.jpg)
AzureSUCCESS
AzureSUCCESS
A Culture of Transformation
The secret sauce behind today's most successful firms can be summed up with a single word: CULTURE! Listen in as Sana Khan explores this most profound insight.
BIO: Sana Khan is a Sr. Cloud Solution Architect in the Customer Experience & Success team at Microsoft, focused on Azure Data & AI at global and local customer organizations based in the Northeast region. Specifically, Sana advises customers on where, when and how to: leverage CAF to transform their data, application, product and process lifecycles; grow into intelligent analytics by incorporating enriched data, analytics and AI into their product offerings; transform in-house technology platforms to power creativity, innovation, business growth and overall vision, and productionalize use cases in Azure that help achieve and maintain customers’ competitive edge and leadership in the marketplace.
In her personal time, Sana invests in initiatives that combine her academic roots in Math, Art, History, Economics and International Strategic Communication with her professional work in Analytics/AI, Design Thinking, Inclusive Thought, Applied Empathy, Allyship and Transformation. Which is why, in addition to her core CSA role at Microsoft, Sana is honored to serve as one of Microsoft’s WW Champs for the Azure Data & AI Business, Lead for the Microsoft Northeast Region AI Ambassador team, Co-Founder and Co-chair for the Women at Microsoft NY Chapter, and Core Team Member of the MS OneNY Ambassador Council, NY ERG Leads team and MSUS Digital Transformation D&I team.
LINKS: Microsoft Global Diversity & Inclusion; Culture Is The Most Surprising Reason Microsoft Stock Will Keep Rising; How Microsoft “Renovated” Its Culture by Following These 3 Steps
CREDITS: Louis Berman (Host); Sana Khan (Guest); Dan Phillipson / PremiumBeat (Music); Anne Lamb (Intro/Outro); East Coast Studio (Editing)
MORE: visit https://azure-success.com for additional episodes, plus transcripts, and more ways to listen to the show. As to your comments and suggestions, please feel free to email your host, Louis Berman, at lberman@microsoft.com
I've noticed that what really brings a customer in and therefore ensures that we'll get some ads. Revenue is when I show up as the technical advisor with my credibility and with the ability to be trusted, which means I have to be open to listen to what is working for them on another platform you're listening to as your success, the podcast by and for, as your professionals listen in, and you'll be sure to speak to your customers March into the cloud. And now your host, Lois Berman.
Speaker 2:Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Azure success podcast. The podcast buy in for Azure professionals. I am pleased today to have senior class solutions architect for Azure data and AI Sana con Sunna with you, even though she spells it as an a we'll ask her what that's all about. So why don't you say hi and tell me what's up.
Speaker 1:Hi everyone. Hi Lewis. Thank you for having me on, on the Azure success podcast, really excited to be here. It is, sign up your rights and that's precisely why I don't spell it with you.
Speaker 2:You know, it's, it's really important to know your one for N like I, in my last 20 podcasts, I, I screwed up one name reliably on pretty much every episode or at least I'm very, um, I'm very self conscious about it. Uh, listeners are probably sick and tired of me talking about this, so I'll stop. So anyway, we're going to talk about one of my favorite topics today, which is culture. And we'll talk about the spin on it, but very often as technologists and son and I are both technologists, we both love technology and work as cloud solutions, architects and Microsoft are no small measure because it is allows us to get our hands dirty and work with technology. But you know, lots of people think that the formation of having a successful career, a successful company, a successful technical evolution, if you will, is about, I don't know, knowing how to program the next grass thing or having access to the best technology or something. But I assure you, I assure you that culture is the thing that drives successful companies. And the most successful companies in this world indeed are driven by literally nothing. But, you know, if you think of sat in Andela our great CEO, he drives us by instilling the right culture in our minds. We don't think about him. Like he used to be a programmer and he did this, that, and the next thing we think about, you know, you know, empower every individual on the planet to achieve more. Right. You know, we think of those sort of things. So sign up. Why, why don't you talk a little bit, how to build a culture of transformation, both the customer and Microsoft itself. Remember we're not done right. We're building more of it,
Speaker 1:Right? No, absolutely. I agree with you on this. I think it's an interesting topic and I often wonder where to start with this, right? I would say that a lot of it has, if I now look back at my career at Microsoft or at HB or micro strategy or the business or organizations before that, and I'd say business, because I not always on the technology side, you know, I was always a math geek or math nerd, rather. I'm very specific about when to use nerd and when to use geek,
Speaker 2:Be proud, be loud.
Speaker 1:Yes, I am a nerd. It is true. I've tried hard over time to escape that label, but I now embrace them. Love it. And you know, technology doesn't mean hands on with software technology in every environment. In some cases, technology means like if you go to the audit or financial services firms, technical, there means to be in the space of audit. Whereas customer relations means to be in a space of sales, right? So it's a technical acquires, different meanings, but it does focus on expertise. And I find that people often see cultural creation, customer relations, the soft skills as sort of separate from the technical skills and that somehow for us cloud solution, architects, sales, engineers, you know, fields, engineers, somehow the two are antithetical or in a mutually exclusive framework. And I find that if you want to do them well, they are inextricably linked. So that's the first thing that I will say in just to agree with what you're, what you're talking about.
Speaker 2:Cool. It's important to note that this is not just theory, right? It's proven. And it's something that, that has been worked on and achieved both in our firm and other firms. Can, can you talk about some of the hallmarks of good culture and you know, I'm a programmer at heart. So, so we always talk about things called code smells, you know, does the code smell good? Is it going good? What tells you that, that an organization has a good culture and that is likely to be able to support transformation?
Speaker 1:I think it's a lot of the principles that you mentioned or that you referred to when you talked about Cynthia. Yup. And we're seeing it now evolve with how our global DNI lead Lindsay, my MacIntyre's taking it on with how our MSU, as president Kate Johnson has been taking it on with the regulated industries, president Tony towns, but how she's been taking it on, you know, which, and you'll see a common thread, which is a culture that is not looking to polarize that's one, right? And I mean, this truly in the sense of not creating, binary's like there's a right or wrong, right. But it's more about being on a journey and a journey of learning. And I think a culture where you see that, and I look at it from the context of, you know, lose when you and I go into customers for example, and we're there to talk about Asher. Oftentimes the account executive, the technical strategist and the sales specialist have had some level of conversation already. The way that a technologist can see that what's happening in the culture is one, how open is it? You know, how divided are the people in their perspective or entrenched or they're in their opinions. If they do believe in a certain school of thought as a team, a business unit, how open are they to each other and how willing are they to empathize and create room for the other side to speak and express. This shows two things, one that all voices tent or many voices tend to be heard and circulated right to that. Oftentimes when they are willing to hear another's opinion, it reflects that credit is also given where it's due in how people get the work done, right? Oftentimes we'll go into customers and see, you know, hundreds of applications of which 10 or 20 are the most important and people and team leads or resources and developers are hanging on to those applications as the product of their creativity and their work life. And so one big, big element of culture is how open are they to being part of a workflow that is sort of pervious and moves through and it's dynamic and flowing and adaptable to growth and inclusion of new ideas, as opposed to being rooted in strongly held beliefs that might be in that case, not relevant to what they're trying to do with transforming the company towards where the company's vision is at now. So these are some key principles. I find growth, openness to growth, openness to new technology, new ways of doing things, new, new workflows, and the willingness to incorporate, right? The fluidity of, of giving credit and circulating credit back and forth. And I think the empathizing with, uh, with each other and holding space for the communication to happen, what do you think, would you add anything to that? Or,
Speaker 2:Well, what I would add is none of it's easy, right? And so there's lots of things to get better at and to our credit, firstly, we're about to have a digital transformation Academy, is that, you know, so yeah. And so DTA is we pre COVID. We would all go out to Vegas and we we'd take three days worth of workshops around how to succeed in business. Right. And, you know, and be everything about it. Right. It would be how to work with our peers, how to work with our customers, how to in recent years, focus on customer success, right? Lots of times you have organizations in our particular ad side of the organization sales organization, where it's sell this, do this, get in their face, make them do the thing. And you know, I'm very happy to report that we've unequivocally refocused our efforts to customer success. I often think about it like, you know, miracle on 34th street, do you know the movie, the famous movie doesn't matter, it's all moving. So the idea is one of the things, it's, it it's set in, Macy's the famous department store. And you know, Santa's in this case, hiding out is just as, just as an employee pretends to be just an employee. And he starts sending people to other stores because they had better solutions.
Speaker 1:Right. I love that. I love that setting, that, that scene. It's just so it's uh, yeah, I agree.
Speaker 2:So the point is, that's a metaphor for us and I'm not suggesting for you what it said to her customers away, but the point is it is imperative for us. It is important for us to talk about customer success, as in making sure they achieve their goals. So I'll give you a very specific example of something that I do in this regard is I'm a seller. So in some sense, I get compensated for helping things be sold. And one of those things, I still haven't bothered to look it up is Azure dev ops services. But you know what, every time I talk about dev ops, which by the way, is one of my key areas. I say, you can use Azure dev ops or get hub or octopus, or, you know, I start listing off of this whole thing. I'm interested in you guys and being successful in the class. I'm interested in you guys deploying software. And quite frankly, I'm convinced utterly convinced by the way, that it will not do bad things for Microsoft. It's going to do good things. They're going to be fast, or they're going to employ more software. They're going to be more inclined to work with us. So that's a cultural thing. And it comes from three different areas. Firstly, it is, I'm told this from everyone, from our CEO down to be the best advocates for their customer success. I'm also told by my teammates and then finally the exact same thing. And that includes my manager. That includes, you know, my peers, but finally I'm told by my customers that that works yeah. That resonates with them.
Speaker 1:I would agree with you on this. And you know, it's interesting what you just brought up because I find that I do something similar in accounting and you'll notice that this is another way to put it would be that if I, as a technologist, if we see that, you know, are, and, but also as technical sellers that oftentimes we become attached to the idea of ensuring that there's an Azure footprint, right. And especially for me as a data and NAI seller, like for you DevOps in the certain workloads, under Azure data services that we want to sell, even if the customer has Azure, they might not have Azure data services, but I've noticed that what really brings a customer in and therefore ensures that we'll get some ads. Revenue is when I show up as the technical advisor with my credibility and with the ability to be trusted, which means I have to be open to listen to what is working for them on another platform and open to the idea that that's okay, you know, that if something's working for the customer and they want a multicloud strategy that works and what are the ways I can help them. Right. And I think that in bringing that kind of, I don't want to say three 60 because it's an overused term. And I don't know if I'm really practicing three 60, if I have that view all around, but in the expanded view that I bring to this, right. That okay. If using Azure AHRQ or outpost or Google those, okay. Yeah. Let's work with what you are currently doing. I find that when I bring back kind of view, or in the case of data and AI, they're using Google to query or another AWS solution, um, or, you know, still fleet, which can be used on Azure as well. If they're already using something like that and I validate their approach and then create a best practices system for them to take on as a, as you know, a phase strategy, they tend to want to move to Azure even more because people like buying from people, they don't just buy from the company. Right. And I think that is a key principle there. That, to what extent, and of course selling is a key mandate for us, right? As, as field sellers. And at the same time we get to walk the line. Right. I would think it's an honor in some ways that we're trusted to do this and we have the capability to do this, which is we get to walk that line of earning that trust with the customer, that Brooklyn, to advise them to the best of our knowledge, what will work for them independent of whether it brings us revenue or not. Right. So that's the key principle that if you can, I find that when, when us technologists can foster that with the customer, it's not only creates a relationship with them in that specific role that we're in right now at Microsoft, but in any other role we're going to be in because it establishes an ecosystem of openness and connection.
Speaker 2:Yep. So I want to talk about another aspect of this. And so we were talking about having multiple voices heard. I don't think it will come as a surprise to any one of our listeners that technical selling's a team sport. Right. I actually met you. You know, I can't remember if we took meetings beforehand, but I met you at a client right. In New York city. And by the way, I live in Philadelphia. So I, you know, I traveled there and where do you live by the way know,
Speaker 1:I didn't know that I live at union square, but these business spending a fair bit of time in South Jersey too. So combination. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So anyway, the point is it's a team sport and culture counts, but inclusiveness and having, not just playing me, me, me, me, listen to me. But, but having your entire team work, the situation helps. Can you talk about that a little bit?
Speaker 1:Yes, absolutely. And I think it's on us to also be aware and discern when this is happening at our customers or not. Right. I think, and this is a bit of a part of the personal detail that I'll bring into this. You know, I was just on a team meeting earlier today in the morning, you know, sort of presenting on what, what are the methods that I've used to have impact right through the four or five years that I've been here at Microsoft I'm in my fifth year, at this point. And I've realized that so much of this is about being self aware and aware of your environment, right? So we all, I think I can comfortably say that those of us who are technical sellers, you know, we have to have a combination of tech skills, some selling skills, collaboration, skills, individual work skills, focused skills, so that we can text them to train with the other activities that are happening around us. And I would say that it's not only important to see when it's happening at a customer that maybe some voices are not being heard or some voices are not present. And I mean this, because more often than not even though we, you know, in the context of diversity equity inclusion, or, you know, grow through effective allyship, right. Which is a fear of Microsoft principal this year in fiscal year 21. And I can always talk to that later on. I feel that the key principle that comes out usually in that is, you know, the obvious differences, you know, between people, right, and between leaders and their teams. But I think that there's, you know, some aspects that are implicit and that acquire like sort of a team political situation at customers as well, which is that oftentimes the people or the teams with less power, because maybe they, their application wasn't approved or they were recommending an approach to cloud or to a way of doing things, for example, governance or security or management, one big aspect where I think it becomes quite political that I saw in my early to mid twenties, one of a previous company about, you know, this is what 12, 13 years ago now was that their biggest hot button within the company implicitly, you know, for everyone was whether to have a centralized versus a federated data platform. Okay. And they invested millions of dollars and three different iterations with different consulting companies, brand names that we know to get this going. And it continued no matter who came in and presented it, how through what lens? And they brought an army of project managers and management technique consultants to work on it. The fact was at the end of the day, there were camps who had a view on this. Right. And you see a similar thing, you must see it on the dev ops space, in the developer area, there are OSS opensource camps, right. And schools of thought. And so I find that oftentimes the voice that gets left out of the room when we go to conversations and we're hearing people talk is the one that's either seen as contentious. Right. That, okay, they're bringing in unpopular view that might be seen as a destabilizing force to everything else that they think that they've agreed on. Right. And so that voice tends to either self remove, you know, or it could be unintentionally excluded. And sometimes it's a clear mandate that, Hey, we're not going that way. And so it just becomes not considered. And I think that's a disservice to companies I'm not arguing for, or I'm not advocating for customers to be in contention. No, but I am saying that when we have different schools of thought at the table and each school thought is open to seeding to the other side and has the interest of the project or the company at heart, then people find their way through it. It's what we call one Microsoft, right? When we have different teams and different methods of getting compensated and different goals in our customers, and we choose what is best for the customer. Oftentimes you'll see this happen when it comes to iOS and pass, right? You could have SQL running on VMs, or you could have it running as Azure SQL database, or, you know, imagine instance is st or Singleton database or a server list. And the point is to have a conversation that is time box, that allows for different views that moves through it. But you always keep the focus there. And that's the job. I think a bus technologists, when we come into these sessions to keep that focus and then derive the solution. But yeah, I know I'm a little passionate about this. I kind of went over on it.
Speaker 2:Yes. On the Azure success podcast, low on life. We're all for passion. Right. Uh, you know, to not worry about that. So, so before we go on, you know, it's really important to note, you're like a very well credentialed person. So for instance, you just won a valuable award. What was the valuable award, please? I ever worked it down on my sheet, but I will screw up the name. So I'm going to ask you to say it.
Speaker 1:Yes. So thank you for mentioning that. I am, you know, like you, I'm a seller within the Northeast region and the enterprise enterprise commercial business at Microsoft. And so the award that I received is called the technology solution achievers, valuable contributor, platinum award. It is the actual category is valuable contributor. It's a corporate or sponsored award that you get from the worldwide business. Usually it's someone who sponsors you and said, this person has achieved or contributed to a set of projects for the full course of the year. And the projects that I received it for were for contributing to the data and AI business in terms of feedback, to product and bringing customer feedback. And then also providing feedback on what could be the prioritize features and then presenting to what we call the global black belt group at Microsoft in terms of what we call impact, modeling culture, transformation, leveraging Azure.
Speaker 2:And it's really important to understand we have more than a hundred thousand people in our company. And while we're, we're certainly all about being rewarding, our people and highlighting their achievements, this is a pretty high up award. So I'm really, really impressed. So therefore, I think we stopped talking about that. I'm incredibly jealous. So let's talk about something. I can actually talk about watercolors watercolors. You're a painter, which by the way, intimidates me even more. My wife is a setting costume designer, but she does an incredible amount of painting too. And you know, she's a fine painter and she, but she paints in guash and oils. Cause she says, they're easy watercolor. Oh my God. It's like one mistake it's done. It's like, you have to be so brave to do watercolors so hard. Tell us about watercolors.
Speaker 1:And you know, you actually pointed out something that most people don't know about watercolor, unless they are someone who, you know, you're someone who paints as well. It's interesting because I think just speaking of watercolors, it's the reason why initially when I was in Pakistan and I was growing up of Indian descent, my family within descent, but I was born in Pakistan in a little clinic in Karachi and you know, I've moved around quite a bit through the course of my life. You know, I'm also, I moved to Canada. Canada's kind of like my, I guess I think New York is my first home, New York city, but I would say get a Toronto is one of my homes, right?
Speaker 2:Clear, by the way, you have literally no accent. And if we did not go through the whole spiel about Suna, I don't know if anyone would know. Right.
Speaker 1:That's also a good story. But coming back to your watercolor comment, initially when my art teacher told me, Hey, you know, go for watercolors. I was literally like sweating inside because I, first of all, she was, she was so, you know, you didn't want to let her down. She just knew her stuff so well. And she used to train all these, these people who would used to get graded by Cambridge, by university of Cambridge. We sent our portfolios there and there were intense two years of work that we would send to get graded across people from the world. Right. And so, as you can imagine, a lot of us, you know, high achievers, cause that's what we're trained. We are trained to value success, maybe more than happiness.
Speaker 2:Oh, I'm hoping, you're happy. You sound happy.
Speaker 1:I did a lot of work and spent a lot of time and money on that. So yes. But yeah, to your point there initially I was really, I was definitely scared of watercolors because I didn't want to be feeling in my own eyes and looking at it on paper. But then I realized how watercolor was the right medium for me. Because in fact, when I did oils, eventually I locked myself in a room. I put on some music, you know, I parked my math and my physics and my, uh, history, you know, the rest of the work. And I just kept going. And I ended up having, I think maybe a little about a few poisoning because I just, you know, I was so absorbed in it, which it's very easy for people who tend to be in technology and math and, and even, you know, in the creative field, right. People think that math and the analytical are completely antithetical to the creative. When I feel that I've come to realize over time that the drive to hyper-focus and analyze something so deeply and just keep going at it with your mind, it's a framework for organizing a range of stories and awarenesses and assumptions and thoughts and ideas that we don't quite know how to navigate. Right. And so it's interesting because watercolor helps me step out of that analytical frame and go with the flow. And if something is not looking how I thought it was not looking, let it go sign up. Do you just need to keep moving with it, keep dancing with the paint and the paper and what you want to express. And so it really helps me bring, and you know, honestly, a lot of cultural transformation, this is the art part of the science right. In our roles. And it's really important to remember that because you need to bring that element of flow when you're a meeting and everyone's getting to their minds, how do you get them to not polarize and come together? It's through dropping into that space that is not as ego egoic. Right. And it's more open to the common goal. So I want to bring that home. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So we're almost out of time, but let's bring this around to, it's very clear that you have adopted the sense of transformation through allyship and culture and stuff, but how can we bring this to others? How can we bring this in particular to our customers? How can we convince them it's good and how can we show them that it has value for them?
Speaker 1:I think the number one thing is, is providing samples and also examples in how we show up as technologists. And that could be someone at Microsoft or outside when people ask me Sana, how do I grow to becoming an AI professional? You know, when I've done speaking engagements and they, you know, ask you later on on LinkedIn or other places. And I find the best way to figure out what you want to do next is to just look within and to embody what the vision is that you have for yourself or for the organization that you work for. So when I enter a customer account and I say this for our partners and for customers as well, we're looking to explore Azure and bring it into their own organizations or those who are looking to go into tech careers, right? Is that embody the elements that you want to create in the company or that you think that you don't currently have. And I think when you embody those elements and do the work to earn them, you automatically reflect everything that you're trying to bring as well. It's actually quite magical and very transformational to do that kind of work. And that would be my number one point there. How do you become aware of all the things that you already are and all the gifts that you already bring to the business and to the culture and the community and impact that by just stepping into it today, right now in the present, you will start creating that. And I think that's number one, the technology will follow, right? It's like using Microsoft word to write poetry. It's not Microsoft word as an application. That's going to write portrait for you, it's you, but you get to use the technology. Right?
Speaker 2:Excellent. Well, it has been terrific talking with you. I'm talking with Sana Khan, senior cloud solutions architect for data and AI cultural hero at Microsoft prize winner and someone we will look forward to hearing from in the future. Again, thank you so much.
Speaker 3:You've been listening to Azure success, the podcast by and for Azure professionals, you can visit our website, asher-success.com for show notes, helpful links and other episodes, but also to leave your questions, comments, and suggestions. Thank you for listening.