Director of Product Management, Strategic Missions and Technologies at Microsoft
Can you please provide a little introduction about yourself
I am currently a Director of Product Management in Microsoft’s Strategic Missions and Technologies division, the company’s business acceleration and scale-up arm. I am a former 20+ year technology analyst focusing mainly on artificial intelligence, applied emerging technologies and enterprise innovation. I have worked in and served as a non-exec director and board member for several startups throughout my career, but one of my passions is working with CIOs. I am currently a member of the CIO100 and Next CIO judging panels in the UK for CIO.com which recognise the most transformational CIOs and next generation of IT leaders each year.
What has your journey to your position been like? What path have you taken?
My path to this point has not been a predictable one! Growing up in a small town in Canada, I studied at a small but reputable liberal arts university on the east coast of the country and there I met a phenomenal professor who encouraged me to study for a master's abroad where I ended up at St Andrew’s University in Scotland studying economics. My background therefore is largely business-related but I ended up doing much of my post-grad work at the intersection of business and technology which landed me my first job working for a tech VC fund in London. From there I became a technology analyst where I gained his technical experience to set me up for the work I do today. My experience as a technology analyst for over two decades has enabled me to acquire deep technical understanding through a process of continuous learning, a capability that comes in handy today in my engineering role focused on future horizon products inside Microsoft.
Has it always been your vision to reach the position you’re at? Was your current role part of your vision to become a tech leader?
I would say that aspects of my role have always been part of my vision. Working in next horizon emerging technologies for a fantastic firm like Microsoft has always been in my sights but I have arrived in this role in many ways by luck and navigating several setbacks in my career. Perhaps owing to my experience in technology incubation and in particular with startups early on in my working life, I have become used to setbacks and having to embrace large-scale change and reinvention. For example, just a few years into my career, I was let go from a job working in a seed-stage investment vehicle as the markets for tech startup funding completely dried up. I took it very personally. But what I didn’t know at the time was that this served as a huge blessing and catalyst to move me onto my next stage which ultimately led me here. These experiences are important because they encouraged me to become comfortable with change because you have to learn to overcome obstacles working in innovation. There is no rule book or blueprint for growing future products and emerging categories.
Have you had a role model or mentor that has helped you on your journey?
I mentioned earlier how important one of my undergraduate professors was in helping me understand what is possible with regards to my education. In my professional life, there have been many including Denis McCauley who was instrumental in helping me become a technology analyst and guiding me through my first experience working for the Economist Group. I am also grateful to our fearless leader in Microsoft Mitra Azizirad. I just love her mantra which she often shares with the team: “Get energized by the word “No.” She argues that the word is “not a closed door – it's an opportunity to learn, grow and come back stronger. Failure and success have a lot in common. You must embrace one to capture the other.” This really resonates with me as to how I can overcome the many obstacles working in innovation on one hand but also in my career as well.
How do you see the role of the technology leader evolving over the next 5 years?
The big change will be leaders will no longer conflate leadership with management. These are two different things and in the past there have been many companies grossly over-managed and severely under-led. I see more emphasis on qualities like coaching, providing clarity, supporting and respecting, to name a few, along with the ability to inspire and to help people produce their best work versus being a taskmaster.
What do you see as the next leap in technology that will impact your business or industry in particular?
We are about to witness several major technology paradigm shifts in the coming years that businesses need to start to plan for today. These are not only going to shape the future of connectivity and computing but they will also open up new doors of innovation for enterprises and governments all over the world.
These three shifts include “Modern Connected Apps”, which brings the future of connectivity and technologies like 5G and space together with the cloud to put compute power into increasingly hard-to-reach areas and enable a new paradigm for connected applications in the process; “AI Co-Reasoning”, which, thanks to today’s advancements in generative AI through services like ChatGPT, will enable a new co-reasoning paradigm to develop between humans and machines that will transform how we interact with technology in the future; and third, “Quantum at Scale” which will enable a new computing paradigm with greater intelligence, precision, speed and scale applied to computational-based problem solving and open up new fields of scientific discovery in the future.
These three key areas of future innovation are not only collectively shaping the cloud’s future but Microsoft’s future as well, and is the core focus of our work in Strategic Missions and Technologies. Ultimately, we want to help our customers plan and gain a foothold in these emerging areas today so they are prepared to gain an advantage when this innovation becomes standard in the future.
"Lean into uncertainty and approach risks and setbacks with a growth mindset
If you were mentoring a leader of the future, what advice or guidance would you give to help them on their way?
The main one would be to lean into uncertainty and approach risks and setbacks with a growth mindset. I wish I had this mindset early on in my career. These types of experiences are important to your development and it's a great skill ultimately to be comfortable with change. In Microsoft we have an acronym for it: VUCA: volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. Being comfortable with VUCA is about staying positive in a rapidly changing world and approaching everything with a ‘learn it all’ mindset.
If you could change one thing in the world, what would it be?
I am a type 1 diabetic so I would love a cure for the disease.
A big thank you to Nick McQuire from Microsoft for sharing his journey to date.
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