Having joined Microsoft as an industry recruiter immediately after her graduation, Stacy Hu (MSc HRM 2018) was keen to quickly make an impact in her role and to become a top performer.
Perhaps somewhat frustrated to have to spend her first six months making phone calls to build her experience, she soon became aware of the importance of the concept of impact in Microsoft. She tells us more.
"In Microsoft, we define impact in three circles. The first one is your individual accomplishments in the role, to the team, to the business, and to the company.
"The second circle is how you leverage the success of others to achieve larger impact. How you build on the work of others to accomplish your own tasks.
"And the third circle is how you can contribute to the success of others.
"All of these three circles are identical and they have intersections between each other."
Stacy highlights that if the impact of your individual work can only reach level one, by adding the second and third circles, you can expand the margin of the overall impact that you can achieve in a large organisation.
She explains more about why this matters and how to do this in practice, based on her experience in Microsoft.
"The first circle is very straightforward. It is about your key individual accomplishments that contribute to the team, the business, and customer results. At the end of the day, the whole success of an organisation is built on individual achievements and how they can contribute to the overall success of the business.
"We do this by setting core priorities or key performance indicators (KPIs) with our managers and mentors every quarter. During each quarter, you will undertake different activities, whether it is achieving sales results, delivering code, improving a process, or creating a new programme. We emphasise not only the activities themselves, but also the impact of those activities.
"To do this, it is important to understand your team and your company's overall objective and ultimately align your impact with those business strategies and goals. Throughout this process, we also focus on growth mindsets in terms of emphasising failure — how to fail fast, how to learn from challenges, and how to contribute continuously and sustainably to the overall success."
Stacy then looks at the second circle — namely how your results build on the work, ideas, and efforts of others. She compares this to writing her literature review for her dissertation but instead of reviewing papers from other authors, It is about consulting with your peers, your mentors, your managers, your stakeholders, and your clients.
By doing this, we avoid duplication in work and aim higher than the current standards. In Chinese, we have a saying 'Stand on the giant’s shoulder and look further, this is the way'.
"We do this by building different connections with others and leveraging their success, insights, knowledge, and experience to accelerate and maximise the collective impact against a set of shared priorities in the organisation.
Stacy reminds us that this can also serve as a foundation for future innovation both individually and collectively as well as serve as a platform to quickly bring new solutions to customers.
Turning to the third circle, Stacy sees this as the most interesting.
"It is about your contributions to the success of others. The company expects you to contribute to the culture of sharing and helping others as well as to achieve larger business goals. It is about showing your leadership in the role in helping others to grow as well."
She highlights that in large organisations such as Microsoft, by listening to the insights of your peers, mentors, and managers, and by learning from their experience, you will gain different perspectives on the tasks you are doing, enabling you to advance your own responsibilities to the next level.
The real benefit is then seen by bringing these three circles together.
"It is about being motivated to draw from and contribute to the success of each other and to do our best work together" says Stacy. "And the impact will grow."
Stacy reminds us that the concept of impact is just as relevant whether you are working for a large organisation such as Microsoft or working for a small start-up or non-profit organisation.
Finally, she talks about some of the practices adopted within Microsoft to ensure impact including buddy programmes, mentoring programmes, and regular one-to-one meetings with managers and stakeholders and organisational leaders, as well as both feedback processes and reward systems.
Taking a step back, she also reflects on how the Covid-19 situation has added some new challenges, emphasising the need to continuously connect with each other remotely to continue to create impact.
Stacy Hu was just one of the speakers at the Global Alumni Day, May 2021. Other topics covered include sustainable investment, global marketing trends, how to enter the Chinese market, renewable energy, the circular economy, and alumni mentoring.