- It's lunchtime at Ignite, and this
is Brad Anderson's lunch break.
Ignite is one of the best tech conferences
in the world, and while I was in town,
I set aside a couple of hours to
meet up with a few thousand of my favorite people.
Today, my guest is pretty much everyone at Ignite.
(light orchestral music)
- Jump in, John!
Good, how're you doing?
What's up, what's on your mind?
- Uh, nothing, really, I don't even know who you are.
- So I'm Satya's personal assistant,
I go get him cokes and coffees when he needs it.
- Does that pay well?
- So far so good.
- Where are you going?
- How many shirts have you sweat through already in Orlando?
- Four.
- Four, okay, how much can you bench?
- Almost as much as my wife.
- Okay, that's...
She sounds strong.
- She is.
- So, we've all had those horror stories in SMS
and config manager, what's your horror story?
- What's my horror story...
Okay, so we were building SMS 2003, we made a mistake
in how we were using active directory,
we took the entire company down.
- Wow!
- Nobody authenticate because we
did a denial of service attack on EZRAC on active directory.
- What are some of your top recommended books?
What do you like?
- Ooh, yeah, yeah.
So first of all, I just finished reading Satya's book,
I really read it.
- I just submitted a request for
that in my local library today.
- It's unbelievably direct and it's unbelievably genuine.
- What does your work week look like?
How many hours are you actually putting in?
- Yeah okay, I gotta tell you right now,
my work life balance is the best
it's ever been in my career.
- Really?
- Yeah!
So first of all, I'm a early riser,
I get up at 4.30 in the morning,
I'm at the gym by 5.30, into the office at eight.
- Right.
- And for me, I work eight to six,
I usually don't take lunch, I leave at six
because I think it's important
to have dinner with my family.
- Moving in heavily into EMS and I've seen
the new 365 spaces and one of the things we've noticed
is that obviously, you've got so many moving parts now
with intune and mam and the other security elements
and you've got so many different product stats,
just trying to understand Microsoft,
where that trying to pull that together.
- Yeah, next to what are we doing.
- Yeah.
- So, with Microsoft 365 now,
we literally have a monthly steering
committee where there is about six or seven of the VPs
who are in charge of driving in 365 across
all the engineering teams, so all of those pieces
we look at monthly and then we go and drive
that across Windows, EMS and Office 365
but we're treating it like a product.
- Oh, that's a encouraging and fantastic
from our point of view, because I think
the great solution is you just need to see them across the.
- I think we've made great progress,
but there's more work to do.
- The Microsoft tips of day is night and day compared to
- Oh, I'm so glad you said that.
- Yesterday, so it looks wrong.
I mean, I'm sure it'll be night and day
for tomorrow but I mean it's a nice piece
to work with whereas previously,
it was always a necessary evil
without that sounding too harsh.
- No, no, no!
But now, the company's different.
- The support we're getting from you guys
and have had this year has been fantastic
and we really do appreciate.
- Lightning round?
- Lightning, first question, tea or coffee?
- Diet coke.
What was the last movie you watched?
- Hot Rod for the 37th time.
So I think with onedrive, I think
one of the things you can talk with the customers,
the decision makers is, the new capabilities
that we have where you can actually like,
go back to a last known good, it actually
protects you from ransomware.
So go talk about the fact that
if your files are in one drive for business,
you're actually protected from the ransomware.
- Yup.
- That's your drive, onedrive for business.
- It's amazing how often people still seem to be,
uninformed at how secure it is
and they still want to use their own premises tools.
- Who has a better car?
You or your wife?
- My wife, yeah, she drives the Tesla.
When I'm good, she lets me drive it on the weekends.
- Can you give us a ride to the Hilton for 10 bucks.
- Seriously, no jokes, would you mind?
- No, we're filming right here.
Yeah.
- Is the Hilton over there?
- I don't know, that's the Hyatt.
I don't know where the Hilton is.
Did you hear that, Ben?
- How do you do the work life balance thing,
as a dad, as a grand dad, as a senior VP for Microsoft,
how do you do that?
- What advice do you have for somebody like me
who has twins and a two year old at home?
- Biggest thing is, you gotta learn to say no.
- Say no.
- You have to know what to say yes to,
what to say no to and then, like for me,
eating dinner with my children,
is one of the most important things that I do,
so get home and have dinner with your family.
- What do you believe would be the most important
soft skill for an IT pro to have, to drive cloud options.
- So there are a couple of things, one,
I tell people, like when I go talk to universities,
you're always selling and so, I think
the ability to be able to communicate
and to be able to articulate a story
on how an idea that you have is gonna
enhance the company, is gonna enhance the user experience,
you have to be able to articulate the clear story
to your managers, to your peers,
to the people you're delivering the service as
so I think the number on thing that you can do
from a soft skill, is be a great storyteller.
So what was your favorite session so far, other than mine?
- Other than yours.
You are strongly confident that I watched yours.
- Who is Ben Hawkin?
- I don't know, this weird guy who comes up
with the ideas of me driving around in cars.
- Has he ever infiltrated your
Twitter account to your knowledge?
- Yeah, he has the password to my Twitter account.
He's the only person that has
the password to my Twitter account.
- So did you steal Anderson Cooper's
Twitter account or did he steal yours?
- It took us multiple years to negotiate that on Twitter.
- Fair.
- Look, a guy like me who's late 40's,
what advice do you have for you know,
how to kinda find your nitch these days in the new world.
- Okay, what I've always believed is,
see if you can identify what that trend was gonna happen
in the market, that is just unstoppable
and then go get good and try to get in on that early.
So, right now, everything's gonna
move to the cloud, everything.
So how fast can you become that individual
that understands how to help organizations
move to the cloud, how to lead your
organization to move to the cloud.
- Our IT group is about 80 people
and only a couple of women and we're seriously trying to...
- Increase your diversity?
- Absolutely, do you have any advice for us?
- That's a good question, I believe
the culture is the most important thing so,
do you have a culture where everybody
feels their voice can be heard, is inclusive
and I think if you focus on the culture first,
so that, you know, the women who
are already in your organization can say,
this is a great culture, I can thrive here
and second I would say is, are you actually finding,
are you looking, are you finding the individuals
that come in and interview for the roles
or take a look at your interview slates, are they all dudes?
The other thing I tell you as my advice
is go look at your job descriptions
and like have the women on your team look at them.
- Oh.
- Because the wording that sometimes
there's words in a job description
that completely turn off a woman
because they're seeing that are masculine to their tone,
that are not inclusive, so, check that out too.
- That's awesome, thank you very much.
- Heard you talking about configuration manager
and the in tune and road maps and things
like that yesterday morning and I was curious if
SA scheme is gonna live to B30.
- Oh yeah, for sure.
- And the last one, in the last 24 hours,
I've been told that SCCM is dead, what do you have to say?
- You know SCCM is more alive than it's ever been.
It's more interesting than it has even been.
- Exactly!
- Hey, where you from?
- Florida, here in Naples, 10 South.
- Ah, Naples is beautiful, gorgeous.
So were you guys impacted by the hurricane?
- Yeah, we got a direct hit but if it wasn't for all
the Microsoft products and some of the
automation we've put in, we wouldn't know what we would do.
- Quote that!
- For real, seriously!
As a leader, I'm president of the company,
small organization, but I want it to be big.
What are some of the best advice to
be a better manager, leading people,
especially in today's day and age.
- A couple of things, one, I think
you just have to be genuine.
You know, people wanna trust you
and if you're genuine and they know
that you're being genuine, I think
people are willing to follow just because
they trust you, number one.
I believe information in powers
and so, as much information as you can give to your people,
empowers them to make the decisions
based upon what's best of the company
because they know what's going on.
Too many leaders wanna hold the data in
and I think you should let all the data flow.
- Great.
- And then I think, third, you have to focus on the culture.
You know, you more than any leader in your organization
are gonna define what the culture is.
If you take a look at what Microsoft
has done over the last three to four years,
Satya's number one focus has been the culture
and look at what the impact it's had on Microsoft.
- Unbelievable, yeah and I did get his book actually
this morning and downloaded the audible
so I can't wait to start reading it.
- Page 58 is my favorite.
- Is that where you're in.
- Yeah.
(laughter)
Where you from?
- I'm from Seattle, I work at Microsoft.
- Alright, what team?
- Onedrive.
- Okay, so you wanna come work in the EMS team?
- Oh, oh!
You have to ask Jeff for that.
- Yeah, Jeff and I are like buds, he won't care.
He would say, Brad seems better.
- Oh!
Hi!
I was wondering what's your top
productivity tips and tricks.
- One, if I can block out about two hours a day
for just for me to do that work
that I have to do as a individual contributor.
I can keep my work life balance,
because I spend the bulk of my day in meetings so,
one of the things I'm pretty religious about
is kinda keeping eight to nine open
and then, five to six, and so I'm able
to do in those two hours, get
the work done that I have to do.
- What was the single feature in SCCM that seemed
like it was gonna be so easy, but
then was just like a nightmare?
- Go back a decade ago, we took over the help desk
and the desktop manager for three different companies.
Lost a fortune on it, but we learned a ton
and so we learned so much in that experience
from 2007 to 2011, that is what actually
got us onto the right path with Intune.
- So, listened to the keynote,
going to the session is a common theme
for transformation right?
And so, I've been on a transformation project myself
and eating right, going to the gym,
what I'm wondering and I think
the entire community, really,
is how does Brad Anderson keep a 24 inch pythons,
what kind of workout routine do
you use to stay in this shape?
- So, if you go back a few years ago,
back to 2010, I dropped 50 pounds.
- Wow.
- Okay, yeah, I was a fat dude.
- Yeah, I'm at 60 so far and I'm still...
- You've dropped 60 pounds?
- Yes.
- Dude, like here man.
Holy cow!
That's a transformation!
- Exactly, yeah.
- You planning on taking a Lunch Break
to the next height, next level like Carpool Karaoke?
- Only if I can get a piano in the car.
- What's your takeaway from the events of this week?
- So, I think the interesting thing for me here is that,
like we've seen IT folks, we've seen business folks
coming to hear that and how do you kind of
create a message, after message
that speaks to both those people?
- Yeah.
I guess this is actually one of the things
you're really good at, but there is an art to it
and on it, you have to tell those stories
but you have to help to make sure those stories
blend so they understand how they work together.
- What's your favorite part of the Primas abilities
and what should I be focusing on?
- Oo, my favorite, that's kinda saying like
who's my favorite kid.
- Yeah.
- Many of us, I built my career
building onpram products, we talked about disruption,
my whole life got disrupted because
I had to figure out what it means to build services.
Once you taste that telemetry,
man, it is addicting because you know,
for the first time in your life,
from a professional standpoint,
you have data that tells you what's going on
and can then be the basis of your decisions.
Dude's gotta be hot man, look at him out there
sitting in the backyard in all black.
- Yeah.
- He's leaning back and catching some rays, look at that.
- This honestly isn't bad, I've been
at a wedding in Louisiana in August.
- Oh geez, that sounds like hell.
(light orchestral music)