Gaurav’s Substack
Storyteller’s Dreams
The Day Microsoft Almost Made Me Fire My Entire Team
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The Day Microsoft Almost Made Me Fire My Entire Team

How a false accusation turned into a decade-long partnership

In the late 2000s, I was part of a scrappy startup building Healthcare products. Like all startups, we were bleeding money and trying to stay afloat. We partitioned our team and started taking consulting gigs to generate cash flow; I took on Microsoft account as a partner. Every week, I flew from Burbank, CA to Redmond, WA working closely with Microsoft Health Solutions Group (HSG) leaders as a strategy consultant and guide my team on the ground.

Not too long after I started scaling the team, I got a call from the Director of Training and Certification at HSG accusing us of cheating. My Board was ready to fire everyone on the spot. I asked for 24 hours to understand the root cause. Bruce Tizes, one of my Board of Directors, and I met the HSG Director next day. We went from bring an underdog being accused of cheating to building a decade long partnership.

In this story, I share my experience and lessons from ADAPT - Assessment Driven Approach for Project Training, I developed at JP Morgan Chase. ADAPT helped me build high performance teams in multiple companeis.

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