The first week of a new year is a great time to reflect a little on what went well over the last twelve months (along with areas that could use a little improvement) and to start to think about the conversations that the next twelve months will bring.
On a personal note, last year was a challenging one for me. I made a conscious decision to spend more time at home with the family, and took on a new role in Microsoft that would make that possible. So far, five months later, it has been a significant mental shift and has obviously resulted in a very different daily routine.
My previous three years were spent as Regional Technology Officer for our Asia Pacific business and pulled me into discussions about pretty much any technology policy related topic across Asia and the South Pacific. A broad set of topics spread across an even broader set of countries, both in terms of geography and demographics.
This new position revolves around the standards setting communities in Australia and New Zealand with three main areas of focus;
- Increase Microsoft participation in local standards development and testing activity
- Understand standards related requirements and policies in Australia and New Zealand
- Help the product development groups understand how they need to support us
The first five months have been a genuine voyage of discovery for me. I’ve met a long list of people in both countries with a lot of enthusiasm for IT standardization and all that it entails, I’ve been introduced to each of the respective government views on the role of IT standards in systems design and deployment (sometimes expressed in no uncertain terms!) and I’ve crossed the Tasman Sea more times than I care to count.
At the same time I’ve been discovering new parts of Microsoft. For the last fifteen years I have held various senior roles in our Public Sector sales organization, leaving that behind to join a more central corporate function has involved building new networks inside of the company and expanding the number of topics that I need to involve myself with inside of Microsoft. On some levels it amazes me that it is possible to spend almost a decade and a half with a company and still find news areas that drive significant personal growth within the organization.
Finally, the field facing team that I’m now part of is a new component to our corporate standards group. Our corporate standards organization has been around for a few years now but last year was the first time we put dedicated people in the national subsidiaries with a focus on standards related work. The result, as with any new team, is that we have had to find ways to work together. Just getting to know the people that I work directly with has taken up a significant chunk of time over the last few months.
In many ways 2009 was a reboot and restart year for me… it involved massive personal and professional change and I think I’m only just starting to feel like I have some sense of clarity around what I need to be doing from here.
I’m conscious that a number of things I wanted to do in 2009 didn’t get done, my most significant failing over the last few months has probably revolved around communication. This blog is an example, it has been getting very little of my attention in recent months – I’m assuming that readers have little or no interest in the details of my long list meetings involving introductions to new people and organizations.
So I begin 2010 with a long list of new people that I now work with (inside and outside of Microsoft), some ideas around how I think Microsoft can do a better job of working in this area in Australia and New Zealand and a handful of personal projects that I want to get done over the next twelve months that I think will benefit the standards development environment in general.
I’ll find the time over the next few days to write up a few of those in detail… I promise!