0066 - Caring About Knowledge

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Interview with Lizzy McComish, GSDM @ Microsoft 

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[Shane] 

Welcome to the Design Talk podcast. We are interested in exploring the practical challenges of learning and growing the "know who, know where, know why, know what, know how, know about" in organisations. Particularly the kinds of practices or behaviours we will need to interact with and manage global partners, and ultimately to be a global partner.

We are thrilled to be joined today by Lizzy McComish. Lizzy is a Global Service Delivery Manager at Microsoft, a company she has been with for nearly 7 years. She is also a Smurfit alumni, graduating with an MSc in Marketing in 2014. On top of all that she is the Women at Microsoft lead for MBO Asia

Conversation started with a summary of Lizzy’s work

●      [S] You’re a global service delivery manager, what exactly does that mean?

●      What are the key soft skills that are needed to succeed in this line of work?

We then moved on to vendor selection

●      [S] What types of services do you generally look to outsourcing in your role?

●      What are the key factors you look for when making an outsourcing decision?

●      Does culture play a role? 

●      [Allen] If you walked into a new client-side engagement, and you looked at the existing supply management team. What would you see as “oh, that's great, I can see this is run well”, and these are the kind of features of a well-run team, and you'd expect to see in place?

Relationship management

●      [S] In a previous conversation you said “If i'm not successful, they [vendor] aren’t successful” Could you talk a little more about that quote and your role as the in between client and the vendor?

●      When it comes to making the vendors feel as part of Microsoft, how does that actually work in practice?

Managing Knowledge & Training

●      [S] Last time we spoke you mentioned a time where on a vendor side, one staff member was absent for an extended period and that led to significant issues. I was wondering if you could elaborate on that a bit more for the audience.

●      How do you approach training when it comes to your vendors?

●      [A] It sounds like shadowing is a really key practice on your part. It's very diagnostic, isn't it? 

●      I think this has come up a couple of times, but I think what you've done is demonstrate the link between metrics and relationships and how each productively produced each other.

Last part of the conversation centered around a situation where Lizzy had to manage an outgoing vendor

●      [S] Last week, you told an amazing story about how you managed an outgoing vendor transition. I was wondering, to finish, if you could tell us that story?

●      It's amazing to see how major corporations like Microsoft still that kind of personal feel and the benefits have it brings back in as well.

●      So, in a way, that kind of interaction was not part of the written contract but was more part of the social contract built over time. 

Closing

[S] That's absolutely fantastic. Lizzie, you've definitely given us a lot of fantastic insights that I hope the class found useful. I'd like to take this moment to thank Lizzie very much for her time. Taking half an hour or so out of her busy Tuesday evening to speak to us today. We're truly grateful for a lot of the knowledge you've shared with us today has been truly valuable. Thanks so much, Lizzie.

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Acknowledgements, License

Music

Title: “’Intro 1 Delay Classic”

Artist: “Ivan Šipek”

Source: personal copy

License: “CC BY”

Cover Art 

Title: “Cover Art”

Artist: “Anastasia Kucerovska”

Source: personal copy & image clip art via Canva (canva.com)

License: “CC BY”

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