The Data Binge

Today's episode focuses on the life-cycle of creating healthier human experiences through communication, how to grow and maintain truly collaborative communication environments (especially with customers or clients), as well as the importance of mindfulness in a society that is becoming ever more digitally fatigued, and increasingly connected.

Connie Barnes, National Manager for Healthcare and Life Sciences - Enterprise Sales at Microsoft, joins us and discusses her mindset and perspective on how she communicates, listens, and invests in the moment as she leads, collaborates, and challenges colleagues and customers.

Some key takeaways from the talk:

-Effective communication really starts with listening, and humility

-The importance of being hyper invested in the moment, vs thinking about the outcome of the conversation

-(2) things that sabotage the opportunity to be collaborative: emotion, and a fixed mindset

-Approaching every situation with calm, clarity, and kindness

-Mindfulness and technology: tools and tips for combining these two worlds

Thank you so much for listening!

Contact Connie:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/connie-barnes-50b4a7/

Resources:

Books Mentioned:

Getting to Yes

https://www.amazon.com/Roger-Fisher-Getting-Yes-【2018】/dp/B07H9X5PMW/ref=sr_1_6?keywords=getting+to+yes&qid=1554668278&s=gateway&sr=8-6

Can't Hurt Me

https://www.amazon.com/Cant-Hurt-Me-Master-Your/dp/1544512287/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=david+goggins&qid=1554668370&s=gateway&sr=8-1

Podcasts Mentioned:

https://findingmastery.net/john-donovan/

Connie's Current Book List:

https://www.amazon.com/Legacy-James-Kerr/dp/147210353X/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=legacy&qid=1554668469&s=gateway&sr=8-1

Connie's Current Podcasts:

https://gretchenrubin.com/podcasts/

http://happierinhollywood.com/

https://thepillarlife.com/sheri-nancy-show/

http://www.jolentagreenberg.com/by-the-book

Today you'll be excited to hear that this is the first of a multi-part segment where we focus specifically on Industry 4.0, which is the emergence of a novel epoch in human productivity and innovation where cloud technology (so things like predictive maintenance of machines and IoT devices with computing power at the edge) and automation come together to augment the human worker. Most of the conversation will be around the digital transformation of manufacturers, specifically in the high tech space, so you can think about everything from semiconductors to automobiles, and the conversations go beyond to the applicability to process improvement.

Greg Vigil joins us today on the show, Greg is currently an Industry Solutions Director, leading a team of data scientists, solution architects, and business strategists within the manufacturing vertical at Microsoft, an enterprise customer facing organization. We cover everything from how manufacturers should be looking to harness their most valuable asset, data, to what it takes to go beyond the POC stage into developing production grade solutions at the shop floor level that meet process improvement goals.

Key concepts covered:

-Industry 4.0: The merging of cloud based tech with automation, and the worker

-Where to start? “Think big, start small, go fast”

-Mapping the manufacturers goals to the their richest asset: DATA

-The importance of the unique and differentiated partnership: transactional vs transformational engagements

Ways you can reach Greg:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregjvigil/

Resources:

https://www.pwc.com/us/en/industries/industrial-products/library/industrial-digital-ecosystem.html?_ga=2.201036845.2017094280.1518378701-2139349531.1518274246

usblogs.pwc.com/emerging-technology/how-industry-4-0-changes-business/

Thank you for listening!

Nate Yohannes joins us from Microsoft. Nate is currently a Director of Business Development, within the Artificial Intelligence, IoT, Intelligent cloud group, focused specifically on Microsoft’s strategic relationships with mobile operators and business development in emerging markets.

Nate brings with him an impressive perspective on the importance of connectivity (energy) to our society, and why tackling big challenges that accelerate internet access, both physically and financially, have been on the an integral focus point of the U.S. Federal Government, and also on the heart and mind of his team.

Key takeaways from the talk:

-Experiences from Nate sitting on the White House Broadband Opportunity Council, under former president Barack Obama: his work on AI currently and why bandwidth & latency are national security concerns

-Big trends and emerging partnerships in the AI/Telecoms space: Conversational AI, The intelligent home , AR for telecom, Computer vision

-Your network is your net worth: learnings from his parents, political refugees from Eritrea who taught him the importance of maximizing oneself through self-investment and education

This is an incredibly valuable listen, and I personally took so much away from it. Looking forward to comments and really hoping you enjoy!

Here's how to contact Nate:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/nateyohannesgovernmentaffairs/

This talk covers 5 big perspectives I have discovered from my experiences, and the experiences and observations of peers, mentors, leaders, and people who have succeeded and won in the growth engine of the digital era: sales.

The episode was based on a LinkedIn publication I posted on November 5, of 2018, by the same title: The "Outcome"​ Seller: 5 Strategic Perspectives on Selling in the Digital Era. They are:

1. You have be customer obsessed - and this includes being smart enough on their topic areas to challenge your customers or the people you are trying to advocate to

2. Establish credibility, and one really strong way of doing that is by specializing

3. You have to be a consumption economist, we live in a world where new business models are emerging, people are consuming services on everything from cloud storage to automobiles, understanding these trends are hyper important

4. To be effective, and to actually care, you have to find your passion and the utilize the passion of others

5. Branding is everything - it's so important to have a holistic and omni-channel method for how you digitize your thought IP, whether it be words, voice, or video - it’s the best way to reach the most amount of people, the most quickly.

You can find the publication here, along with all links and data that I covered in the podcast episode.

The "Outcome"​ Seller: 5 Strategic Perspectives on Selling in the Digital Era

Thank you so much for listening!

Feel free to follow me on LinkedIn, or Instagram!

Today's episode features Tim Salau, an extraordinarily gifted and hard-working community builder, Tim is currently a Product Manager at Microsoft in Redmond, and works with the Customer Care Intelligence team, developing AI powered bot frameworks, to help customer service oriented businesses create, deploy, and manage bots through a broad suite of services, tools, and platforms.

We cover the following items:

-Communities, how they are built, and why they are important

-The power of purpose, for personal and business

-The authentic self, and leadership through openness, growth, connection, and love

-What businesses should be thinking about when productizing into digital spaces

-The Future of Work: working to live, NOT living to work

Resources :

Humans 2.0 Podcast:

How to Reach Tim:

Facebook:

LinkedIn:

Instagram:

Thanks for listening!

Feel free to follow me on LinkedIn, or Instagram!

Ali Powell joins us for today's chat. Ali is currently the General Manager of Customer Success at Microsoft, representing large enterprise customers in the Southwest. Ali has almost 14 years with the business, and we talk broadly about his team's charter for customer success and why it's so important in the emerging digital and innovation economy. We also go deeper on topics ranging from customer understanding and empathy, all the way to building diverse and inclusive teams and how to go about making contributions to solve the world's problems.

Big takeaways include the following:

1. The way businesses use technology today is based on a more granular consumption model than in previous eras, and helping businesses with incremental wins that allow the tech to make business priorities effective, is critical

2. Customer Success focus areas should include the following:

-Understanding the need

-Aligning the need to where business is headed

-Making sure there is a smooth integration and adoption

3. Contributing to solving the world's problems doesn't have to be complicated; look for a problem, focus on solving it, tell a story that supports the uniqueness of the challenge and why it should be solved , use networks as "currency", tackle one small problem at a time

4. Diversity and inclusion is about building platforms for people to feel comfortable, to develop courage and also to empower others with the courage to find the freedom in their voice to contribute and add value.

Resources: Treasures from Africa

http://www.treasuresfromafrica.com/

https://www.facebook.com/Treasures-From-Africa-218553888175625/

Books: Leaving Microsoft to Change the World

How to contact Ali:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ali-powell-8b61402/

Thanks for listening!

Feel free to follow me on LinkedIn, or Instagram!

Today's talk features Sara Nagy, an AI Evangelist at Microsoft, working with the Microsoft AI engineering team to help customers with their journey to a greater future through these advanced technologies.

You'll find in this episode, a very informative and highly energetic talk on topics ranging from how to be thoughtful about your career path, what people at the top level are concerned about in regards to the future of AI, and what is working to unblock some of these big challenges.

With over 1200 speaking engagements under her belt she also talks about how to be a successful speaker and deliver a great message, and finally we have some pieces on the true purpose of AI in developing human intelligence.

Notable points taken away from the talk:

-The biggest blockers for successful technology adoption: culture, legacy thought, legacy systems

-If you are scared of a future ruled by robots and AI, is it your job to challenge that future and guide the changes for a more fruitful human existence reality

-the most successful AI adoptions come from progressive leaders, who test and develop solutions internally, to get change ownership from individuals at the organization and successful buy in before customer scale

-the entire purpose of AI is to augment human thinking, we should all be concentrating on these ideas

How to contact Sara:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sara-nagy-22463a/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/saranagy

Thanks for listening!

Feel free to follow me on LinkedIn, or Instagram!

A fascinating talk with Cecil Sunder, a hyper AI Business focused solutions leader at Microsoft, where we spend the majority of the time talking about the tactical and strategic approaches for deeper partnerships with big businesses, and how Artificial Intelligence is being leveraged today, to create seamless customer experiences and to accelerate products to market. You are in for a treat!

Big ticket items covered on the chat:

1) How military experience helps develop effective approaches to technology adoption: acceleration, evaluation, and implementation within limited resources

2) Why vision, belief, and conviction are 60-70% of the what business leaders need to have, to be successful in the innovation economy

3) The importance of a partnership: what technology vendors must bring to the table, and how business leaders should be leveraging their expertise in their subject matter area to create valuable, scalable, and sustainable solutions to big challenges

Books referenced:

https://www.amazon.com/Crossing-Chasm-3rd-Disruptive-Mainstream/dp/0062292986/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1542813655&sr=8-1&keywords=crossing+the+chasm

You can contact Cecil:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/cecil08businessweek/

Randy Holloway joined Microsoft in 2004, and brings with him deep experiences working with global businesses, and leading private cloud and public cloud specialty teams. Now, as the leader of the Intelligent Cloud solutions team in the Southwest, his focus is centered around helping customers transform and adopt solutions, and creating an internal culture that drives business outcomes. Randy has the look and feel of a true visionary, and his excitement around building technology that focuses on creating tremendous business impact, while also delivering novel business models, makes this episode a must listen!

Key Take-aways from the talk:

The importance of moonshot thinking - how to approach driving dramatic change in outcomes we cannot yet foresee

How to approach problems sets: perspective and mindset

Thinking bigger comes down to culture: optimization vs reframing

Success in this new environment of unbounded possibility and low barrier to entry

The technologists of tomorrow: building dynamic teams in the era of Digital & AI

Books referenced:

The Innovator's Dilemma

The IT Value Stack: A Boardroom Guide to IT Leadership

Slack

You can contact Randy

LinkedIn

Twitter

Please feel free to follow me on LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, Medium, or to contact me directly at [email protected]

Thank you so much for listening!

Today's chat features Arleen Abarquez. Arleen is a digital advisor with Microsoft Digital, a customer facing team at Microsoft that helps big businesses re-invent themselves in the digital age. Arleen brings with her 30 years of experience in the technology industry, and her ability to understand large and strategic initiatives central to how businesses operate, and her ability to help businesses see through to their digital vision & journey, are the focal points of her success.

Key Learnings from the episode:

1) Be a team member to your customers, and come in with the right attitude: understanding, good listening skills, and empathy

2) Digital re-invention: start with an envisioning process, and innovate through strategy sessions, putting structure to a customers' digital journey

3) How to be heard (women & minority voices in technology): building credibility, authority, and trust

4) Biggest learning in the last year: teaming and going into the digital future with others that have similar goals and complimentary perspectives

You can contact Arleen via email: [email protected]

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arleenabarquez/

Please feel free to follow me on LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, Medium, or to contact me directly at [email protected]

Thank you so much for listening!