- So a lot of corporate leadership coaches ask this question. I'd like to get your feedback on it. - Oh, yeah? - If you had to pick you know, one Golden Girl which one would you be? - Rue McClanahan, she was the sassy one. - Uh huh, that would be you. - That'd be me. - It's lunchtime, and this is Brad Anderson's Lunch Break. Two of my favorite things about Microsoft are the smart people that constantly visit campus and the great fleet of shuttles. Whenever I can I try to take advantage of both of these things and I grab lunch with some of the tech industry's best and brightest. (upbeat peppy music) Okay, so let's have a little fun. You and I can play this game called This or That. - [Nicole] Okay, fantastic. - [Brad] Epic. - I said fantastic. This could go off the rails. - Oh, this is fine. So I'm gonna give you like two topics, and then I'll give you some kind of word or description. You're gonna tell me is it one, two, or both. - Okay. - Okay? So your two terms are transatlantic flights. - Okay. - Or World of Warcraft. Okay, do you know much about World of Warcraft? - A little bit. - [Brad] Alright. - I had to stop playing so that I could finish writing my dissertation, yes. (laughing) - Okay, alright, here we go. You would do something unspeakable in an exchange for an upgrade. - Transatlantic flight. - Okay, I think my boys would say both. You have too much personal baggage to be able to sit comfortably. (laughing) - Um, World of Warcraft. - Walking the floor at a tech conference. - Yes? - Or joining a fight club. People get more aggressive the longer they're there. - [Tim] I guess the fight club. - Yeah, I don't know. That could be both. I've seen people at the tech conference before. - It could be both. Yeah, it could be both. - There ya go, okay. You go back home and brag about how many sessions you were in. - [Tim] That could be both. - Yeah, so a big part of the work that you do is really deepening and broadening the partnerships that Microsoft has. - Right. - And so, you know, there will be a lot of CIOs and senior leaders who will be watching you know, what we're talking about here. How does the work that you do impact their lives and make them better and their organizations better? - [Peggy] I think we've had more of a focus over the last several years on the partnership aspect and kind of moving from this transactional relationship to more of a strategic partnership relationship, and that's opened up a lot of doors for us and our partners. And rather than, you know, approaching it from a transaction we can say, you know, what do our joint customers need? What problems are they trying to solve? And then that helps us look at areas of collaboration that we can do with partners, and I think the opportunities for both sides have increased. - [Brad] Totally. - Yeah, we take a lot of the friction out of it for them so if they have to do something manually that sort of integrates our two products our partner's and our own and we can put them together in a seamless fashion. Um, that's sort of a win for all three of us. - So over the years you've interviewed a ton of like, the tech heavy stars. - Yeah. - Right? - Yes. - Any one of them leave you totally like wow that was amazing? - [Tim] I did interview Steve Ballmer. - Yeah. - Um, so that was quite fun, and his character was not quite what I expected when I first met him. He was uh-- - Lot more low key in an interview? - Yeah, I guess so, yes. Yes, and I liked him actually. I think he was full of life and full of enthusiasm. I really appreciated that. - Yeah, well people know Steve for kind of like the stage presence, but when you're in a small group you know, and you just have this conversation, he really is a great-- - Yeah, and very sharp. - Exactly, just a great guy. I always loved those times I got to spend with Steve like that. We talk a lot about this transition to the cloud and the culture change that it is for our customers. We've had to go through that internally. You know, I've gotten hundreds and hundreds of engineers who have built on prem products for, you know, for some of them for decades. Now some of that skill set is implacable in the cloud, but we've had to fundamentally relearn different aspects of what it means to build cloud services, to operate them, you know, the architecture is different than a client server architecture. So we've had to go through that same cultural transition internally that many customers right now are facing as we're helping them and pushing them to move to the cloud, but we've had to go through it first. - [Jeff] I have started, and I think people would be surprised about this from the SharePoint guy, I start when I'm sitting down with the CIO or I'm on my phone, let me show you how. Look, here's, you know, see all my email, my calendar, but wait, it gets better. Here's OneDrive bring up all my docs. Yeah, that's pretty good. Here's how I share things. You know, let's keep going. Let me show you the new SharePoint app where I can show you my intranet, and I can show you my collab sites and the publishing sites, and search on people and documents and that blows people's mind. They say wow if I could deliver all that just to our users they'd be great. And they say on top of that it is secure. - [Ben] This stuff isn't really a technology barrier. This isn't really a technology change It's a cultural change. It's a huge change. - Massive culture change. - And you know, if we talk about tools or if we talk about technology first without actually addressing the fact that this about people, because we hear every company has their Uber moment coming. It's actually about how do you think about your business in terms of what your customers want and will want into the future and what your people can fundamentally deliver. So it's really about that human element and just spending time kind of thinking about the future and your future. (peppy whimsical music)
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