It's Not All About The Ivory Tower

Excerpted from The Truth about Getting Your Point Across…and Nothing But the Truth 

One of my jobs at Microsoft was running Microsoft’s Corporate Procurement Group. 
This group was responsible for managing and influencing several billion dollars in purchases ranging from personal computers to marketing materials to outsourced services.  My organization had about 30 procurement managers who resided at headquarters and worked with various organizations around Microsoft to help get better value for our purchases.

To better expand our global influence, we started working with procurement organizations in Microsoft subsidiaries around the world to understand their purchases and to find areas where we could partner.

What we learned was more than what we had anticipated; not necessarily about their purchases, but about how they worked and the importance of urgency versus importance in their jobs.

For example, in some of the smaller subsidiaries the person responsible for procurement was also responsible for facilities management; meaning if the toilets didn’t flush it was his responsibility to get them fixed.  Given the choice between working on a global procurement contract and getting the toilets fixed, he would focus on tending to the toilets first (rightly so).  Getting this exposure into the subsidiaries taught me a very important lesson about working with organizations outside of headquarters:  it’s not all about the ivory tower.

Just because you have the same job title and are part of the same organization doesn’t mean you do the same things.  Take time to understand what your colleague does and what he or she considers important.  Target your communications to meet the needs of your colleague.  Doing so will better ensure your colleague gets information that is most important to him or her, and ensures you aren’t wasting your time creating information that isn’t relevant.

Lonnie Pacelli
Keynote Speaker | Board Director | Autism Advocate | Author | Project Management Expert | Microsoft/Accenture Veteran 
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