First 60 days @ Avanade

Completed 60 days @ Avanade. It looks like I just transitioned last week from Microsoft. Journey so far has been enriching and full of new experiences and most importantly full of learnings from application of my experience at Microsoft in a new work culture.

Key Learnings:

• Switch from a Products company to Professional Services company can be difficult sometimes especially for someone with no prior Consulting experience. My experience at Microsoft Consulting Services, Pre-sales exposure in Partner Enterprise Architect Team (PEAT) at Microsoft (and not to mention experience with 2 IPP long time back) made the transition easier.
• Branding for Services offerings and everything around it, is as important as Product branding. I am sure most of the Professional Services focus on branding; but Avanade is super focused on this. “Go Orange” is a key mantra here. In first 60 days; I realized that branding and templates do help in easing the on-boarding experience and learning aspects for employees in addition to cost reduction and consistent outcome / delivery for customers.
• Developing network and meeting as many people as possible is key to success in settling in a new role. In a new role, it is good to be in listening mode more and understand the work culture and context. Earlier you get used to the organization culture better it is. Instead of mastering everything yourself; focus on leveraging network.
• Look for 2 mentors. 1 with loads of experience in organization (helps in understanding work culture and answering lot of those WHY questions) and another with ~12 months in organization (helps with easier on-boarding and ready references for do and don’ts and not to mention trivial operational guidance’s and challenges)
• Develop a 30 / 60 / 90-day plan and review the same with your mentor / Career advisor. Do strike a right balance for learning, mandatory trainings, certification (if any required for the new role), business as usual activities, on-boarding process and meetings with key stakeholders. Do keep some time to reflect upon your learnings and experiences and when in doubt always clarify things with your assigned mentor or manager. If you got into an expanded GEO role, do keep sometime to understand the work culture and challenges of new geography. Most important is to refine and update the plan every 2 weeks. I guess some point of time this plan need to get expanded and converted to your execution strategy for your goals and targets.
• Nothing new about it but it’s kind of must in a new job. Establish a regular rhythm with your manager and spend some quality time in understanding key success criteria, role & responsibility clarity, annual goals and targets, key focus / priority area, manager working style etc. Do setup sometime with your skip level too and replay your understanding of role & responsibilities, priorities and key success criteria and annual goals and targets.
• Ensure that you maintain NDA information with your previous employer while sharing information. Sometime it can be hard (there is very fine line in sharing your experience / applying your experience and disclosing NDA information and compete information) while you are in an intense business conversation for similar customer / offerings etc.
• It is good to be aggressive and disruptive in your solution approach (new fresh thinking is anyways expected from experienced hires) but don’t forget to “Sell what you have in Truck” instead of trying to revamp too many things upfront or waiting for developing the new multi-million business offering / product. Constructive feedback is key and do share the same with right stakeholders (and if you are not sure of right stakeholders then atleast document the same along with your ideas; as you will lose it very fast with business as usual and target pressures)
• Don’t rush for getting in-front of customer upfront. Spend some time in going through the defined on-boarding process, organization Vision, Mission and Work ethics principles, understand the policies as going through them helps in understanding business challenges, culture, growth aspirations, goals and company directions. Do spend time in familiarizing yourself with tools, processes and different segmentation of organization business and hierarchy. Trust me you don’t spend time on these in first 30 days; you will never get time for them easily.
• Understand the Selling Process and what’s my role in each Sales stage helped me getting upto pace faster and confirmed the fact that Solution shaping is way beyond “Technical Solution Architecture” and Product fitment.
• Irrespective of your past work experience and large number of business trips in your previous organization; always pay attention (like your first ever business trip and first ever customer meeting) to your first business trip, first expense report and first timesheet submission. Your first business meeting is like a fresh start, do spend some time in practicing your new introduction and roles & responsibilities.
• “No question is a stupid question” … I guess is very apt in a new job and do exercise it as much as possible.
• I am sure in past you have got advice to take break between 2 jobs. I think that’s important but equally important is to spend sometime 1 week before your last day in updating your personal subscriptions / profiles for email alias and Mobile number (if your employer owns it). Forgot Password also will not help later 🙂
• Don’t forget to update your LinkedIn profile.