Microsoft executive Sarah Vaughan learnt one of her key management lessons jumping out of a plane.
Before her corporate life, Captain Vaughan had command of the communications troop for the Australian Army’s parachute battalion and the lesson then was how fear in a team can quickly lead to mistakes.
“As a leader you have to be conscious of that because it’s really infectious,” she says. “You are only as strong as your weakest member. The checks around your team and culture you really can’t leave unchecked.”
During the training jump that day, a failure of nerve spread from one member to another eventually leading to four injuries during the exercise.
Now treading a different battlefield, Vaughan says a similar lack of confidence, in a corporate sense, can quickly undermine a team’s productivity and health of the business. And she is here to make sure this doesn’t happen.
These days Vaughan leads Microsoft’s Developer Experience & Evangelism Group where her job is to inspire customers in the tech startup space and help them to build the next business breakthrough or innovation success.
“It’s about nurturing the local software ecosystem to be successful in the global economy,” she says. “As well as communicating the value of leading edge technology.”
Together with her leadership and team building skills, Vaughan has her army days to thank for starting her down the technology path in the first place.
After graduating from the Royal Military College, Duntroon, she joined the Army Signals Corp and quickly “fell in love with what the technology could do and the science behind it”.
As well as literally “jumping in” communications equipment into the field, her army career included a number of communication management roles.
The one which took her from radio and satellite communications into computing was as systems manager for the Joint Intelligence Centre, a strategic asset providing secure communications across Australia and our allied countries.
After rejoining civilian life, she started with Microsoft in 2002 as a product manager during the early stages of e-commerce.
The best thing about her current role, she says, is the opportunity to leave a legacy through helping software developers – from startups to students – commercialise their work and make a difference.
“I’m a bit of a cheerleader for tech. I love being a leader at a market level because it’s intriguing and challenging.
“Every day I hear something really inspiring about what someone has done or is trying to do. You can see these people are really excited. They are not just doing a job, they get great energy from it.”
What she is most excited about right now is the future of artificial intelligence and machine learning and with it the potential to change people’s lives across sectors like education and health.
One such project is for smart glasses for people who have lost their sight which uses the technology to scan the view in front of the wearer and then describe it through audio.
Another innovation aims to automate the work of data scientists by using natural language processing and machine learning to analyse big data.
The technology being developed lets you ask a question relating to the data sets, like “what is the most profitable product?” and then delivers a comprehensive response as a virtual report.
Vaughan says the aim is to make access to such knowledge faster and cheaper and more generally accessible – a push for equality which drives her work.
As a woman in tech, she is pleased to see gender barriers starting to break down, especially in software development where there is now gender parity in the 18 to 35 year age bracket.
“This is a massive shift and a heartening trend for the industry,” she says.
A culture of workplace flexibility at Microsoft has also made it easier to balance work and family life with two young children and a third on the way.
“It’s about what you do, not where you do it,” she says. “As long as I’m driving impact and delivering it doesn’t matter if people don‘t see me for a week.”
She is also keen to push for diversity in teams to help challenge the status quo and bring other ideas to a project.
“I find the pace of what we are doing increases and it enriches the project or product that you are building.”
Her other advice is to take the job you think you can’t do, with “portfolio careers” set to become more common in future.
“The more comfortable you get with being uncomfortable the more opportunities you get in your career.”
She sees her role now as an extension of the drive for service that first inspired her to join the military, following her grandparents who also served.
“I really believe you should be making a difference,” she says. “And in doing something that is bigger than yourself.
“Things like machine learning and artificial intelligence have such potential to positively impact people’s lives. It’s dazzling.”
Sarah Vaughan is speaking on Thursday October 27 at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney as part of the Intergenerate event series, brought to you by the Guardian and Optus.
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