FY07 Microsoft Australia Company Meeting

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I spent the last two days at the Microsoft Australia FY07 Company Meeting at Star City Sydney, meeting a few more of the 600+ colleagues I have in Australia. It was the best Microsoft Company Meeting I’ve been to, and possibly the best company meeting I’ve ever been to (although my past work life was at very different types of organisations – see about me).

I found the two days to be extremely valuable for me personally for the following reasons:

- good structure of the two days that enabled a lot of quality Q&A time between the senior leadership team and everyone

- good overview of all divisions’ goals and objectives for the coming year and future. From which I could then easily identify which teams I need to collaborate with to get things done.

We also had a great session today all about how to more effectively work with each other, and communicating our commitments effectively with each other so to get effective team work going.

Our trainer Patrick from Axialent was an excellent coach/facilitator, and I learnt from him that: we need to take a more proactively approach in work and life, be an active player, and not a victim of the seemingly uncontrollable external factors that impact on our work and life. A great example is that I’m often late getting home from work. My excuse to my family is always – “bad traffic in Sydney tonight”, by saying that, I’m admitting defeat, traffic is something out of my control, hence getting rid of all my responsibilities and guilt. On the other hand, I could also say “sorry I left work too late to get home on time – given the traffic situation tonight”, this new attitude has now turned the control back to me, it is up to me to take the control and not be late in the future. The decision is with me. I choose to be in control. We also learnt a few techniques about how to more effectively request and articulate our commitments to each other, that enable us to be professionals acting with strong accountability and integrity.

I am looking forward to putting some of these lessons learnt into practice when I sit down and have my commitment discussions with Frank. Should be fun and should be a great year!

Did I also mention that we also had the wonderful Wil Anderson hosting the first day, funny guy!