The Microsoft Edge: Inside Strategies for Building Success - Hardcover

Bick, Julie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0671034138 ISBN 13: 9780671034139

Publisher: Atria, 1999

Synopsis

A unique manager's guide scours the hallowed halls of Microsoft for management tips and strategies, offering practical advice on how to apply the company's winning formulas in any business arena

About this title

About the Author

Julie Bick is a magna cum laude graduate of Cornell University and a graduate of the Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania. She worked at Microsoft for five years as a Product Manager and Group Manager on a variety of products for the office, home, and web. She is the author of the national bestseller All I Really Need to Know in Business I Learned at Microsoft, which has been published in languages around the world, from Chinese to Dutch to Portuguese.

A portion of Bick's proceeds from this book will be donated to children's charities.

Reviews

What are the secrets of Microsoft's success? Bick, who has worked at Microsoft as marketer, new-product planner, and manager, has written a follow-up to her All I Really Need To Know in Business I Learned at Microsoft. The earlier work stressed the "personal side of business," including how to be a good supervisor and do well on the job. The new book focuses on the "business side of business," discussing successful strategies for doing business on the web, hiring (and keeping) the best employees, launching new products, and working with partners (e.g., co-workers, the press, dealers, service agencies). Bick has also drawn on case studies of her colleagues, 40 company managers. This practical guide to proven management and marketing techniques also provides insight into the inner workings of Microsoft and is an important addition to collections on that company and on management and marketing. Recommended for public and academic library business collections.ALucy T. Heckman, St. John's Univ. Lib., Jamaica, NY
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1
People: Hiring the Best and Keeping Them

Great experience? Fabulous references? A winning attitude? Nah! Most Microsoft managers will say "hiring smart people" has been the key to the company's success and will be to its future. As with most disciplines, Microsoft attacks this one with vigor. Employee "success indicators" are compiled, analyzed, and sent around via e-mail. Thousands of employees conduct interviews, and they are trained on what to ask job candidates and how to ask it. Human resource people seek out star performers when they become unhappy and work behind the scenes to get them back in the groove. And despite the fact that they are multimillionaires, hundreds of "old-timers" (well, maybe they're in their mid to late thirties by now) come to work every day. Why do people choose to join at Microsoft and why do they stay?

In a 1998 talk at San Jose State, Bill Gates said, "We like people who have got an enthusiasm for the product, technology, who really believe that it can do amazing things. We're very big on hiring smart people, so you'd better be comfortable...having the debate and questioning that goes along with that." He's delivered the same sentiment innumerable times, and that opinion has suffused the ranks at Microsoft.

Hiring the Best

New Employee Success Factors

You need to hire someone to fill a spot on your team. Or maybe it's time to go and recruit at the local college. Before you start, sit down with your prospective employee's coworkers and any other folks who will be conducting interviews. Brainstorm and debate the qualities you're looking for to focus everyone on finding the right person for the job. Is it a strategic thinker you're looking for? Are world-class communication skills important? Maybe you're looking for passion and drive. Talk about the kind of person who will excel in the job. Agreeing up front on what's important will have everyone looking for the same qualities in a candidate.

Microsoft focuses on the following "success factors" when hiring employees:

Individual excellence

Results

Teamwork

Passion for products and technology

Long-term approach

Customer focus

Functional/technical knowledge/skills

Each factor may have subfactors. For example, integrity, intellectual horsepower, composure, and creativity are some of the pieces that make up individual excellence. A team from Human Resources working with managers and executives from around the company crystallized these factors. The weighting might change between jobs or groups -- a junior software tester might need to focus on individual excellence and results, while a midlevel marketer might need to have a stronger long-term view of his or her work -- but the characteristics fit surprisingly well over the 30,000 employees of the company.

Microsoft holds interviewing workshops to help managers make sure that these factors are evaluated during any employee interview. A list of sample interview questions offers ways to get a candidate to show off these attributes or to demonstrate their absence. There are even tips on finding out if a "success factor" is overdone and possibly detrimental to the candidate's performance. For instance, a person who tells you he'll change any established procedure for any customer request may be taking "customer focus" a bit too far.

Your list of key attributes can be used beyond recruiting. When a new hire joins the team, sit down together and make a list of the skills you both think are important to the success of his or her job and why. Yes, you already have your list in mind. But talking it over together helps both of you focus and is a more palatable approach than a direct order. The discussion sets appropriate expectations for the new employee and can serve as a reminder of the qualities needed to succeed in the position.

Three Lessons I've Learned about Hiring Great Employees

Jon DeVaan, Vice President, Consumer and Commerce Group:

1. Always hire people smarter than you.
Don't be intimidated by them -- seek them out!

2. Take people out of their comfort zone in the interview; make them think.
After all, that's what they'll be doing when they get to the job, not reciting memorized answers to standard questions.

3. After the interview write down in useful detail why you want to hire the candidate or not.
"Bong goes the bozo bell" may be fun to say but doesn't give useful information to other interviewers.

Hire the Person for Three Jobs, Not One

The best hire is a versatile hire. If the market changes, the division is reorganized, or a new business opportunity comes along, you want an office full of people who have the diversity of talents to switch gears to meet the new challenges. If your hire is too specialized, you may find yourself with dead weight and a slot you wish you could fill with different skills.

Sam, an interview candidate in the Human Resources department, had a highly valued talent. Sam could coach anybody through anything. He could help managers work through team-building challenges. He could get the person with "analysis paralysis" to stop overanalyzing data and move forward on a decision. He could help nervous presenters conquer their fear of public speaking. But that's all he could or wanted to do.

There were a number of other responsibilities in the department, but Sam just wanted to stick to his coaching. He didn't want to design programs to take groups of people through a management exercise. He didn't want to research why people were leaving Microsoft and figure out ways to keep them. He didn't want to do team-building exercises. Still, he was hired and excelled as he coached people.

After some time, though, Sam ran out of people to help. Other important issues and projects began looming in the department. Those problems got juggled around the hallway as other team members tried to add them to their own responsibilities. Only Sam stuck to his original charter. But that charter was quite limited. Eventually, Microsoft had to let Sam go and hire someone more flexible.

It's hard to know the "next big thing" that upper management or the market will throw your team. Having a versatile group, supplemented with specifically skilled consultants, when needed, gives you a flexible and cost-effective way to meet new challenges.

Retaining the Stars

When Making Changes, a Little Human Goes a Long Way

You can make change easier for your staff. New bosses, new organizations, new responsibilities, can range from somewhat unsettling to downright scary. I had a friend who woke up in a sweat at 2 a.m. every night the week before her first meeting with her new boss. I've seen other teams spend so much time speculating on impending organizational changes that they basically did little work for a month.

Whether it's learning everyone's name and one thing about them ("Hey, Pete, how's your puppy?") or hosting a Friday happy hour in your office, show your employees you're a regular person to allay their misgivings and enable them to be productive quickly in their new roles.

When Brad Chase was the Vice President of Windows Marketing, he was put in charge of combining the Microsoft-DOS and Windows teams. People got nervous. Who would report to whom in this new organization? Where would the power lie? Who would make the big decisions? And who was this guy Brad they'd all be working for now?

Brad sensed the uneasiness in his new group, so he went from office to office meeting with each person on the new team, to discuss their career goals and interests, and to solicit input into the new organization. He t

Edition details

• Publisher: Atria
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0671034138
• ISBN 13: 9780671034139
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 192