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 | Expedition: Everest at Disney's Animal Kingdom. Orlando, FL July 23, 2006 |
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| Apple | Cool | Disney | Entertainment | Fitness | Geek | Microsoft | Politics | Seattle Storm | Transit | Travel | UW MBA | ||
July 30, 2004You're A Product ... Planner?So (ack! I said it! The word!) I've been meaning to write this post for a while. I've had enough people - friends, relatives, fellow MBA students, Microsoft people, the crazy guy on the bus - ask me this question that I thought it was worth addressing: "So, what exactly is a product planner, anyhow?" Put succinctly, planners help guide product evolution. (Caveat: this is how planning is done in Office; if you're a planner elsewhere in Microsoft, such as MSN or XBox, your mileage may vary.) We generate new ideas, identify trends, keep an eye on competitive products, and try to help provide thought leadership on products. We are, in effect, the "voice" of the customer. Planners straddle traditional marketing and development responsibilities. In Office, the planners are coupled to the development team; planners in other parts of the company are usually part of marketing. Here's why planning is important. Let's say you're a developer. You are in the process of building the next release of the best-selling Widget 9.0. Naturally, you've got a laundry list of features in front of you that you can implement. Some of them consist of direct feedback from customers, others are things you wish you'd had time to "do right" in the current release. There's another bucket of stuff you have to implement because a competitive product has it, and it's become important. And finally, there's a class of "cool" features that you'd love to put in. Underlying all of this, however, is the stark reality that you have only so much money, only so many people, and only so much time. What do you do? Now let's say you're a marketer. You have just been told that Widget 9.0 is complete. At this point, your job is to sell as many copies of Widget as possible. To facilitate that, you would take a look at the product's features and capabilities, and assess what problems might be solved by employing those capabilities. You then figure out which segments of the population experience those kinds of problems, and begin the long process of positioning Widget so those people a) know it exists, b) believe that Widget can solve their problem, and c) choose to buy Widget over alternatives (such as a competitive product, or choosing to buy nothing at all). Of course, your job is made much easier if you know, with certainty, that Widget was designed with certain types of customers in mind. Enter product planning. The planning discipline is an ounce of prevention - as opposed to the pound of cure. Planning brings a marketing sensibility and a research budget to the development process. We give our Widget developer the data she needs to make smart prioritization decisions. We also help our intrepid marketer know what segments will find Widget incredibly valuable, and why. Planners are interdisciplinary glue. Here in Office, there's a planner for every product in the suite. There's a planner for Outlook, OneNote, Access, you name it. There are also planners for categories of products, or who specialize in certain types of technology. These people are smart, creative, thoughtful, holistic, and, most of all, credible. They do their homework. And they care about customers. Planners get to work on cool stuff. My summer planning project consists of some blue-sky exploration of a problem area that crosses product categories. Essentially, Microsoft has hired me to make them a map of the problem area that they can use - over time, it will be updated and filled in as more people explore the territory. When I got here in June, my instructions were essentially this: "Microsoft is interested in studying this subject. We know it's a problem, and we know it's a problem our customers experience all the time. We don't have any real sense of how to attack it, but several people in the company have taken a shot at it. Go talk to those folks, do some thinking, and then let us know how you think we should solve it." We go to primary research in early August. Speaking of research: I'm in San Francisco early next week for some customer stuff, so updates might be light. I'll post when I can. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated July 30, 2004 5:14 PM. Real's Response: Kiss Our A--Vunet: Real is responding to Apple, "That is why so many consumers have welcomed the news of Harmony. Consumers, and not Apple, should be the ones choosing what music goes on their iPod." Of course, all of this is getting silly. No one is telling people they can't choose what music to put on their iPods. Go to the music store, buy that Hootie CD (someone has to), take it home, rip it, and BOOM! it's on your iPod. Really, the issue comes down to consumers being able to choose which DRM goes on their iPod -- an entirely different question. Is anyone, other than manufacturers of different DRM schemes, asking for this? Anyone at all? Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated July 30, 2004 2:08 PM. July 29, 2004Color Me ShockedCNET: Apple says "It is highly likely that Real's Harmony technology will cease to work with current and future iPods.." Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated July 29, 2004 9:51 AM. July 28, 2004CNN on iPod and RealCNN: "The question the company now must answer is, Is it strategically more important to preserve its closed system, or is the iPod the future profit machine for the company? In the latter case, it should pump up sales numbers at any reasonable cost. It's quite a pickle." Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated July 28, 2004 2:45 PM. Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?Day 2 of the CAC. Presence is causing problems for people. When you sign in to an IM session, you're "available" and people feel free to send you messages. If you're sitting in front of your computer doing a whole lotta nuthin', then the message may be a welcome intrusion on your otherwise-uneventful consumption of fark.com. On the other hand, you might be "available" in the IM sense, but busily authoring a marketing document, editing a PowerPoint deck, crunching numbers, and so on - basically, getting work done. In this case, the new IM is not welcome; it's like a ringing phone that demands to be answered. If your status is set to "available" but you don't respond, the person initiating the IM gets (understandably) miffed, because they think you're ignoring them. (And they're right.) There are all kinds of "solutions" to this problem today, but they push 100% of the work on to the IM user to update their status. My home IM client, iChat, makes it easy to create custom messages that tell others what I'm up to. As such, I have a laundry list of status messages ("On the phone," "Writing code", "Catching up on e-mail", "In the shower") that I actively manage from a persistent menu at the top of my screen. A number of my friends have taken to doing this as well - even to the point of aping or making fun of one another in their status messages. Richard, for instance, set his message to "Busy, busy, busy"; shortly thereafter, Mary set hers to "is busy like Richard." As well as this works for Users In The Know, being In The Know is atypical, and thus an automated solution is a much more attractive option for people who want to just use their computers. Today's IM clients do this to some degree with their auto-idling (e.g., if you're away for 5 or 10 minutes, your status is set to "idle", telling people that you haven't touched the keyboard or mouse). While "idle" conveys a lot of useful information, it's also super-brittle: if you touch or jostle the mouse for any reason, you go back to green (available) and the 10-minute clock starts all over again. I chose to blog this because I think the problem is really, really interesting from both a technology and a social perspective. We've never really dealt with this before in a new technology. Phones, for instance, are intrusive like IM. But phones allow the called party to choose whether or not to answer, without any ill effects. Indeed, Caller ID has put more power in the hands of the called party, and people commonly screen calls. (In an interesting arms-and-armor race, this has led callers to leave voicemail messages that openly ask if they've been screened!). For now, it's acceptable to let your callers shunt into a voicemail system, and you can call them whenever you like. E-mail is also intrusive, but you can choose when (or whether!) to answer. So it's not in the same league. IM, on the other hand, demands an immediate answer because it conveys the pesky presence data, "I am physically in front of, and am using, the computer." This reduces the "Oh, sorry I didn't get your call ... I was out" defense that you can use with missed phone calls. Instead, the party IM'ing you has the impression that your willingness to answer them has more to do with how important they are to you than with any other factor. We humans are social creatures, and we are nothing if not attenuated to our place in the social hierarchy. It will be interesting to see how this "problem" gets "solved." Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated July 28, 2004 9:41 AM. July 27, 2004CAC!There is an unwritten rule at Microsoft: that which can be given an acronym (or, as my friend Bill Hays points out, an initialism), gets an acronym. This means that otherwise innocuous-sounding names for things are quickly compressed into three or four characters, which are then fed straight into the vocal chords for easy mangling. In today's example, consider the Customer Advisory Council. This is an unarguably good thing: a forum for Microsoft to learn what its customers want, straight from the horse (as it were). However, this also means that Microsoft culture re-christens the event with the unfortunate-sounding name of "CAC". When pronounced, it sounds like someone just choked on a small bit of salami (e.g., "GAK!"). Stop the insanity! But I digress. The CAC is a group of customers who have agreed to come to Redmond and tell us what's on their minds. Some of their feedback is directly related to our products, and how much they love them. Other parts of their feedback consist of how our products aren't as good as they could be. And a third part consists of those same customers telling us that they're happy to kick us to the curb if we don't do what they want. Sounds like fun, huh? Actually, it was. The entire feedback process is structured in such a way so we capture as much data as possible, as accurately as possible, in as short a period of time as possible. As a Product Planner Intern, this represented one of my first glimpses of how market research works, Redmond-style. Many of these customers represent sizable companies with sizable IT budgets, sizable needs, and a sizable ability to make us happy - or un - if they see fit. I've written before about my goal-setting process, and how Microsoft is big on transparency and accountability. Today was an example of that with customers, rather than internal folks. After some brief opening remarks from Bernardo (my team lead), Anoop got up and talked for a good 45 minutes about where the division is going, and how he sees Microsoft products evolving into that space. After painting the vision, he paused, surveyed the room, and said, "I'd like a show of hands. Who here thinks we're not listening as well as we could be?" A few hands went up. Gingerly. It's hard to be a party pooper in a room full of people. Reluctantly, a few more went up. And then one or two stragglers. Anoop surveyed each of them and said, "Thank you for your honesty. I stand here because I want to fix that." As one who has had to wear the Asbestos Underpants with unhappy customers in the past, I must say that I was both impressed and refreshed by Anoop's forthright solicitation of this feedback. It would be really, really easy for him to stroll in to the room, say a few uplifting words ("We love our customers, technology is wonderful, children are our future, thank you for coming!") and walked out, leaving his direct reports to deal with complaints. But he didn't. Very cool. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated July 27, 2004 9:09 PM. In The Field...I'm at an all-day Customer Advisory Council at a hotel here in Redmond, so blogging will be infrequent at best. I'll post some summaries later tonight, time permitting. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated July 27, 2004 12:58 PM. July 26, 2004NEWS FLASH: Microsoft People Are Blogging!Wired's got a cool little blurb about Microsoft bloggers: "Microsoft employees were on the panel not to defend secrecy, but to laud their company's widespread embrace of blogs and other so-called social-media tools. Long criticized as a secretive corporate behemoth uninterested in customer feedback, Microsoft now boasts over a thousand bloggers, including the prolific and popular Scobleizer." Over a thousand? Killer. A few that I read are Scoble (of course), Rick Schaut (MacBU), the IE Team, and Chris Pratley (OneNote). I don't think they counted me (y'know, I'm just an intern). UPDATE, February 6, 2006: One or more of the original hyperlinks on this page expired, and has been dereferenced. The hyperlinked text is now underlined. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated July 26, 2004 9:36 AM. Is RealNetworks Playing Fair?The Web is atwitter today with the news that RealNetworks has reverse-engineered Apple's FairPlay digital rights management scheme, and plans to use its implementation in its music store. In English, this means that songs purchased from online stores operated by RealNetworks (or from companies to whom Real has licensed its technology) will now be playable on iPods. Why is this a big deal? Well, first let's clear up some confusion. iPods play MP3 files just fine, whatever their origin. If you have an MP3, then you can park that puppy in any iPod, no sweat, and play it to your hearts' content. The problem, of course, is that MP3 is an unencrypted file format. Once a song is in MP3, you can copy it, give it to friends, swap it on the Internet, you name it. I'm speaking from a technical standpoint, here, not a legal one (don't steal music). The recording industry HATES this, which is why digital rights management, or DRM, comes in to play. DRM is designed to take the music file and "seal" it in a digital envelope so it can only be played by the person who actually buys it. There's a billion and one different DRM schemes out there, but Apple has chosen a technology called FairPlay for the iTunes Music Store. If you want to play music on the iPod that's got DRM, the only DRM you can use is FairPlay. Real bas basically cloned FairPlay, and is now selling its clone technology to others. This raises several interesting questions. First, is this good or bad for consumers? Well, my first inclination is to say that Choice Is Good; that is, the more outlets you can get selling music, the better it is for online music as a whole and individual choice in particular. However, I am troubled by the fact that Real has chosen to reverse-engineer the technology (rather than licensing from Apple ... and yes, I know Apple has refused to license), because it means that the quality of the experience for Real's consumers is not guaranteed. Should Apple decide to make small changes in FairPlay (and this is something tech companies do all the time), then it's very possible that Real's technology will break, and anyone who is buying music based on that technology will be basically screwed. So while I applaud Real for their Engineering Kung Fu, you wouldn't catch me building my business on their stuff. Second, I'm not sure that what Real is doing is even legal. The Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a law passed to protect the rights of copyright holders. It basically says that reverse-engineering is, while not outright against the law, now a very murky area. This law is playing out in interesting, and unexpected ways. In the brutal inkjet-pritner business, for instance, manufacturers like Lexmark give away their printers at cost to make money on the ink cartridges. Lexmark, like a lot of companies, now embeds chips in Lexmark-branded ink cartridges so they work with Lexmark printers. No special chip in your ink cartridge? Won't work in your Lexmark printer. Or it'll work poorly. Lexmark actually sued a small company, called Static Control Components, who reverse-engineered their chip technology. Static Control was selling this reverse-engineered implementation to other ink cartridge manufacturers, who in turn could now undercut Lexmark on price in the ink cartridge market. Static Control has ceased making their chips. So it seems that something similar is about to happen in music. Pardon the pun, but stay tuned. This could get ugly. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated July 26, 2004 8:36 AM. July 24, 2004We Won. Again.Tonight's game was pretty fantastic. Houston played really well, and even managed to erase an 11-point lead midway through the first half. Our girls came back strong and we finally beat them 67-63. One of the best things about tonight was hanging with my good friend John Kaufmann, his girlfriend Brynn, and Brynn's brother, Will. John is the one who originally got me in to the Storm, so it was great to spend an evening next to someone who is (easily) as enthusiastic as I am about the team. Brynn had never been to a game before, but she came out a fan. Awesome. ..oh, and I caught one of the free t-shirts that Doppler was throwing in to the crowd. Guess I finally have something to wear to the games, neh? =) Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated July 24, 2004 11:38 PM. July 23, 2004MBA Lunch Series: Jim AllchinThe MBA executive lunch series continued today, this time in the form of Jim Allchin, Microsoft's pooh-bah in charge of platforms. Jim is very senior, very computer literate (the man has a Ph.D in Computer Science, for Pete's sake), and very smart. Jim's been at MSFT since 1990; BillG recruited him away from now-defunct PC networking company Banyan. Bill's lure was that Jim could have more "impact on society" by coming someplace where the products enjoyed ultra-high distribution. As a Product Planner (OK, as a Product Planner Intern), I have to confess that this argument is fairly compelling. About a week into my Microsoft internship I was chatting with Jeff Smith, another planner here in Office. Jeff had had recently come to work on Outlook after spending years in the MacBU. Jeff explained that he loved the Mac, but wanted to see his ideas get greater distribution and touch more users. "Apple does cool stuff," he said, "But if you're not clued in to the Mac market then no one ever hears about what you're up to." Steve Jobs once said, "Real artists ship." Contained in that statement is the premise that conceiving an innovation or idea doesn't count - it needs to get released into the wild, and used, to be considered valid. So isn't a corollary of this idea be that you owe a good idea the widest possible distribution? I honestly don't know. There's a part of me which thinks that an innovation should be left alone on its product - indeed, it becomes part of the competitive advantage of the product. On the other hand, the folks at iCalShare would be well served if suddenly, Outlook users were able to publish and subscribe to .ics files as easily as iCal users. Indeed, you could argue that this influx of Outlook users would only improve the variety of .ics files available, thus giving a positive network effect to iCal users. But then again, you wind up with, say, Apple (to pick on someone other than MSFT) improving Sherlock or announcing Dashboard, and the controversies that arose from each. Good ideas, each getting better distribution. Yes? It's thorny. Back to Jim: he exhorted all of us to "go where you'll learn the most, go where you'll have the most passion, and go where you'll have the most fun." He regaled us with stories about OS/2, Cairo, NT, XP and Longhorn. Some Linux chatter. He talked about Dave Cutler, and how he tried to retire a few years back ... but couldn't, because he got too bored away from the office. Apparently, Cutler kept coming back to his old office at Microsoft, and eventually walked in to Allchin's office and said, "Look, if I'm going to be here so much, you better start paying me again." BTW, If you want an amazingly good read about Cutler and the creation of Windows NT, check out "Showstopper! In all, a thoughtful, engaging talk. It's amazing who you get to meet around here. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated July 23, 2004 5:34 PM. Worship My Radiant iPodKim sent me a link to this riotously funny screed on SF Gate: "Because now you -- yes, you -- can say you were there for the advent of the Apple iPod. The very first one. The red-hot must-have gizmo of Now. The smooth white plastic love lump of Yes. The Gadget That Changed Everything even though everything was pretty much already completely changed and everyone was pretty much already like, damn, can things even change much anymore? And then the iPod hit and the answer was a clear, delicious, hell yes." Kim and I share a high school, a long friendship, and a love of Smoove B. When Kim sends you a link, you share it. End of story. (It's kind of a game rule.) Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated July 23, 2004 1:38 PM. Are You Committed?I had my midterm "checkpoint" review this morning. Microsoft has a very defined HR process. If you're a full-time employee, you set goals (or, in Microsoft parlance, "commitments") with your manager every year. These goals are, ideally, SMART (Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Reasonable, and Time-bound) (although the specific word choices seem to deviate from org to org), which means that you're clear about what you're going to accomplish and others have a way of determining if you've hit - or exceeded - your targets. Microsoft people are unbelievably open about their commitments. Steve Ballmer has talked about his commitments to Microsoft's Board of Directors to the entire company; Anoop Gupta, who runs the Real Time Collaboaration division here in Office (the group I'm working for) led a 200-person all-hands meeting where he effectivey gave a recap of of his own recent performance review. If you stop and think a moment, this is pretty incredible -- here's a very senior manager, walking through what he accomplished (or didn't) with all his people. Including the interns. Pretty transparent, huh? The annual cycle, SMART goals and focus on transparency means that Microsoft people tend to be very candid about strengths and weaknesses. I was delighted with the feedback I received from my manager, both because it was positive (they didn't, for instance, tell me to pack up my stuff and get out of the building by 2 PM) and because I felt that the areas he identified for improvement were right on. I also appreciated that interns are so carefully managed: we're here for just 12 weeks, but we get a goal-setting session (when we arrive), a checkpoint review (at the midpoint, which was this morning), and an exit review (for me, that's late August/early September). It all adds up to a 'guided' path, where the interns are free to focus on learning and doing their jobs. There's very little chance that we're going to be left on our own long enough to cause problems. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated July 23, 2004 10:53 AM. July 22, 2004Good News Of The DayTwo quick hits on the news sites before I plunge back in to writing research questions. First, the Storm won today. And second, it looks like my paycheck is going to clear. Good news all around, eh? More Microsoft stuff soon... Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated July 22, 2004 3:46 PM. Times On Bird And Jackson: "Stars Have Aligned"
"All it takes is a slight rise of the brow from Jackson and instinctually the basketball floats from Bird's grasp to her for a turnaround jumper. Or, as in Saturday night's overtime win, it could be Jackson's monster block at the free-throw line that Bird bats forward to race downcourt for a dazzling backward shot." Lemme tell ya: as one who was there for the 'dazzling backward shot' last Saturday, it was a hell of a thing to see in person. The Storm play Indiana in Key Arena in about two hours. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated July 22, 2004 9:24 AM. July 21, 2004So ... yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Super-cool! LOL!There are four communication quirks I've noticed that are very common to Microsoft peole. They're kind of funny.
Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated July 21, 2004 11:13 AM. You Can Always Buy Me Clothes...I need another black t-shirt like BillG needs another $5, but this one seems pretty darn applicable... Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated July 21, 2004 10:32 AM. Birth of the iPodWired has a '...while Fadell may have had the business plan, Apple CEO Steve Jobs molded the device's shape, feel and design. UPDATE, February 6, 2006: One or more of the original hyperlinks on this page expired, and has been dereferenced. The hyperlinked text is now underlined. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated July 21, 2004 10:03 AM. The Raikes PerspectiveOur MBA lunch series continued on Tuesday, this time with Jeff Raikes. Raikes is a 23-year Microsoft veteran. He came here in 1981 from Apple, where he was working on, among other things, VisiCalc for the Apple II. It's also worth mentioning that, as VP of the Information Worker business, Jeff is my boss's boss's boss's boss's boss. Or real close to it. =) Like the other senior Microsoft folks, Jeff was very willing to entertain questions from the MBAs that ranged from the simple to the complex. He was engaging and interesting, even while fighting a cold he'd caught from a trip to New Orleans last week. The most notable part of his talk came at the end. Jeff had talked for about 25 minutes about his history, how he'd come to Microsoft, and the roles he'd played along the way. He then took our questions for 30 minutes or so. As the clock ticked down to 1:00 PM, he pointed at a raised hand and said, "OK, I'd like to answer this last question and then I'd like to share a couple of thoughts." These closing thoughts were mostly about work/life balance, and how to have a career while having a life at the same time. He talked about how Microsoft seems to attract type-A, go-go-go types (and certainly, MBAs seem to exhibit symptoms of a highly-virulent strain of that disease), but that people will inevitably burn out if they don't have something to keep them going on the outside. He exhorted us to put time into our families and our communities ("Microsoft could not have succeeded if our people had not had the support of their communities. Period."), and to "leave work early sometimes. Go for a walk. Play a sport. Volunteer. You might not spend as much time at work, but you'll do better work. And you'll be able to nourish your passion over a very, very long time." I think a cynical person might write this off as either a) low-key marketing to the crowd ("Come to Microsoft! We're laid back!") or b) the musings of a guy who has clearly made a lot lot lot of money and is looking backward with warm nostalgia. I don't buy either theory. My own, personal experiences with startups have taught me that boundaries are key to real success in life. Back when we were building Pacific Rim Network we spent insane amount of hours at the office (100-hour weeks weren't uncommon). Life distorts at that level. You spend so much energy in your work that when you emerge into the Real World, blinking and dazed by the sunlight, all you can talk about with others (like, say, your friends. Remember them?) is your work. So you get trapped into this work cycle, where all you can do or talk about is The Project. Life compresses into a space that's maybe a molecule wide. I hear from too many people who go to work for a sweatshop consulting company, law firm, or brokerage where they're told to "work now, play later." Jeff has figured out how bankrupt and short-term that strategy can be. And that insight was easily the most interesting thing I'd heard all day. UPDATE, September 4, 2006: One or more of the original hyperlinks on this page expired, and has been dereferenced. The hyperlinked text is now underlined. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated July 21, 2004 8:26 AM. July 19, 2004Windows 1.0 = Miami Vice!The Microsoft MBA Intern mailing list has recently discovered the video of Steve Ballmer hawking Windows 1.0. There's an excerpt of this in Cringely's oustanding "Triumph of the Nerds Of course, my favorite Ballmer parody is the pseudo iPod ad from MacBoy. (You can also see the source file it's based on). What can I say? The man has energy. A LOT of energy. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated July 19, 2004 10:56 AM. July 18, 2004Fly Like A BirdSix of us were at Key Arena last night to watch the Storm scratch out their win over the Mystics. We just couldn't get it together for the first half of the game, but started rolling as the clock ticked down to halftime (personally, I saw the look on Lauren's face ... she was pissed). Halftime was over, and the Storm came back to erase a 14-point deficit ... and then matched the Mystics in a point-for-point run. The crowd was insane. Overtime. The Mystics were up by 5 early into overtime, but the Storm managed to close the gap to 83-83. With seven seconds left on the clock, Sue grabbed the ball and ran it all the way to the basket. This is the amazing part. She launches herself into midair, spinning, and throws the ball toward the basket. And made it. 85-83, 2 seconds on the clock. If this had been in a movie, I don't think I would have believed it. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated July 18, 2004 10:51 AM. July's PSBJ ColumnMy July column for the Puget Sound Business Journal, "Beware Web placement offers on search engines" hit the streets on Friday. I'll link to it once they publish it to the Web (which they may or may not do - their internal systems have some odd constraints, apparently). Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated July 18, 2004 10:49 AM. July 16, 2004PowerPoint A-Go-GoMy good friend Allie lived in Chicago for several years. "Chicago," she says, referring to the city's drivers, "Has three primary languages: English, Spanish, and Honk." Microsoft is a lot like Chicago. Here you communicate in three mediums: voice, e-mail, and PowerPoint. Much has been written by the technorati about how PowerPoint is evil or sucks. It's even engendered some killer parodies, and the PowerPoint communication ethos has been used for devastating effect by some folks who got bad service from a hotel. That said, I find that "thinking in PowerPoint" has a few interesting side effects:
PowerPoint: much maligned, but not too shabby. I'm kind of grooving on it. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated July 16, 2004 9:42 AM. July 14, 2004Dinner With BillGA lot of geek cocktail-party conversation revolves around Microsoft - its products, initiatives, goofs, love/hate, and so on. One strain of these conversations involves the reason for Microsoft's success. Some claim that the firm was just lucky (the MS-DOS deal with IBM, for instance) or could only succeed by breaking the law. Others believe that the company has succeeded purely on the basis of superior products (my good friend and ex-MSFT guy Rich Barrett holds this view)or hard work (as Steve Jobs said, "I have no problem with Microsoft's success. They've earned their success ... for the most part."). While I think all of these elements play a role, I actually think that a big chunk of Microsoft's success comes down to two words: continuous leadership. It's true. Bill and Steve have been running the company since the beginning, and there's simply NO way to replicate the depth of knowledge they have of the industry, Microsoft culture, and the company's strengths and weaknesses. These guys know where the bodies are buried and the secret combination to the vault. They know who gets things done, who has good ideas, and what's incubating in the farthest reaches of the business. They also have a depth of knowledge of the competitive landscape (both obvious and not-so-obvious threats) that makes for better decision-making. Most tech companies blow it when their leadership changes. Apple got torpedoed when Sculley came in (and, interestingly, reversed itself only when Jobs - the Apple parallel to Bill - came back). Palm got hit when the founders left for Handspring. Novell has had a revolving door of CEOs for a while (and Eric Schmidt's presence and success at Google clearly indicates he had the chops, but that the Novell culture probably couldn't be managed by an outsider). When there's a change of leadership, it opens the door to a stumble. All of this is a long, long preamble to my ultimate point: for all this success and wealth of knowledge, Bill Gates seems like a pretty down to earth guy. One of the (major) perks of the MBA internship program here at MSFT is unprecedented access to senior executives. The best expression of this is the annual barbecue at Bill Gates' house (yes, that house) for the interns. Along with a number of vice presidents and senior managers, His Billness was there to talk to people, answer questions, and just chat with interns about what was on their mind. Bill, obviously, is quite a draw -- he was standing in the middle of a ring of interns, five-deep, answering questions about all kinds of topics. He was patient, friendly, joked a bunch, and didn't make anyone feel silly or look stupid. Ballmer recently sent a memo to the company, which was followed by a Q&A session for employees that was then Webcast. BillG and Steve took questions from the audience and by e-mail. Some of the questions were direct and difficult. Both guys were willing to take the time to follow up with every point - even one guy, who had so many questions about the stock price that Ballmer digressed into a quick tutorial about the Black-Scholes Option pricing model. With a smile. =) During the Webcast, Bill was every bit as engaged and engaging as he was in person. I don't get the impression that it's an act. Further, both he and Ballmer were willing (and able) to zoom down to a super-granular level of the business when necessary. 30 years' experience in the software industry - and a willingness to listen to the new, young guys and gals around you - is one hell of a competitive advantage. (Oh, yeah -- the house is awesome. And so was the food.) UPDATE, November 18, 2005: One or more of the original hyperlinks on this page expired, and has been dereferenced. The hyperlinked text is now underlined. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated July 14, 2004 9:24 AM. Microsoft: Month OneAs of tomorrow, I've been at Microsoft for one month. My original intent this summer was to blog the "Microsoft experience" - the whole process of stepping in to the culture, meeting the people, and so on. Ideally, I would have been able to provide the fresh perspective of a newcomer, and been able to give some good insights into how this place runs. As it happens, what I've found since coming here is that it takes time inside Microsoft to even be able to talk coherently about Microsoft. There's too much baggage when you come here -- perceptions about what's expected of you, or what projects are going on -- to be able to really see how things are working. Let me give you an example. It's no great secret that I've been a lifelong Mac guy, and that many of my best friends think of Microsoft, quite literally, as the Evil Empire. (Sidebar: when Dave Bodmer and I were driving to Microsoft in February for our internship interviews, we played John Williams' "Imperial March" on his car stereo ... followed by Madonna's "Ray of Light.") So a part of me was looking around corners for the first few weeks, watching for a glimpse of the World Domination Room -- you know, the one that looks like the place SPECTRE meets in the '60s Bond films. High-backed chairs? Huge, wall-sized televisions? Big map of the world? People calling the bald guy "Fearless leader"? The room doesn't exist. OF COURSE it doesn't exist. But it's one of those things you halfway EXPECT to exist because the public persona of this place is so tortured. It takes time to get these latent expectations out of the system, and I've been steadily losing them. I think I'm finally ready to write. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated July 14, 2004 8:41 AM. |
" by G. Pascal Zachary.
The Seattle Times