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This Transformation Leader and Microsoft GM Joins Ultimate Guide to Partnering®

My next guest on Ultimate Guide to partnering recently joined Microsoft, bringing over two decades of experience to leading its US Device Partner Solutions Team. Angie McCourt is Microsoft’s General Manager and an accomplished author, coach, and podcaster. Angie has a rich background, having led transformation at TD Synnex and running her own successful business, helping leaders shift from the inside out. She now brings these invaluable skills to Microsoft. In this episode, learn how one technology leader transforms, shifting from the inside out.

In Angie’s Words

Angie is currently General Manager for US Device Partner Solution Sales for Microsoft. She has authored two books: Love Your Gifts: Permission to Revolutionize Authenticity in the Workplace and her new book, Authentic Leadership: Embracing Your Archetypal Gifts (Love Your Gifts).

Angie believes in modeling authentic leadership in corporate environments and helping others to open to possibilities for themselves, their teams, and future business.

What You’ll Learn

• Introducing Angie McCourt (4:26)
• What led her to write a book and start a podcast (9:45)
• The importance of aligning with company culture (15:09)
• When there is a lack of partner mindset (23:01)
• Why intuition is so crucial at this time? (32:27)

Creating Ultimate Partnerships

Let’s face it, we all have seen partnerships that look good on paper but never live up to their expected results. There are many reasons why partnerships fail, and at Ultimate Partnerships, we help you get it right by applying a proven set of best practices and frameworks. If you want to learn more, follow the link in the show notes, or visit our website.

Other Microsoft Device Partner Solution Sales Leader Episodes

78 – Focus on Coming Out of This Year, Better Than Before. Featuring Linda Rendleman

Links from this Episode

• https://podfollow.com/ultimate-guide-to-partnering
• www.angiemccourt.com/loveyourgifts
• Shifting Inside Out podcast (on most major listening channels or https://angiemccourt.transistor.fm/episodes)
• Best.Self.Activation, both App Store and Google Play www.angiemccourt.com/best-self-activation
• FREE OFFER from PartnerTap
• athleticgreens.com/vincem

Transcription – by Otter.ai –

Expect Plenty of Typos & Grammatical Errors

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

partnering, partnerships, people, business, started, organization, microsoft, intuition, shift, company, years, aligned, important, book, tech, leading, literally, transformation, partner, data

SPEAKERS

Announcer, Angie McCourt, Vince Menzione

Vince Menzione  00:00

One technology leader focused on transformation is shifting from the inside out. My next guest on Ultimate Guide to partnering recently joined Microsoft, bringing over two decades of experience to leading its device Partner Solutions team.

Announcer  00:19

This is the ultimate guide to partnering the top partnership podcast. In this podcast, Vince Menzione, a proven partner sales executive shares his mission to help leaders like you achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. And now your host Vince Menzione.

Vince Menzione  00:38

Welcome to or welcome back to The Ultimate Guide to partnering. I’m Vince Menzione, your host and today I will and Gene McCord is Microsoft’s general manager for us device partner solution sales, and is an accomplished author, coach and podcaster. Angie has such a rich background, having led transformation at TD sinex and running her own successful business. She now brings these invaluable skills to Microsoft. I was recently a guest on Angie’s podcast where I shared my story. And so now we have a chance to turn the tables. I hope you enjoyed this discussion as much as I enjoyed getting to know Angie McCourt. I’m so excited to welcome athletic greens as the latest sponsor to ultimate guide to partnering friends who know me well know I’ve made taking a green drink supplement part of my health ritual for over 20 years now. About five years ago I added athletic greens and now their product ag one has become my go to green drink supplement. Ag one is packed with 75 high quality vitamins, minerals, Whole Foods source superfoods, probiotics and antigens. It literally is replaced every vitamin in my cabinet. If you’d like to give ag one a try athletic greens is giving away a free one year supply of vitamin D and five travel packs with every new purchase. Check them out at athletic greens.com forward slash Vince M. Angie, welcome to the podcast.

Angie McCourt  02:23

Thank you Vance. It’s a pleasure to be here. I’m really honored that you invited me on and I look forward to our conversation today.

Vince Menzione  02:29

I’m really excited to have you as a guest on Ultimate Guide department. So you’re fairly new to Microsoft. But you’ve been around this world of partnerships and technology for quite some time. I think you start must have started when you were 12 years old. I’m certain of that. But for our listeners that may not know Angie, can you tell us a little bit about you and your role.

Angie McCourt  02:51

I was in the corporate world for 27 years prior to taking 18 months to focus on some passion projects. And now I’m back in tech and I’ve been at Microsoft now for three months. My husband and I have three college students and our oldest is 23. So we’re very much in that you know kind of transition and shifting into adulthood with our kids. And the most recent over the past year endeavor is my husband and I have started a hobby farm. We have three goats the horse so many donkey chickens, citrus and fruit and veggie garden. So like the whole gamut small scale, we call it many hobby farm. So that’s the personal side. And then at Microsoft, I lead the US device partner solution sales business and team. And basically what that means is I’m responsible for fostering transformation across the ecosystem aligned into the strategy, as well is focused on key opportunities to drive device assortment and solutions offerings, and accelerate the revenue growth and health of the business.

Vince Menzione  03:56

So I love your focus and experience. You have this transformation in your DNA. Can you tell us a little bit about that career journey and what you found out or what that taught you?

Angie McCourt  04:08

I actually majored in fashion merchandising. for almost seven years, I was a buyer with some major department stores. I also worked with electronic retailers, I never had any intentions of going in the tech industry. I am not a technical person by any means. But I am a business person and I am a leader. And those are the things that I really was able to establish as I went into tech data and spent 21 years there. And I’m really excited that I had the opportunity to go into this industry because I find that what it taught me and what it allowed me to do is to really expand on skills that I was discovering in different roles that I had, I kind of did this tour of the company. So I started out in purchasing that was my transferable skill from retail into the tech industry. Then I went and I managed one of our largest customers at the time. which was a very interesting opportunity to go from purchasing into sales. But then I went into leading the Cisco practice managing that relationship. What I found in that role for eight years was that I spent way more time with customers and partners than I did when I was in sales. So it became a passion, it became this. Unbelievable, I would say, partnership and opportunity to be able to establish and design a lot of what my team was then able to create. Within that practice, we more than doubled the practice, which was significantly into the billions. The team went from 56 people to 300 people. And then I went into actually standing up the Americas transformation management office. So transformation is definitely literally threaded in my life and in my experiences. And then I went and stood up the Business Innovation Center. So the threads that happened that I felt really interesting learnings, within my experiences at Tech Data were that early on, in my purchasing part of my career, I started to build relationships with logistics, and with it, and with finance, because these were all really key stakeholders, and partners within, you know, the business that we were trying to manage and run. And as I had built some significant partnerships there and moved into that large customer that I then manage for almost three years ended up carrying forward all those relationships and those partnerships into new endeavors that I needed their help with him. And we work together to really build amazing capabilities to manage those very large partners. And then into the Cisco world, it became massively important that we were completely aligned and connected, because our decisions impacted their output and outcome. And vice versa, right. So we needed to be aligned, we needed to have clear lines of communication processes and systems that we were building around this, to be able to scale this business, that thread that became super important along the way, as well as I created the business plan for integrated supply chain services. So it was getting tech data into that fee for service model, which was really great diversity from a profitability and financial perspective. And it was great because it was sparking something new inside of a almost 40 year old company at the time. So I would say the threads within tech data and the learnings were partnerships are super important internally and externally. investing time and those partnerships having to a trust and bi directional, meaning it’s not that you’re partnering with people, but it’s always that you’re expecting something out of it and not giving because understanding what they’re responsible for how they’re even comparable, how they’re, what the priorities are that they’re dealing with is so important, because you can’t just go in to a conversation with your own agenda, and be blind to some of the challenges that they might be dealing with some of the other expectations that they might be responsible for delivering, and just be in your own world. It doesn’t work that way.

Vince Menzione  08:00

But it strikes me that you got to become intimate, you walked the hallways figuratively and literally within the organization like every department in this internal role. And then you flipped it and you went to the client side. So you got to see the client perspective. And then we’ll also have the client integrated across that organization that you’ve become familiar with and built these partnerships with. And then from the other side, from the vendor side, which is also an incredibly important role for an organization like a Tech Data, probably one of the most holistic views of the business of anybody internally to the organization, which probably is what led you to that transformation role.

Angie McCourt  08:38

I think it’s important to note that while I had a lot of information, a lot of knowledge, I understood how the company ran, I love being in a place where I have no clue right now. I love being in the beginner mindset. I don’t know the answer, I have to be curious, I have to show up in a different way. I’m really loving this, it is really rewarding. And it’s also a great growth edge to be on.

Vince Menzione  09:01

How do you approach a role like that? How do you start the process? I remember my first days at Microsoft, what’s it been like for you? Angie

Angie McCourt  09:08

a lot. That’s the two words that I share with everyone. It’s a lot, a new company, new organization, new motions, a lot of information, Microsoft does such a good job with creating a lot of training, really helping to I would say enable and empower their colleagues to be able to show up and have the information and not be left in the dark when they’re trying to do their job. I’ve just tried to go in and embrace it all. So for me, it’s been a lot. What I’ve really enjoyed is the support that I’ve gotten from folks there.

Vince Menzione  09:40

So when you left Tech Data, you didn’t just jump into a role like Microsoft. You took a pause. You wrote a book, you started a coaching practice. You started a podcast. Can you tell us a little bit more about what led you there as opposed to just hopping into another big tech company?

Angie McCourt  09:57

What I realized is I was on a journey for probably really about three years where it was this curiosity of learning new, one thing would lead to the next is so fascinated with the brain. So anything around neurosciences, I really started looking at hypnotherapy. And how do I want to also embrace new ways of reducing stress and anxiety. So I started to really explore some of these new modalities that help us actually live better, feel better, and be able to deal with very big stressful times. for about 15 years, I wanted to write a book, but every single year, I would change the topic, and so it was never landing. And finally, I said, I really liked this topic, I’m going to test it out there and see how people respond and react to it. So my first book is called love your gifts permission to revolutionize authenticity in the workplace. And how that really started to formulate for me was, I put out seven blogs over seven months. And I honed in on these gifts that I was like envisioning and seeing happening in the workplace, but not people fully stepping into or being fully received and appreciated as the reception to that was like really good. I said, You know what, this is what I’m gonna land this is timing wise is perfect. This is what I’m gonna do for the book. So in January of 2020, I created a book proposal is 50 pages, got my thoughts collected around it framework, the structure, the outline of how I wanted to do the book, what was important, sharing and working through limitations and things that hold you back to be able to unlock the gifts. And then how do you integrate it, I was still working at Tech Data, by the way. And so then I went, Okay, well, I don’t know when I’m going to actually have time to write this. In February of 2020. I bought my website, I don’t even know if I was really cognizant and conscientious of what was happening. I think I was being guided down this path. And it was just unfolding. I had no intention of leaving my company at the time. We get into March. And I said, I’m going to do a business plan like this. This is like a real thing. Like I could do this. So I started create a business plan. And I remember this is the very beginning of March, I said, gosh, if I didn’t have this job, I can write this book. And then I would love to do a podcast around some of this to this would be really all tie in really well together. Literally a week later, my boss calls me he’s like, Yeah, we’re gonna disband your team. You can go work for the CIO. And I said, doing what and it wasn’t really clear. And I said, I’m not doing that again. I said, Can I have a package? That was the entire three weeks, and then I was done. And then literally, about a month after I left, I started writing the book. And I did 2000 words a day, four days a week. And I started may 6, I finished July 26 78,000 word books.

Vince Menzione  12:37

This was during the height of COVID. Like literally when COVID hit the universe was telling you need you to go do this.

Angie McCourt  12:43

Yes, I had no intentions of leaving my company. I was a very loyal soldier for many, many years, I took on tons of extra projects, I went and did what they needed me to do. And so that last probably year and a half that I was there, I was starting to unravel that identity quite a bit. I talked about that in my first book, actually, which I think is really, really important. A lot of people get just sucked into that identity of their company, even how they introduce themselves as not as a person hits as a worker. And so I started to have some realizations like, this is not necessarily what I want to be doing where I want to be. So I was already subconsciously, I think going through that motion of where are my values that where’s my alignment at what other opportunities are out there. And I think the fact that literally came out of my mouth without even a thought was, Can I take a package and stuff. I’m very proud of myself for that, because there’s not something I would have done even probably three months earlier,

Vince Menzione  13:39

we’re gonna talk about these interesting times we’re living through but even for me, when I left Microsoft, and I was on your podcast talking about this, I thought, intuitively, I was gonna go back into another big tech company. And then I had the same like premonition if you will. And next thing you know, I’m speaking at the Microsoft conference, and then people are handing me their business cards. So we both went through very similar journeys, I would say, what brought you back, I’m interested in what brought you back in to the tech giant.

Angie McCourt  14:08

I had two books that I actually wrote in a year. The second book is authentic leadership, embracing your archetypal gifts. And that was published in October, I had the podcast which now we’re up to you were episode 43. Last week, and then also I created an app. So I have an app that’s available out on the App Store. And on Google Play Store. It’s called best self activation. And so that was a big mission for me. And once I finished that, and I launched that in August, I was like, Okay, what do I do now? And so I said, if I go back into tech, it’s got to be for a very specific reason. So I did a lot of work on my own self values alignment. Where am I at in my growth journey? What are things that I’m working on developing? What are things that I’m working on practicing? And what is the best place for me to integrate as far as like, who is the best company that I would align with Microsoft was it and they were the only company actually applied for. And I’m very grateful to be there. And what I found is I literally start laughing. Sometimes I’m like God, they use my language. It’s such a perfect alignment. And I know granted, there’s still lots of room for evolution and just shifts and changes. But Satya has got this, I’m so aligned with his belief system in this way of being and how we show up. So I feel really good about that. Because I feel like that’s so important when people feel out of line or they feel stuck. And when I’ve coached clients on that, a lot of times, it’s because they’ve grown and shifted or evolved, and especially through COVID, you see this a lot. they’ve shifted, grown and grown and have shifted a lot into their new self. And now the values and the needs and the wants, and the life practices they’ve put in place may not align with the old company culture with the old way of doing business, or the old way that the company was run are structured. And so they’re like, I feel stuck, I feel misaligned. And that’s where it’s okay. It’s because you’ve grown, it’s because you’ve shifted, and you’ve, you’ve gotten into this new place. And so either there’s, if you don’t want to leave your company, it’s okay, well, you’ve got to figure out how to align into something that makes sense within that company may not be the overall but there might be something that you’re doing specifically, that’s very meaningful, that’s very purposeful for you in that area of work that you’re doing. The other thing is, if you want to leave, then you got to find something that is, it’s super important to have that alignment into where you feel that you can find meaning in the work. And also, what’s important from a needs perspective, a lot of people are like, I want more freedom, I want more flexibility. And some companies are showing up and really offering that Microsoft is one of them. But not every company is right. So there’s still this sense of opportunity from how we lead how we allow people to work. When it’s their at their best, not eight to five, because eight to five does not work for most people. As we’ve gotten to the pandemic people had to like, also teach their kids while they’re remote school. It’s also about our best selves, like, I’m most productive, and I make the best decisions between like 9am and 12pm. I do my best collaboration early afternoon, you hit me at three o’clock, I’m done. I can definitely work through emails, and I can get cleaned up and strategize for the next day. But don’t put me on some big brainstorming ideation session at four o’clock in the afternoon, because I will not be able to show up. My creativity happens to be before I wake up, I actually wake up with ideas in my head.

Vince Menzione  17:38

You bring up some really good points here, I just wanted to hone in on a couple things. First of all, you talked about Microsoft in that culture, and we just had Dr. Mike drove AON for the third time. So this sports psychologists, high performance psychologist who came in the room with Satya at a time when Satya took over the organization and help them that whole mindset and mindfulness journey so that that’s what I think you found when you got to Microsoft is that the organization’s all been trained on this like there’s, they’re an anomaly there. I don’t think there’s any other organization that really has valued mindset the way Microsoft has. And it’s great. It’s shown in the way the company has performed. And then tell tell us more about the leadership book, like you’ve touched on it, you talk through some of the principles, but can you spend a little bit more on what you see, in terms of great leaders in this world? That has changed considerably. I mean, we’ve accelerated more than 10 years in the last three years through the COVID cycle, through the Trent technology transformation that got accelerated. And now through through this time, that’s somewhat like no other maybe or another. You talked about oh, nine, maybe we’re going through a little bit of those type of headwinds? Hopefully not. But what would you recommend to leaders from a leadership perspective? Like what are the principles you embody?

Angie McCourt  18:52

One of the things that I really set like a foundation on is that leadership is evolving. We’re in this middle of this leadership evolution right now. And I think when people can just sit with that for a minute, and say, what does that mean to me? What does that mean to my people, there are a few key things. One is that people have identified how they want to work. So having a different approach and meeting them where they’re at is so critical right now. And we’ve never been in a place in history where we have actually done that. Why it’s important is because when we are able to engage our colleagues in a way that allows them to really embrace the potential and possibilities that they actually have, which if you look at some of the stats historically, for the past 40 years, our disengagement percentage is 75%. Like only 25% of workforce is actually engaged in their work in their company. Okay, well, if we haven’t fixed that in 40 years, I think we’ve got a problem. But that’s where a lot of the kind of human evolution is happening. When people are starting to realize what’s more meaningful to them. They’re breaking away of the robotic mode of living and into more meaningful ways of how they show up every day, how they want to do their work, and what work they want to actually deliver out and contribute out into the world. And the meaning part is really important to people nowadays. The other part of it though, is they’re finding that I’m tired of sacrificing my life for my work. And so there’s this sense of, I’ve got to shift and change my own perspective on this, I have to start working through fears that if I don’t work 60 hours a week, I’m going to lose my job, that if I don’t shift to this productivity model of craziness that I’m not going to be valued. And unfortunately, and fortunately, like that stuff doesn’t work anymore. Productivity isn’t the key thing anymore. Its quality, and its impact. And those are the things that I think as leaders, we have to shift away from our old ways of managing and the performance in the way of Let me see how productive you’re being to get numbers only. It’s, oh, this person actually came up with a great idea. So that’s one piece of it, right? So there’s all these kind of old ways that are shifting. The other thing is, is people not only want to feel that meaning, but they also want to be acknowledged. Because when you think about recognition programs, there’s literally like one or two spots in 1000 People get recognized for something right? I said, What do you mean by that what is really important to you and what we what it comes down to boils down to is acknowledgement, acknowledge that I had a good idea, acknowledge that I contributed to this team acknowledge that I did work late to get this stupid report, knowledge that my presentation was good. And instead of it just being an expected thing, right. And so people are at this place where they’re like, tell me that I’m doing a good job, but tell me in a way that is actually productive, like, give me specific, so to say, I’m doing a good job. The biggest thing is an all of part one in the book, authentic leadership, embracing your archetypal gifts, I go through some of the old behaviors as leaders. So for instance, territory grabbing. So this and this goes against partnering with others internally, externally, okay. So when I call it what I call territory grabbing, I’ve seen this so many times is that, you know, instead of looking at how transformation can actually evolve an organization or business, profitability, whatever is happening for the partners, whatever is happening in that particular model, is that they’re trying to protect what they have in their territory, so their arena, so they’re saying, Well, no, my team reports to me, I have so many people reporting to me, and it needs to stay that way. I can’t lose this to this other group. So we talked about silos in an organization, even matrix organizations, you still have this happening. But it totally goes against partnering. It goes against innovation, and what can actually happen in this world, if we were to let down our own shields like Brene, brown talks about like, let down our own shields, and work together in a way that’s much more productive to move forward. Because all we’re doing is we’re territory grabbing to stay still,

Vince Menzione  23:01

there’s a lot to unpack here, I will be good spend, like, a couple of days here. And yeah, and I’m gonna have to have you back just because there’s so much to cover. But I love what you had to say about territory grabbing. Because when we talk about partnerships, I like to talk about partner mindset. And when it doesn’t exist, when there’s a lack of partner mindset, there’s this I, I’ll refer to territory grabbing, I like to say that in many cases, and you’ve been in the sales side, both in front of customers and on the vendor side, and seeing this, but this heroic mindset, like the heroic sales culture that comes in and says, we ring the bell, and we reward the individual contributor, not the 40 people standing behind them that are on and make that it’s a team effort. And it goes across multiple organizations. And you’ve seen that, like you’ve been a builder, like you’ve gone across all these organizations that built amazing tentacles and relationships in the companies you’ve worked in. So you’ve seen this firsthand is probably one of your leadership strengths. Okay, we got to put links, we’re gonna wait a lot of links to put in we have your app. We have both books. We’re also going to reference to this other book that you you mentioned here earlier, what was the name of the Coaching Habit? Yes, establishing habit, and definitely gonna have your books in here. Awesome. But I do want to make sure we cover some of the other topics. You know, this is the ultimate guide to partnering, we started down this partnering path. What have you seen from the best partners you’ve worked with? What would the best the best do differently? Oh, I

Angie McCourt  24:25

can tell you my absolute favorite partnership was when I was leading the Cisco practice. And I would say it’s on many levels. It wasn’t just who I worked closely with, which was Mike Perez. And I’ll say his name because he’s just amazing. We had this very trusting partnership. And it was very much about bi directional to way like there was no everything, you know, they have to do everything for us. We have to do everything for them. Like there was this what’s best for the team and the partners in the business. And then from a alignment perspective, like where our priorities were aligned, how we were really focused on of being able to keep everybody Intune investments in the right place priorities in the right place shift when we needed to the sync between us was like significant in our teams. And so when you take that into each of the organizations, and we were able to establish those partnerships all the way across at every level. And so when you have trust, when you’re adding value when you listen, and you show up in a really intentional way of how can we do this together, that is so critical and so important. And I think the ongoing, part two, that is, when you showcase that partnership to your teams, and they’re seeing it, they start building it, and that continues, and that continues that, can you so it’s a legacy that just continues, it doesn’t stop, because I left the Cisco team and went and ran transformation management office, you know, it sounds

Vince Menzione  25:53

like you establish the shared vision for success. Between the two organizations you had you did some value alignment to to make sure that like you were all on the same page. And it was a win win. overused word, but short term, but something weird works. It works. And then you use that in a way to go across both organizations, right, that became the compelling reason why we’re doing this. Why are we putting so much energy like you said this earlier about? I need to know that my work matters? Yes. going back and saying this is why your work matters. Like this is what how we this is why it’s important to go do that go that extra mile today on your job and what you do. And then you went across both leadership teams, or maybe growth organizations end to end. And you got everybody involved in the process. And everybody own that shared vision across both organizations.

Angie McCourt  26:45

That’s exactly right. Yeah, it was effort. It was effort. But we jointly did that. And our whole TRL. Both of our teams were like all aligned and combined in it. And it wasn’t just a one time shot. Like there was always education, there was always connection realignment, restating the vision, making sure everybody stayed connected into it. And then when we shifted it, we made sure people knew this is the shift. This is why here’s where we’re focusing. And it was got to the point where honestly, the culture on like, my team, for instance, was all about if we weren’t changing, there was something wrong, which is a great place to be in.

Vince Menzione  27:21

Always iterating. Right. Always refining, refining. Think we covered I always like to ask about the kryptonite. But I think we covered that already. So didn’t we, I think in terms well,

Angie McCourt  27:33

I do have a good example for that, which is really interesting. So that the partner that I had mentioned that I managed for the three years, that was very challenging from a partnership perspective, and I’ll just say mainly, because there were a couple people who I worked closely with at that partner that just a lot of their approaches were very much like I would go okay, what’s, where’s this going? Like there was a lack of trust, right? And so what are they trying to get out of this? Anytime you’re questioning something like that, it’s okay. There’s obviously no trust. But I would always try to think three steps ahead. Like where are they going with this? How do I because I had to protect company assets, I had to protect the business as well, right. And I’m responsible for this. So I’m like, I gotta make sure that it was hard to find the woodwinds in that partnership. And I think it was really challenging. So I literally went to the next role. And a way of riff just totally I think, goodness, like it was very refreshing because I had a finally a trusting relationship and partnership in the business that I was like, Okay, it’s not all like that. Right. But yeah, it the kryptonite part I would say is that when there’s this one directional one way, always like pushing at you challenging and wanting stuff that just if I learned how not to just saying no, but to say no, but or no. When, because they’d never accepted no for anything. But it did learn how to say it was a good bootcamp. But yeah, it was opposites. Total opposites, one roll to the next. So I’m glad that I was able to get out of that just to constantly thinking ahead, like three steps ahead, where are they going with this? What’s going to happen? And what are we going to do? Instead, I could like focus on let’s do this. And let’s trust that we’re going to continue to stay focused in this arena. And we’re going to make impact

Vince Menzione  29:27

such a difference from one role to the many organizations are learning to do more with less. And as you think about how you’re going to reach your revenue targets this year, I recommend you check out partner tap, a founding sponsor of ultimate guide to partnering partner taps pipeline discovery and CO selling platform will help your channel and sales teams to hit their revenue targets faster, even with fewer resources. Partners app gives your teams the new automation and partner data, you need to source more pipeline and close deals faster with your best partners. You can find out more information at partner tap.com. You mentioned trust I the mutual trust, I talked about trust being the oxygen in the room without trust you don’t have you don’t have a true partnership you have. You have a business relationship. You have a vendor relationship, but it’s not a true partnership. And then I think what you were describing to me sounds like scarcity mentality, right? Because there’s no trust in the room. And they’re coming at it from a what’s in it for me? Yeah. And always looking at it from that angle, as opposed to like what’s in it for us mutually together to go do? Right. And you describe the other relationship with Cisco, as just that. Yeah, it’s a mutual trust.

Angie McCourt  30:49

Yeah, totally.

Vince Menzione  30:51

So I’d like to shift for a moment. You know, we’re living in these interesting times, there has been some headwinds in our economy. I’m an optimist, I remain optimistic that our best times I think 2023, at the end of the year is going to be seen as an amazing year. I also believe that during times where there are headwinds, some of the best business relationships, organizations come happens during these times, because it really challenges us to put our best thinking hats on, and in some cases do more with less. What are you seeing?

Angie McCourt  31:24

Yeah, we’ve been in challenging times. This has been three years now, pretty much you know, that we’re at this point of, and this is why the leadership evolution is really sparked sparked up big time, because we’re in this place of still unknowns and uncertainty. And we’re very much one of our needs is typically certainty. Most people that’s one of their needs is they’ve got to have some certainty in their life and in their business and with their team. And so we’re in this great time of uncertainty continued. And yet, we’re still looking for how do we apply what we use to, to how we’re doing business and our leading nowadays, we’re still resisting a little bit. So there’s this opportunity that I look at with the challenging times and the unknowns. And the uncertainty is having a little bit of openness, like data is great for historical data is hard to look into the future. But one thing we forget to leverage in our own toolkit is our intuition. I’ve made so many decisions in business based on my intuition, not just on data, if we are trying, and we are innovating, and we aren’t experimenting on new potential possibilities, then we’re going to sit here in this space. And I think I’m feeling the stagnation going on right now. And what I’m curious about is, if you look on LinkedIn, you see a lot of jobs, a lot of people that have lost jobs in that engineering space. So where do all these skills then settle. And those people who went into those roles and did a lot of work, educating themselves, and learning and training and certifying things are like I want to create, I want to build. And so we’re at this time, where I’m like, looking at this in a very curious way as to what is next. We don’t have Steve Jobs around anymore, who’s our big pusher of innovation. But I think for now, we’re sitting in this stagnated place. And we’re probably going to be here for a little bit. Meaning probably like a year at the stagnated places, we need to simplify, we need to figure out how to maybe make ourselves more efficient inside of our companies. We need to figure out what to actually landing out there technology wise, what are people using? Are people so overwhelmed with technology that they’re at the point where they’re just like backing off of it from a user perspective? What are people needing? What are people using? What are companies needing What are companies using, I’m feeling optimistic that what’s going to come out of this is going to be way better than what we’ve brought into it. And it may be painful for a lot of people in the meantime. But there is an opportunity, I think for people right now just to do that reassessment on themselves to like I went through two years ago now.

Vince Menzione  34:10

Very profound analogy of where we are right now where we need to go. You mentioned intuition. You talked about looking at the data that’s in the rearview mirror. But we need to rely on our intuition. How do you help? How do you recommend that leaders rely on their intuition? What are the steps they need to take to get there because a lot of people don’t rely on their intuition. Right. They had it when they were young. But they get into the business world and they don’t necessarily apply it. What do you recommend for those leaders?

Angie McCourt  34:39

Yeah, I think part of it is Why did you stop applying your intuition in the business world like in school, and as we’re raising as we grow up, like we’re using our intuition all the time, part of it comes down to the conditioning that we’ve had and that could be there was an instance in a meeting 15 years ago, that I said, If something, but it wasn’t backed with data, and I got burned for it, or I was criticized for it, yet, it probably came true. But nevertheless, that criticism stuck with me. And so I protected myself all this time back to Brene. Brown, here’s what happens, we create a plan. And this is what’s not working. Now we create a plan, we say, here’s our annual operating income, here are all of our goals. We create the plan, here’s how we’re executing, and all of a sudden, it’s not working. And we’re going but I don’t understand why isn’t working, tap into deeper, deeper, deeper, why is it not working? Because the data is probably not going to tell you so much, why it’s not working, you’re gonna have to either go get additional inputs from people, how they’re feeling what they’re thinking, you’re going to have to use your own intuition as well. And sometimes just simple meditation is a great way to tap into intuition. What are the things that I used to find my biggest problem solver is when I would leave the office, when I worked at Tech Data leave the office. As soon as I hit the bayside Bridge, which was about six minutes from the parking lot, all of a sudden, a solution would come in. Because the problem is during the day, we’re so distracted, we have so many things going on in our mind is just consumed in all of these areas. And so because of that we’re up in our heads all the time, we’re not necessarily filling in the blanks between the lines, we’re not necessarily allowing ourselves to rest for a second so that we can then say what else? And what if you can just take a step back, block 30 minutes on your calendar. After meetings, give yourself time to consume what happened, come up with something could spark from that, because there’s a lot of ideation that does happen inside of multiple multiple people meetings, give yourself space after meetings, to be able to consume it and process it and say, Oh, what if you know, and then and then you know, you’re coming forward with something else. And it’s and it’s not easy when you’re in an environment where it’s very strictly about the mind and about the data. If you come across with I feel you might be discouraged on that. And I think there’s two things there. One is, go prove them wrong. And that’s what I’ve done in the past. And to is maybe that’s not the right culture for you. And if you are able to go find something else, and that might be an important that from a leadership perspective, the leader is the one who really should be encouraging the space for this new way of bringing our whole selves into the picture.

Vince Menzione  37:22

Well, I love what you have to say here as somebody if you did my Myers Briggs, you know what, I’m a feeling individual. But I’m bringing that to work and and I think also heard you say quieting the mind, whether it’s meditation, or when you got in the car, you were focused in on driving the car for those six minutes. And that’s how your mind cleared out. And you were able to come to a solution, right? Where when you’re in the office, and all the noises hitting you all the all the visual and all the distractions of email work, people coming into your office, all those things?

Angie McCourt  37:55

Exactly, yes, yes.

Vince Menzione  37:57

So and you you had been an amazing guest, we’re gonna provide all the links to all the things we talked about today. But for our listeners, hoping to optimize for success in 2023. Any closing advice or recommendations for them?

Angie McCourt  38:12

You know, really, from a balanced perspective, I know there’s a lot of companies back to Office, there’s a lot of shift and change happening again. And it may go against the life that you’ve been establishing life practices that you’ve been establishing meaning eating healthier, taking a walk at night, slowing into your day a little bit. Because now you’re having to do the commute again or back to the office, don’t give away what you established. Like, really try to hold that practice, because it’s probably been really beneficial for you and for your family as well. And I am a big proponent of protect what you need. Identify what you need, protect what you need in your world, and to ask for and share what you need with your leadership. Because I think that is so important for leaders to actually listen and be supportive, and be really helpful in a way that can help that person be able to continue their life practices that they’ve added into their world, I would say be really conscientious about not going back into robotic mode. Yeah, bring your day fluid, stay fluid, find your flow, stay fluid, you will find you can do more with less. You can have much more clarity in your mind won’t be so scrambled all the time because you’ve got all these to do lists and actions and whatnot. Tap into your intuition more and allow for flow so be more fluid in what you’re doing in your day. And in your business.

Vince Menzione  39:44

I love this. I can’t wait to share it with the world. You’ve been an amazing guest I so enjoyed. I’ve so enjoyed getting to know you recently.

Angie McCourt  39:53

Both. Yes, thank you too.

Vince Menzione  39:56

So there you have it. Another amazing guest joins ultimate A Guide to partnering. And I hope you enjoyed this interview as much as I did. Odds are if you’re a technology partner executive, and hearing my voice, chances are you too, are looking to accelerate your success through partnerships. I mean, let’s face it, we all have seen partnerships that look good on paper, but never live up to their expected results. There are a lot of reasons why partnerships fail, and at ultimate partnerships, we help you get it right by applying a proven set of best practices and framework that’s used by leading partners working with Microsoft, and other technology giants. If you want to learn more, follow the link in the show notes, or visit our website at Ultimate Guide to partnering.com.

Announcer  40:49

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/ultimate Guide to partnering. We’ll catch you next time on The ultimate guide to partnering