Feedback

Once a year, as part of our annual staff appraisal, we have the opportunity to voluntarily receive 360-degree feedback from our colleagues. The idea is to ask for feedback from various colleagues of different teams, functions or management levels. I find this anonymous feedback from various perspectives very helpful.
Below I provide four examples of the last 360-degree feedback. Except for the anonymization of customers, partners, or project names, I have not made any other changes.

Colleague 1

I have had the pleasure to work with Stephan Michard on two Customer-A opportunities (project-A and project-B) in his capacity as Senior Solution Architect. Stephan’s performance and conduct has been nothing short of outstanding throughout even the most intensive and difficult phases of both opportunities, especially on project-A. The project-A opportunity was highly complex and required Dell, Partner-A and Partner-B to work together to propose a secure, highly resilient, future proof and evergreen solution that would minimize Customer-A’s efforts to lifecycle hardware and software and enable seamless migrations to future platform versions. Stephan’s job was no easy feat given this level of complexity, but Stephan rose to the occasion and successfully led the joint Dell / Partner-A / Partner-B technical teams to design a comprehensive and differentiated solution that adequately addressed Customer-A’s objectives while optimally employing the capabilities from Dell, Partner-A and Partner-B to the satisfaction of all parties. Stephan managed to achieve this by quickly establishing himself a highly collaborative, solution-oriented and client focused technical leader and trusted advisor. He quickly gained respect and trust from the client leadership team as well as from Partner-A and Partner-B leadership teams. Thanks to Stephan’s technical leadership and proposed solution, Customer-A made a final decision to go with our proposal. Customer-A then requested a ’test-drive’ and prove our solution in a very detailed proof of concept. Again, Stephan was instrumental in leading and structuring the execution of the POC with over 200 test cases, leading to a successful completion of the POC. Although the client ended up putting the engagement on hold due to budget constraints, the solution and proposal Stephan helped architect and build and the way he led this opportunity leaves a lasting impact on the client and all parties involved and sets an excellent standard that we should emulate on all key multi-cloud opportunities.
Stephan also played a crucial role in helping shape the solution and approach for the project-B opportunity. Stephan helped steer and coach the technical team in the right direction to prepare a solution for Customer-A’s development platform that is fit for purpose and has been accepted by the customer, with final legal negotiations being the only last step in the process. Although another Solution Architect has been the overall technical lead on project-B, it is important to highlight Stephan’s contribution, without which we would not be where we are today.
In summary, let me say that Stephan is one of the most dependable technical leaders I have known, always focused on finding solutions, always calm under pressure and easy and fun to work with both for our clients and Dell sales teams. If he can help coach more solution architects to emulate his standard of expertise and leadership, this can certainly strengthen Dell technical leadership, particularly in front of potential clients, on our most complex opportunities.

Colleague 2

Stephan has demonstrated exceptional performance during the project-A POC. He played a substantial role in successfully completing the POC and building positive customer relations, even though we didn’t convert the opportunity into a sale. He has shown himself to be a calming presence for the team and has demonstrated an ability to execute technical projects successfully. In addition, his curiosity and enthusiasm for new technologies are impressive and beneficial for the team. As an opportunity for advancement, I recommend that Stephan take on a more active leadership role. With his demonstrated technical expertise and ability to develop concepts and ideas effectively, he has the potential to be not only a technical lead but also a strong and effective leader. Stephan can continue to drive success for Dell Technologies, Customer-A and himself by guiding and directing team members and projects. By developing his leadership skills, he will unlock his full potential and bring more value to the team and organization.

Colleague 3

In 2022, I worked with Stephan for the customers Customer-A, Customer-B and Customer-C. It was a great pleasure to work with him. He managed to convince with his calm manner across all Dell Business Units as a very good team member, so that it was possible to work with him reliably and on the basis of trust very well.
Stephan is well structured, works things out very well so that the whole account team benefits. He brings his own ideas to the solutions, combined with his very extensive experience.
In addition, he has prepared and executed various executive briefings for and with his customers through his own ideas and with a lot of commitment and initiative. Furthermore, he was able to convince many of his customers and beyond with his very large expertise in Kubernetes. He is also well networked within Dell Technologies and can thus fully fulfill his role as CTO Ambassador.
Stephan’s way of doing things is well thought out and goal oriented. He goes the extra mile to consistently pursue his goals. Stephan’s qualities of being a team player and role model make him stand out as an excellent Senior Technical Architect.

Colleague 4

I am very happy to provide feedback on Stephan’s work. I’ve known Stephan since 2018 and since then we’ve been exchanging ideas on technology and career topics on a regular basis.
From my perspective, Stephan has the following strengths:

  • Very serious and senior appearance.
  • Is able, and has shown it in the cloud project at Customer-A, to manage highly complicated projects and win them for Dell Technologies.
  • Highly professional communication skills.
  • Stephan has extensive technical know-how (also specifically in the programming environment) and not only in datacenter topics.
  • Solicits opinions and ideas from others and incorporates them into his own actions (“improving the wheel, not reinventing it”).
  • Extremely reliable. Says what he does and does what he says.

If I were to name potential for improvement, it would be this:
he should please continue to develop his way of serving customers in the same way and pass on his knowledge of this to other colleagues. I would like to see his creativity being specifically encouraged and his potential being raised accordingly.