never I would have you know, I would have walked in and you know, gray slacks and black shoes and a black sweater. Yeah,

Vince Menzione 38:18
I wouldn’t wear a T shirt. You know, I think it is Scott. I think it is Scott glue with with the T shirt. And yeah, so not fashion oriented. Sorry, sorry, Scott.

Alysa Taylor 38:29
But Don, you know, that type of thing. And that is, you know, it is about being authentic. And it makes such a difference, and how much you enjoy what you do every day, if you bring your authentic self.

Vince Menzione 38:41
I love that. I love that. And you know, you mentioned Dr. Michael Dovey a little bit earlier. I would love if you could share a little bit more of that authentic self with our listeners. I know you’ve been through his training. You’ve been very close with Michael over the years. Is there a personal philosophy that you take through your life?

Alysa Taylor 38:59
Well, this will be in keeping? Yes, very much. And I would say that coach that I mentioned, and and Dr. Mike have both been instrumental and kind of helping me really, you know, deeply respect my authentic self as we’ve been talking about. And so my personal philosophy probably will not be a surprise, just given what I was talking about. But it is to live life with beauty and grace,

Vince Menzione 39:21
live life with beauty and grace. I love that.

Alysa Taylor 39:24
And there’s beauty. And then, you know, people think of beauty as a physical manifestation. But there’s beauty in everything. There’s beauty and interactions. There’s beauty in learning, there’s beauty and new experiences. And so to stop and you know, for me, it’s a reminder to stop and pause and find the beauty in in kind of everyday life.

Vince Menzione 39:43
And there’s beauty and getting stuff done.

Alysa Taylor 39:44
Right,there is beauty in getting stuff done.

Vince Menzione 39:46
Absolutely. So it really ties in very nicely. I love that. What have we talked a little bit about mindfulness. But I’d like to come back here for a moment here. Is there anything specifically that you’re doing for your own mindfulness at this time?

Alysa Taylor 39:58
Well, I would say one of the things that You know, again, if you think about a silver lining in every crisis, you know, you’re working at home, the pandemic, it has, you know, there’s two things that have come out of it, which is, I have been able to take up running again, for me, running allows me to have some time with my own thoughts. And it’s a great outlet for, you know, stresses of the day. And so I’ve gotten a chance to run more often than I used to be able to, and I get to see I have two little boys, they’re 10 and 12. And I get to see them throughout the day. And they, as I mentioned, at the start of the podcast, before we went live, you know, I had a little boy that popped in that needed something, and it’s really, you know, that being able to spend quality time with my family and, and spend time, you know, recharging that has helped greatly with my mindfulness.

Vince Menzione 40:47
One of the silver or platinum linings is one of my guests calls it with the with the current life that we’re living, with everyone being at home. So Alyssa, you are having a dinner party. And this can hopefully this is going to be when we all can get together in person, you know, no social distancing or masks. And you can invite any three guests to this party in the present or the past, who would you invite? And why?

Alysa Taylor 41:12
Well, so you kindly let me prepare for this question. And I have to say, I have so much fun thinking through this. So I have three. And then I will tell you why. Because there is an eclectic group. My father was a musician. And I have his he passed away when I was quite young. And I have all of his records. But one thing that you know, always reminds me of childhood is listening to a Stevie Nicks record. And my husband just bought me for Christmas record player. And so I dusted off some old records and played them. And so I thought, Stevie Nicks would be just an amazing person to have dinner one because I love her music or reminds me of my childhood, and she knew my father. And so they were in the industry together. So I would invite Stevie Nicks. I love to travel and I love to cook. So Anthony Bourdain is my second guest. And just because I think such an interesting person all the way around, and somebody that I would want to, you know, bring from the past to be able to get to now and then on the design side, Carolina Herrera. So those are my three

Vince Menzione 42:15
Carolina Herrera who I don’t know, but maybe you could tell us a little bit more about her

Alysa Taylor 42:19
most famous and one of the most famous female designers.

Vince Menzione 42:23
Very nice. And Stevie Nicks and Anthony Bourdain. What a dinner party I loved Anthony Bourdain. And I also love Stevie Nicks. So this Yeah, maybe I could come along. Maybe I could sit come in. I’d love that. So Alyssa, you had been just an amazing guest. I just loved the opportunity to reconnect with you today. Spend some time with our listeners? Do you have any suggestions or advice for partner listeners to help them optimize for success? In 2021?

Alysa Taylor 42:54
I think I would, you know, kind of the theme of what we’ve been talking about, you know, keep keep listening, keep understanding, keep knowing where the world is going. stay one step ahead of it. And you know, the more agile and the more customer centric, the better. I think those are partners of the future.

Vince Menzione 43:11
Yeah, I couldn’t agree with you more. And thank you so much for being such an amazing guest.

Alysa Taylor 43:16
Thank you for having me. It’s been fun.

Vince Menzione 43:18
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 44:11
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

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