Although I usually post around technical matters & such, occasionally I digress into personal reflection. After all, this is my personal blog, & I feel it’s sometimes good/relevant to share certain personal things. Today’s post is along those lines, though it does relate to a technical matter.
Let’s set the scene. As many of you know (either from knowing me personally, or from reading my blog posts), I’m from the ‘model-driven app’ background. Canvas apps are really cool, but I wouldn’t say that I’m a very advanced creator of them. I’m learning the whole time about them (well, when I have a free minute here & there). There are many people in the community who are extremely more advanced than I am, and I love being able to learn from them.
I’m also considered to be in ‘Delivery’, This is the fancy word for those who run/are involved in projects, rather than selling concepts to clients. I’d run a mile if someone tried to put me in a Sales role (though I do admire the power suits that Sales have, occasionally). I’ve done a bit of Pre-Sales (where I’m helping out from a technical perspective), but haven’t been heavily involved. It’s actually something that I’m trying to work on, with being a tech evangelist. After all, if people already know/rave about the tech, how can you evangelise about it to them!!
So last week I get a call from our Sales team. They’re really nice, and know their stuff. However they’re not ‘techies’. They had a situation – we’d been talking to a client about a potential project, and the client told us to pitch for it. Brilliant, right? Well…
The client told us that we had 4 days until the pitch deadline. Not only were we needing to pitch with the usual presentation pack (however would Sales operate without PowerPoint…?), we also had to do a live demo. Not for a completed product, but rather a Proof of Concept (PoC).
The only person available was….yes, you guess it…me. There wasn’t anyone else around with the necessary knowledge/skills to create the PoC in the time-frame needed. I’ll freely admit that I was absolutely slammed with existing projects, but wanted to be able to help out.
However, things then got ‘better’. And by ‘better’, I meant ‘interesting’. I got told who else was pitching to the client. Obviously I’m not going to mention any specific details here, but I knew who they are. More importantly, I figured that I had a very good idea of who from their side would be creating the tech, & doing the pitch.
Now as I’m not mentioning any identifiable details, I’m feeling free to say this. They’re not at my level of tech skills. They’re nowhere NEAR my level of tech skills. This is NOT because I’m better than they are. Totally the opposite – they’re SO far ahead of me with their knowledge of things, I can barely see the dust that they kick up in a race.
Knowing this, I knew that I couldn’t build a model-driven app (though it would have worked perfectly for the scenario/s we were given). I HAD to do a canvas app. But even with doing that, it wasn’t going to be anywhere near as good as what the other side would be able to put on.
The phrase ‘gibbering in fear’ does come to mind with my reaction to finding all of this out. I did feel slightly like a deer caught in the headlights. I wanted to do well, both for myself & my company, but I honestly had no idea how we could stack up.
Thankfully, my company has an extremely open culture, and I was therefore able to talk to my manager about it. He understood where I was coming from, but encouraged me to go for it & do what I would be able to create.
My wife also encouraged me to go for it. Well, actually her words were ‘it’s not sexy when a husband says that he can’t do it, so man up and go for it!’. Ha…after that I couldn’t very well NOT do it.
So I applied myself, and with some VERY late nights (I did have other projects on, as I mentioned above), managed to get something in place. Not only did I create it, I think it looked really good. There was some really nice (canvas app) functionality, and it all came together pretty well.
Everything was in place in time (including some last minute tweaks). I even decided to spice up the demo a bit, and borrowed some dinosaurs from the kids to use for personas. We were using live camera feeds for part of the demo, and suddenly the demo was joined by ‘Rexy’, the ‘Customer Service Representative’ T-Rex! They were quite amused by it (thankfully!), and our team thought it was absolutely hilarious.
I have no idea how the other partner pitched to the client, or what the decision will be from the client. It’s way too early for that.
What I do know is that sometimes we can lose track of ourselves. I’m not going to go into the subject of ‘Imposter Syndrome’ (check out Em D’Arcy if you want to read up about that). Rather that having others around to encourage us, even though others may be more skilled, can really make the difference.
In life, we can often face challenges. How we handle them, and how we decide to move forward, can define who we are. When dealing with technology items such as the Power Platform, where there’s constant change, it can sometimes feel very daunting, but we still need to push ahead.
Yesterday I was listening to Lisa Crosbie talking about her journey into technology (and canvas apps). As she put it – ‘there is no comfort zone here – you need to find a place to feel comfortable with this level of discomfort, and ride it to be successful’. It’s really so true. It’s not just needing to push ourselves in the traditional way, but to keep up our own confidence in our skills & abilities. With this, we can continue to drive forward, keep on learning, and continue our journey of greatness!
I’m really glad that I was able to do this, and hope that I can keep this with me. By doing so, I’ll be able to continue along my own journey.
Have you ever had a time when a challenge seemed insurmountable? How did you cope with it? Drop a comment below – I’d love to hear!
