The news this morning that Greg Larnder is no longer the channel chief of Microsoft Canada is making the channel community in Canada desensitized to organizational changes at the subsidiary.
The channel partners in the last 17 months have gone through two presidents, three VPs of SMS&P and two channel chiefs. Max Long is leaving the president’s post on Sept. 30. That will leave the subsidiary rudderless. No one could have predicted the outcome of Mark Dodds tenure at Microsoft Canada so in this case the company was a bit unlucky. But the organization was under strong leadership with deep Canadian roots two April’s ago with Neil Tanner as the VP of SMS&P, Corinne Sharp, as the channel chief and Eric Gales as the president.
And, the hawks at SAP Canada, who by-the-way went through their own leadership changes recently, are knocking on the loyal Microsoft partners doors with options for their business.
Now is the time for leadership at Microsoft Canada. The company is going through a rough transitional period in its history by focusing on devices and services. While the strategy maybe sound given the new market dynamics, you still need qualified people to execute this strategy. I think Larnder given his excellent track record with perennial Top 5 solution provider Compugen should have been given an opportunity to continue. Thirteen months is not an enough of a sample size, in my opinion, to judge Larnder.
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Larnder’s departure also does not make sense from this point of view: It’s like the assistant coach in hockey replacing the goalie coach, while there is a vacancy at head coach. Why have organizational changes in Canada when you still have to find someone to be the top dog? What if the new president wants to bring in his or her own people?
I had a chance to talk to several channel partners and other industry experts this morning about Larnder’s departure and the consensus is that Microsoft Canada, right now, is a mess. I’m not completely convinced of that. As I said earlier in this blog Long and Dodds are two fine executives. Microsoft Canada was a bit unlucky to lose those two the way they did. Time and marketplace loyalty is not on their side right now and the company needs to act wisely and quickly.
O.K. now it’s time to speculate on who might be the next channel chief of Microsoft Canada. Since Donna Wittmann has left Tennis Canada; she would be the obvious choice to replace Larnder. Wittmann has extensive experience dealing with Microsoft when she was with Dell Canada and she has run a full channel business at Cisco Canada for a number of years. Microsoft would also be smart to go back to Corinne Sharp, who was well-respected and loved by the channel partners throughout the country. But, that ship might have already sailed. The other option is to hire no-one. Maybe the new president and Dennis Cerasoli, the VP of SMS&P, figure out they need more than one person since the direction is devices and services. Maybe they need two people instead of one?