Develop Great Managers

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 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 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.

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.

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 of defining your goals.

I hope that you find this valuable!

It is a new year, time to think about goals!

I will cover the value of goals, some possible downsides and how to tie goals to vision, mission, and strategy. This is for work. For personal goals, a similar process will be followed.

I hope you enjoy!

Welcome to the first Develop Great Managers podcast for 2020.

This will be a new and fun year!!

I start by celebrating 2019. We then move into what will be different. Before I get to that, I would like to stop and celebrate 2019. Number one on the list was the launch of this podcast as well as growing subscribers well above the goal of 500 to more than 900!

Thank you!

Now on to 2020.

In order to make the podcasts more valuable, I will move to focus more deeply on the topics that are most important to you. This will give me more time to get into the details.

I will spend one to two months on each topic. During this time, some of the podcasts will be just me, and others will include invited guests. There will continue to be interviews with great managers. These will be interspersed with podcasts on various topics.

Before getting into the topics that I plan to cover, I discuss why managers are so important. I share information from Google and Gallup.

I then get into what makes a great manager and how the topics will address these.

Thank you again for a great 2019. Here is to an even better 2020!

In this podcast, I talk to Stanimir Markov, Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder at Runecast, about his career path.

Prior to Runecast, Stanimir worked for IBM where he held a number of roles. He started in Windows Technical Support, expanding into VMware and Citrix, and then becoming the first member of a new team of Virtualization Architects. And prior to IBM, Stanimir was in Technical Support at Aplus.net.

Stanimir is a VCDX, the highest level of certification from VMware.  He also has additional certifications from VMware and Citrix. He received his degree in Computer Science from the Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridiski.

I got to know Stanimir while I was at VMware. I was working on VMware Skyline, a support product that has some overlapping capabilities with Runecast. We met so that I could share what we were doing in the hope that Stanimir could evolve Runecast in a way that complemented rather than competed with Skyline.

These conversations were excellent. I had the opportunity to watch Stanimir continue to drive his company forward, even while VMware was delivering new products at an accelerated rate. All of this demonstrated the skills and leadership that Stanimir has and led me to interview him for the podcast.

I hope you enjoy my interviews with Stanimir!

In this podcast, I interview Stanimir Markov, Chief Executive Officer, and Co-founder at Runecast, a company that provides real-time VMware SDDC issue analysis & security compliance.

Prior to this, Stanimir worked for IBM where he held a number of roles. He started in Windows Technical Support, expanding into VMware and Citrix, and then becoming the first member of a new team of Virtualization Architects. And prior to IBM, Stanimir was in Technical Support at Aplus.net.

Stanimir is a VCDX, the highest level of certification from VMware.  He also has additional certifications from VMware and Citrix. He received his degree in Computer Science from the Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridiski.

I got to know Stanimir while I was at VMware. I was working on VMware Skyline, a support product that has some overlapping capabilities with Runecast. We met so that I could share what we were doing in the hope that Stanimir could evolve Runecast in a way that complemented rather than competed with Skyline.

These conversations were excellent. I had the opportunity to watch Stanimir continue to drive his company forward, even while VMware was delivering new products at an accelerated rate. All of this demonstrated the skills and leadership that Stanimir has and led me to interview him for the podcast.

I hope you enjoy my interviews with Stanimir!

In this podcast, I talk to John Dolan, Strategic Advisor and Board Member at Ascend Cloud Solutions, about his career path.

Prior to taking on this position, John was Global Vice President for Software-Defined Data Center Support at VMware.

John spent more than 14 years at VMware in the Technical Support organization, where he led global organizations across EMEA and APJ. He did this from Cork, Ireland where he also held the role of Campus Site Lead.

Prior to VMware, John spent a number of years working for EMC in Technical Support, helping them to build a support team in Ireland.

I got to know John while at VMware when I was in engineering within the Integrated Systems Business Unit. I was working on designs for VMware customer deployments and John was providing support for these same customers. I then had a chance to spend a lot of time with John and his team when I joined the leadership team in Global Services.

I really enjoyed working with John. He was incredibly focused on helping customers to be successful. I was helping redefine how we supported customers by moving us to a proactive model, delivering new capabilities such as chat, and delivering in product support. To do this, John and I had to work through the many challenges in scaling this to the huge number of customers that VMware has.

I am super excited that John has taken on a new role with Ascend Cloud Solutions. His experience, expertise, and work ethic will help Ascend to be successful.

I hope you enjoy my interviews with John!