Develop Great Managers

In this podcast, I interview John Gilmartin, Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Hyperconverged Infrastructure Business Unit at VMware.

John has been in high tech for all of his career. He started as a consultant at Marakon Associates, moved to Dell as a brand manager, then to VMware in product management. He left VMware to try working at a small company. He joined Coraid to run product marketing. He then returned to VMware and has quickly grown his responsibility to the role that he has today.

John has a computer science degree from Princeton and took some time out during his career to go back and get his MBA from Harvard.

I got to know John at VMware and worked for him for a couple of years. John is an incredibly well-rounded leader and manager that does a great job of balancing the urgent with the important, all while remaining incredibly calm.

I know you will get a lot out of my conversation with John!

Welcome to the latest Develop Great Managers podcast focused on helping managers with their work at home employees.

Work at home has never been more important. Learn from the experts how to evaluate if work from home makes sense, and if it does, how to ensure success.

I hope you find this valuable!

This is the third of three podcasts on Office Politics - something important to everyone. 

I have broken the topic into three parts: Introduction; How You Can Be Successful; and How to Manage Your Team. In today’s podcast, I will cover "Introduction."

I cover how you can be a role model, minimizing politics in your team, aligning and supporting the company culture, championing members of your team, recognizing and supporting diversity and providing positive transparency.

I hope you enjoy!

This is the second of three podcasts on Office Politics - something important to everyone. 

I have broken the topic into three parts: Introduction; How You Can Be Successful; and How to Manage Your Team. In today’s podcast, I will cover "Introduction."

I cover being thoughtful, reading the system (company), building a good reputation, and finding common ground.

I hope you enjoy!

Now for the topic that all of you have been waiting for - Office Politics!

I have broken the topic into three parts: Introduction; How You Can Be Successful; and How to Manage Your Team. In today’s podcast, I will cover "Introduction."

I will give you a definition, share the reality of office politics, give you a view into good and bad, and end with some great examples.

I hope you enjoy!

In this podcast, I talk to Alex Bewley, Director of Engineering at VMware, where he has been for the last 5 years, about his career path.

Prior to VMware, Alex started and ran two small companies. The first was focused on Professional Services for Sun Microsystems customers. And the second was a software company, delivering performance, availability, capacity management and costing tools.

Before this, Alex was a systems engineer at Sun Microsystems.

I got to know Alex while I was at VMware. He joined my team when I moved into Global Services. Alex was a part of a team doing research into tools that could dramatically improve customer support. I joined the organization to reinvent support. What a perfect fit!

I worked with Alex and the other researchers to build a team to take their prototype and turn it into the core of VMware Skyline, a proactive support product.

I wanted to interview Alex due to the breadth of his experience, and because he has worked and managed his team while being remote from headquarters.

I hope you enjoy the interview.

Alex Bewley is a Director of Engineering at VMware, where he has been for the last 5 years.

Prior to VMware, Alex started and ran two small companies. The first was focused on Professional Services for Sun Microsystems customers. And the second was a software company, delivering performance, availability, capacity management and costing tools.

Before this, Alex was a systems engineer at Sun Microsystems.

I got to know Alex while I was at VMware. He joined my team when I moved into Global Services. Alex was a part of a team doing research into tools that could dramatically improve customer support. I joined the organization to reinvent support. What a perfect fit!

I worked with Alex and the other researchers to build a team to take their prototype and turn it into the core of VMware Skyline, a proactive support product.

I wanted to interview Alex due to the breadth of his experience, and because he has worked and managed his team while being remote from headquarters.

I hope you enjoy the interview.

Now that you understand why you need goals, how to define them, and how to operationalize them, let's talk about rewards! For the goal topic, I break it into four aspects: What; Define; Operationalize; and Reward. In today’s podcast, I will cover “Reward.”

There are four areas that are discussed.

1. Review the Results
2. Recognize Failures
3. Celebrate Successes
4. Prepare for Next Year

I hope that you find this valuable!

Now that you understand why you need goals and how to define them, let's talk about how to operationalize them! For the goal topic, I break it into four aspects: What; Define; Operationalize; and Reward. In today’s podcast, I will cover “Define.”

I will talk in detail about the five aspects to operationalizing your goals.

1. Develop a Plan
2. Assign an Owner
3. Measure and Report
4. Review and Adjust
5. Finalize Results

I hope that you find this valuable!

Now that you understand why you need goals, let's talk about how to define them! For the goal topic, I break it into four aspects: What; Define; Operationalize; and Reward. In today’s podcast, I will cover “Define.”

I will talk in detail about the six aspects to defining your goals.

1. Make Them Motivating
2. Link to the Business or Your Vision
3. Engage Others
4. Make Them SMART
5. Write Them Down
6. Make Them Visible

I hope that you find this valuable!