Could a greater understanding of what people managers do make you a better individual contributor? And would it also cause you to treat your manager differently?
For Daniel Paluszek, our guest this week in episode 338, it definitely did. And though this was a short stint in Daniel’s career, he refers to that experience as priceless. This week in part 2 of the story you’ll hear about Daniel’s experience working in professional services both in pre-sales and post-sales and how he built expertise to help increasingly larger customers over time. Daniel will reflect on the lessons learned from his time as a people leader, and pay special attention to the moment when Daniel turns the microphone on John during our discussion!
We also explore the reasons why Daniel eventually chose to move back to the individual contributor side of the house. How do you think your mindset would be different when making a move like this? Listen to the full story from Daniel’s perspective.
Original Recording Date: 06-11-2025
Daniel Paluszek is a Principal Partner Technology Strategist at ServiceNow. If you missed part 1 of our discussion with Daniel, check out Episode 337 – Finding Drive: The Parallels of Mentoring and Technology Partnerships with Daniel Paluszek (1/3)
Topics – The Nuances of Professional Services, Getting to Know Service Providers, Becoming a Practice Manager, Difficult Conversations, Returning to Individual Contributor
2:46 – The Nuances of Professional Services

* It seems like Daniel would have been able to bring some of the government work he had done into conversations to help build credibility and relationships.

* Doing federal defense contracting is certainly different but provides a level of expertise that cascades to any government organization.
* When Daniel joined the partner, most of the conversations were about getting into virtualization, and the projects focused on consolidating infrastructure. Daniel had direct exposure and expertise in designing and orchestrating these kinds of projects from start to finish (design, build, migration, providing a day 2 runbook).
* Daniel had the technical expertise he needed but did not at first have the sales and consultative skills he needed. Daniel had help from mentors (his sales rep, his leadership chain, other colleagues on the professional services team) to improve in this area.


* Daniel would later join Cisco Systems doing professional services. This was around the time they launched the UCS computing platform. He had worked in in professional services for DynTek for a couple of years previous to making the move.

* Working in professional services granted opportunities to work with many customers across multiple industries. Daniel calls gaining this experience getting “at bats.”
* Working within a large professional services organization can also be challenging.

* Usually, the person who creates the scope of work for a services engagement is not the same person who will execute the statement of work.
* Something could have been scoped incorrectly or improper expectations set, for example. Daniel tells us part of the role was about overcoming these types of challenges and mitigating risks.
* “You had to work through these situations and challenges on an ongoing basis…. Not only make your customer happy (do what’s right) but also make your organization healthy from a profit and loss perspective because…companies and PS organizations, their largest cost factor is people….” – Daniel Paluszek, on life working in professional services
* Daniel tells us that a professional services organization has to balance executing well for custom...