Continuing our short series of interviews with speakers at SPBiz, this weekend I wanted to share our recent interview with Richard Harbridge - CTO of 2tolead.
Its not a bad way to spend a few minutes on a (hopefully) sunny holiday weekend, I certainly enjoyed what he had to say. I hope you will too.
SPBiz: Hi Richard, thanks once again for agreeing to become one of our keynotes. The team is SUPER excited to have both yourself and Mark Kashman on board for what is now shaping up to be a feast of SharePoint! As always, we like to start light and then get into the nitty gritty of your views on SharePoint. So first up, as a thank you, we are taking you to a planet of your choosing for a holiday. It doesn’t have to be in our solar system…which one…and why?
Richard: Well this is exciting. My immediate concerns are radiation exposure and impact to my health (or accidently bringing something back)… but boy would it be interesting to visit another world.
Would I be able to return or is it a one way trip? If it’s a one way I unfortunately would have to stick to Earth as I love my family, friends, community and my work too much.
If it’s there and back I would love to visit Vulcan (Star Trek) as I think I could learn a lot and might be able to bring that knowledge back with me.
SPBiz: We managed to keep you alive so you could return to your day job after our little jaunt. What should SPBiz delegates know about the role that you perform with Microsoft?
Richard: Oh good it was a return trip!
I love my role with Microsoft. It means that I work across ALL technologies that Microsoft provides as a service, server, or as a device. That means every article and product update for Office 365, Azure, Dynamics, System Center, SQL, Devices, and more are all relevant to me. So there is always an opportunity to learn more or work closer with the different product groups (plus it means people can ask me literally any question and I am also interested in the answer if I don’t have it readily available).
My actual role is to act as a strategic advisor to many partners while supporting thousands of customers. Beyond helping partners adopt and develop new services and business models, I manage a large team of executives, directors, consultants, and other resources through a sales and partner programs, extending the reach, impact, and capability of the Microsoft sales teams so that we can better service our customers.
SPBiz: How did you come to be working in the SharePoint world and working with such great companies.
I started consulting on SharePoint development with SharePoint 2003. We built this really amazing enterprise knowledge and project management solution that took half a year (90+ hour work weeks) and a few hard working developers… I can’t imagine how long it would have taken if we hadn’t used SharePoint as a base.
When the early beta of SharePoint 2007 came along I was consulting as a Business Analyst and decided I would try and recreate ‘most’ of what we had built in the latest version to see how long it would take. It took me only about 4 weeks of part time work to get ‘most’ of the functionality in. At that point I was hooked. SharePoint 2007 had gone through a single revision and enabled our customers to get nearly the same value in an exponentially shorter period of time with far less development.
As SharePoint grew so did I – I decided to work for a few years in large enterprise organizations leading SharePoint teams and doing a lot of business process improvement and people development and training. It was a great experience going from the one “Everything SharePoint” guy to a broader team as I moved onto another large enterprise. In this period of time I had to try and learn how to scale and lead (not just projects but enterprise strategies and teams).
However it seems consulting is in my blood. I missed it so much that I went back into consulting. I was spoiled and got to work on the beta of 2010, then the beta of 2013 and shhh don’t tell anyone but I am working on the early bits of 2016 as well right now. The best part of my work in consulting is that customers really wanted to know more about BPOS and what eventually became Office 365 and so their needs/questions push me to always keep up with the technology.
I personally see Office 365 as significant as the change I went through in that first big project on 2003 that I rebuilt in 2007. The impact it can have is extraordinary for businesses in saving money, time and getting value faster. I wanted to not just know about SharePoint, but about how Office 365’s other innovations could help customers do more with less. So I joined Microsoft and as a result now find that SharePoint combined with Office 365, Azure and Dynamics helps me provide even more value in the engagements I am involved in.
SPBiz: If you were to give a piece of advice to someone who is wants to follow in your footsteps, what would it be?
Richard: Never stop growing and never get too comfortable. Those are connected.
I had a colleague who once told me “when you get comfortable and your job is easy that means you aren’t learning or growing as much as you could be.” Learning and growing requires feeling a sense of uncertainty and accepting that you probably don’t know all that you could know. For me personally – that has been a great way to keep me changing things up and pushing myself to adapt and learn along the way.
Set audacious goals for yourself. I have constantly been setting new ones for myself to stretch me out of my comfort zone.
I feel a sense of responsibility in that I am lucky enough to be able to do work I love, and have great support from my company, community, friends and family. If I don’t try my best then it would be wasting that opportunity I have been afforded. So push yourself to not be comfortable and change/grow with the changes in technology and the changes in your industry – especially if you are lucky enough to have that great support network.
SPBiz: Who inspired you most? (Either in your professional or personal life)
Richard: Tie.
Bill Gates and my parents. I love that Bill Gates seems to always be maximizing his positive impact on the world. Trying to do as much as he can (as well as his lovely wife Melinda).
My parents? Similar just at a smaller scale I suppose.
SPBiz: If you could tell someone to avoid ONE thing in the world of SharePoint that could be a pain for their business what would it be?
Effective deployment and implementation is critical for your organizations success, but it’s not enough on its own. Please plan for adoption and invest effort in running adoption activities to educate, spread awareness and maximize meaningful adoption of SharePoint within your business. Visit http://ift.tt/1vq0248 if you haven’t done so already – great resources are available there and we are working hard at improving it even more in the coming months.
If you need help just give me a shout – Just email me at Richard@RHarbridge.com or msg me on LinkedIn. Even if you already deployed – it’s never too late to improve adoption.
SPBiz: Is there a tip you would give an emerging business out there about using SharePoint? e.g. which version is easiest to set up, which is the best product/app that helps you most during your day?
Richard: SharePoint Online/Office 365 is where it’s at in my personal opinion. For most emerging businesses especially. It’s easy to get started, constantly innovating as your business grows, and financially it makes a ton of sense.
In my daily work I use our SharePoint Search, Yammer and Delve to constantly find answers, insights, useful information or connections that help me to better help Microsoft customers/partners.
It’s rare that I create anything new. It’s almost always an act of adding context, highlighting relevant insights, and connecting people so that they can achieve their enterprise technology vision together. Those are typically the most impactful things I can do in my daily work.
Don’t get me wrong, I spend quite a bit of time in several SharePoint team sites updating documents, excel data, or building new reporting solutions or workflows. However it’s the search capabilities and sense of connected/responsiveness that we have due to the technology we use that helps me most during my day.
SPBiz: What would the Richard Harbridge in another dimension be doing for his day job?
Richard: I think I would enjoy teaching in a university, college or online education institution… or would be a zombie hunter, cyborg, or stay at home dad (or all 3) – I guess it depends on the other dimension.
SPBiz: Is there a common problem you observe when you are working with Microsoft Partners that you help to solve?
Richard: Absolutely. We have incredibly smart and capable Microsoft partners out there. Every one of them wants to better support their customers and lead within their field of expertise.
There are two common problems I run into time and time again. The first actually relates to our customers and the second relates to partners who are transforming their businesses.
- Customers who want to do it themselves, but don’t have the expertise required (or the right support/strategy internally).
Please, please work with a trusted partner or advisor – I can help you get introduced to one, two, or ten if it would help. The partner doesn’t need to do the work, but if you don’t have the expertise you need you should at a minimum involve a partner or someone who has that expertise so they can mentor, envision, plan or help you maximize your Microsoft technology investments.
- Mobility and the Cloud provide incredible and accessible opportunities for your customers and your own business.
As a partner and as customers we need to embrace the benefits that mobility solutions and the cloud solutions can provide. This requires investment in helping customers envision how to digitally transform their businesses in new ways. For many customers it’s not easy to understand what IoT scenarios might be a good fit, or how they can best use Hybrid Office 365 or Azure capabilities to not only offset costs, but improve experiences, security and capabilities.
Partners should be leaning into this challenge and should think of how they can better help customers not just get ‘on’ the latest Microsoft technology but how to best ‘use’ and maximize meaningful adoption of that technology as well.
SPBiz: Music time..what’s the WORST or most embarrassing piece of music you have ever purchased (Mine was Harry Enfield by the way…”Loads ‘a Money”..truly awful, but I was 12 so there’s my excuse.
Richard: I couldn’t find it on the internet, but once at this garage sale I bought this ‘official’ mix CD of old cartoon theme songs – it has Mighty Mouse on the cover. Song on it are from Mighty Mouse, Transformers, Ghost Busters, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, etc… I still have it in my car (I still also have a CD player in my car too).
I suppose that is the thing I am most embarrassed to play, especially because I can still sing the Transformers movie theme song which is on it when it’s played. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaVcpfncOWs
SPBiz: What advice would you give to a business who are looking to develop the capabilities of their SharePoint solution?
Richard: Understand your needs fully. As a business analyst at heart I absolutely love effective requirements gathering and think it’s always worthwhile.
It is also CRITICAL to develop your solution iteratively. That way you can deliver value sooner, people can begin using it, and you can iterate/improve based on their feedback so that the solution can be even better at meeting the needs of your users (including needs they weren’t able to codify/share effectively).
Lastly don’t do it on your own. Look to see if there are great 3rd party products that already do what you are looking for, or that might help augment or compliment your solution. Ask others who have built similar solutions – most customers are happy to speak with other customers and share their insights/lessons learned – use that! Lastly consider working with a partner who has built a similar solution or the solution you are looking to develop.
SPBiz: Thank you so much for sharing your insights. We hope to bring the readers MUCH more from you during your keynote on 18th June. We are still keeping the topic under wraps for now but if you wanted to tease…what would you tell SPbiz delegates about what they might hear if they signup and join us?
Let’s see… What’s coming in SharePoint 2016 is exciting! (All the things I wish I could share unfortunately are still confidential – but they won’t all be by June!!!). You know what else is exciting? All of the Office 365 innovations and new features that you can take advantage of to improve your SharePoint implementations today (you don’t have to wait!).
I can’t wait to share insights, solutions and strategy with all of you in June. Mark Kashman is a fantastic speaker and you won’t want to miss him as he and I share not only what is coming, but what is here, and how organizations are getting the most out of SharePoint today!
SPBiz: Brilliant, we cant wait either. Its going to be a great event. Thanks again Richard and see you there !
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Jon Manderville via Everyone's Blog Posts - SharePoint Community
