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noreply@blogger.com (Collision Domain) — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 03:42:00 +0000

This will be very low-volume, mostly announcing new posts, but feel free to tweet me if you have topics you'd like me to address.

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Administrivia - Added FeedBurner Feed

noreply@blogger.com (Collision Domain) — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 03:39:00 +0000

http://feeds2.feedburner.com/PacketStorm

Abandon All Hope

noreply@blogger.com (Collision Domain) — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 07:54:00 +0000

Stack rank (and calibration) is to Microsoft as acidophilus is to yogurt - they both create acidic conditions.

Get out the Tums, because the heartburn is never-ending.

For ICs in their never-ending quest to move higher. And for managers in their never-ending quest to push their people higher, even if their best performer just pushed out a patch that caused over 3 million clients to hash the VM file and then blue screen and their worst performer spends more time justifying their shitty work than actually doing their shitty work.

You might be asking yourself, "Now why would a manager try and push crappy people up in the stack rank?"

It defies common sense. You would think that at an egalitarian programmer's paradise, managers would cooly and calmly rank their team members, interleaving them with their peer's in about five minutes, and then they would all disperse and go back to making sure that the ones and zeros were being cranked out in the correct order.

The riddle is answered when you realize that the Leads get stack ranked as well. As do the Managers, the Directors and so on.

Dropping the egalitarian bullshit, you can see that if you are a manager and you have a team full of losers, you're not going to do so well at your own stack-rank. "Kim's team sucked. They're all ten-percenters and fucked up all sorts of things this year. You can't put Kim above Kimee."

Things get even weirder when you have collections of rock stars in groups. There curve starts to come into play, and good people get screwed because, well, just because sometimes. They may get an Exceeded, but get shoved into the 70% bucket for stock, losing out on hundreds/thousands/tens of thousands of dollars in stock award based on their level.

Nutty eh?

Nothing says, "We value you," more than having to be squishy about what it will take to get into the 20% bucket next year. As a manager, I'll have to use words like "visibility" or "strategic" to guide you in the right direction.

Take those words as code that it's not you, it's the organization, and that it has screwed you out of money and me out of my ability to be as level with you as I would like.

Some would argue that being a good manager at Microsoft means that you can play the stack rank and calibration game to get your top performers the rewards they so justly deserve.

Deconstruct that, and you'll find a tarball of entitlement and an object example of how managers at Microsoft now spend way, way, way too much time playing the game instead of actually managing employees.

Which is one of the biggest fucking problems at Microsoft today and has lead and is still leading to all sorts of management by committee group-think dumb decisions.

LisaB, I'm looking right at you when I make this request - limit the stack rank and calibration to teams managed by leads only. Only let managers of managers do the interleave and so on up the chain. Make disclosure of this data a fireable offense.

By classifying these data points, managers will have to focus more on managing their teams instead of jockeying around so much.

Managers, ask for this. Wouldn't you rather spend more time guiding your team than in interminable meetings that can last hours as your argue over the minutiae of slot 21 vs. slot 22 on the list? If your answer is no, quit. Those of us that give a shit are really tired of your ilk, and we're going to key your new BMW until you get the message.

Moving back in with the parents

noreply@blogger.com (Collision Domain) — Sat, 30 May 2009 14:35:00 +0000

I have a friend who went back to work for a large company after the small company he had worked at for a while folded. He described the experience as akin to moving back in with parents after a first, failed fledge.

Now I know what he meant.

The parents re-decorated and moved the furniture while you were away, causing you a few bruised shins in the night as you stagger back in after tipping a few pints with your mates at the pub. But what's most jarring is how their behavior has changed.

Especially towards you.

You're no longer the child to be doted upon and enveloped with a warm embrace, but an interloper and an irritant. They lash out at you when you harmlessly suggest they stop shuffling around in their slippers over the throw rugs, lest they fall and break a hip.

And your brothers and sisters who hadn't yet left home? A curious mix of derision and awe, stirred with whispered fears that mom and dad are going downhill faster than you knew, since you weren't around to watch it happen.

And so, I find myself back at Microsoft again, after the sinking economy sucked my startup down into the vortex where so many entrepreneur's hopes go: irreversible negative cash flow.

Ironically, failure has its rewards. In my case, dramatically reduced responsibilities compared to startup-land and managing a team vs. being an IC like my first go-round. Though as I'm finding, being part of the management class I railed against previously is causing me to question my sanity at times and actively worry that I'm falling to the mean of Microsoft management instead of helping to lift it up.

Hopefully you'll help me figure that out, because if I thought things were bad before in Microsoft management-land, they appear to be even worse now.

But before we delve back into the Microsoft management corpus for vivisection, I will preempt a couple of questions.

Why come back to Microsoft and re-animate this blog?

For the first part, it was a path of low resistance and I have bills to pay. For the second part, to help keep my sanity.

Constructive critique of the Microsoft work experience seems to be ebbing as of late and with silly decisions inside the company seeming to accelerate, I need a place to put the stupid.

And Bill knows, Microsoft seems to be generating more stupid per manager than ever before.

Take stack-ranking, for example...

Looking Back

noreply@blogger.com (Collision Domain) — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 07:44:00 +0000

It's been a couple of months since I left Microsoft and moved on to other things, and the perspective has allowed me to deconstruct a few things that were hard to see when I was so close to things.

Notably, I still feel great about my decision and that it was the right thing to do. I wasn't doing anyone any favors on my team with my frustrations with the place as I kept ramming into walls that just wouldn't tumble down because of little, old me.

So here are my enduring takeaways from my tenure at Microsoft:

* Microsoft has a lot of smart people working for it.
* Most of those smart people are trying to do the right thing for customers.
* The rest of the smart people and the idiots who are doing the most damage to the company think they're doing the right thing.
* Bonus and stock awards are stacked towards people willing to sacrifice external, personal demands to Microsoft's demands.
* Compensation and leveling is highly variable in small groups for people doing the same or similar jobs.
* Most leads that I met should be ICs - they just don't have the training or support to do right to their reports.
* Most managers that I met should be leads - the Peter Principle in action for most.
* Most directors that I met should be GMs - I feel for these people; stuck between Partners/Partner wannabees and the clueless managers they have to continually correct.
* Most GMs that I met should be fired - Partner should be a reward for a job well done, not for an ass well-tongued.
* Most VPs that I met should be fired - if they were more out of touch with the front line and reality, they'd be a part of the Bush administration.
* A culling of all the bad leads, managers, directors, GMs and VPs is unlikely to happen until Microsoft has an unprofitable quarter.
* Find the good leads, managers, directors, GMs and VPs to work for - they're there.
* Many good ideas that would benefit customers are sacrificed on the altars of not invented here, political bullshit and apathy.
* Many of the smartest people I met fell into two camps: those that are burned out and those on the way to burnout.
* Most of the rank-and-file are there to pull a paycheck, while upper management thinks they're there because they want to change the world.
* The rules and polices are getting worse as rules and polices are put in place to reduce the rules and policies.
* A bad manager will screw your career worse than a major fuckup on your part.
* Politics trumps technical chops.
* Never leave good food in the fridge - someone will steal it.
* There are no teams, only loose collections of mercenaries.
* HR and LCA care more about butt-covering than providing cover for disruptive innovation.
* Informationals are the interview.
* You are not important, only the work you do is.
* Ass-kissing with poor work output is rewarded more than being blunt with great work output.
* There is life after Microsoft.

Best wishes,
CD

Orbit

noreply@blogger.com (Collision Domain) — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 15:06:00 +0000

"Though I'm passed one hundred thousand miles, I'm feeling very still

And I think my spaceship knows which way to go,"

- David Bowie

Business plan - check.

Moat in business plan - check.

Fundraising rolodex - check.

Personal cash cusion - check.

All systems go for escape orbit on September 17.

So long, and thanks for all the fish!

Lift-off

noreply@blogger.com (Collision Domain) — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 14:48:00 +0000

Another review come and gone yesterday.

(Exceeded.)

One tidbit that I did discover this go-through was that the shiny, happy compensation target numbers on http://hrweb are figments of policy imagination.

While it is theoretically possible to hit the high end of the range, in actual practice, it doesn't happen. The best way to describe it is that the theoretical high end is the volume of a bucket. Then, the budgeted amount of cash for the year's reviews gets poured into the bucket and the surface of the water is the real high end.

Net result?

Bait and switch.

I'd rather have more realistic numbers to aim for that I know I have a chance of being rewarded with instead of numbers that are impossible to achieve. Now that I know the top end just doesn't exist, what's the point of aiming high?

"It's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care. It's a problem of motivation, all right? Now if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don't see another dime; so where's the motivation? And here's something else, Bob: I have eight different bosses right now. "

Preparing for Take-off

noreply@blogger.com (Collision Domain) — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 14:42:00 +0000

Make sure your whole company feels like one team. Ballmer once joked at a company meeting, “Why do the different groups only clap for themselves?” - http://blog.redfin.com/blog/2007/08/will_work_for_food_why_i_left_microsoft_for_a_startup_.html

Word.

Can We Hire Them to Study Microsoft?

noreply@blogger.com (Collision Domain) — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 15:41:00 +0000

Bad bosses get promoted, not punished?

In [a] study to be presented at a conference on management this weekend, almost two-thirds of the 240 participants in an online survey said the local workplace tyrant was either never censured or was promoted for domineering ways.

"The fact that 64.2 percent of the respondents indicated that either nothing at all or something positive happened to the bad leader is rather remarkable -- remarkably disturbing," wrote the study's authors, Anthony Don Erickson, Ben Shaw and Zha Agabe of Bond University in Australia.

They faulted senior managers for not recognizing the signs of workplace strife wrought by bad bosses. "The leaders above them who did nothing, who rewarded and promoted bad leaders ... represent an additional problem."

Hmmmmmm...........

And in the same vein:

Conformity, flattery, and favors, more than competence, make for influence in world of corporate boards, study finds

But we already intuitively know these things since we work at Microsoft, don't we?

I reiterate my second request of management at Microsoft to thin the management ranks of the non-performers and flatten the organizational hierarchy. I keep hearing how we're a data-driven company but I keep seeing blind mice when when it comes to organizational and management effectiveness data that MS Poll generates.

Orr vs. Scheisskopf while Snowden Dies and I am Dunbar

noreply@blogger.com (Collision Domain) — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 06:42:00 +0000

Microsoft is a study of opposites in constant dynamic tension.

Egalitarianism vs. unrestrained greed.

Transparency vs. misinformation.

Purity of mission vs. muddled deliverables.

And so on and so on and so on.

When I go to work and swipe my badge at the portal, I always get a bit of a thrill when the genuflection doesn't register. In those brief seconds before a second attempt, I am Orr, with my escape plan ready to be executed at the opportunity, never to haunt the halls again.

Then the reality of the world comes crashing back upon me as the beep-click grants my passage back into the corporate womb for more gestation. Settling at my desk and triaging my email, (because some do bleed for my attention,) and I lock back into my Scheisskopf persona, (can I get a marketing scenario card for that please?) pondering the rules I can exploit and the superiors I can impress by doing so.

And Snowden lays dying and in him I see the empty shells we sell to our customers. The only friend I had was Snowden and I didn't know him.

This forces me to take things apart and put them back together again ad nauseam in what increasingly feels like a futile attempt to make things better and extend my life.

The irony?

If our managers and leaders would get rid of the Captain Blacks, Colonel Cathcarts and the ilk like them that infest management, many of the potential Orrs would be happy to be Yossarian and be one of the boys.

Which is the entire fucking problem with this company.

When will Rohan ride to our aid?

noreply@blogger.com (Collision Domain) — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 02:49:00 +0000

One year later and nothing has changed.

This was going to be a different post, but recent events have forced me to wonder out loud why more people aren't contacting these people to express that some other people should be held accountable for their continued efforts to loot the corporate treasury for dollar bills to burn as bonfires to block the dinosaur from entering the living room when the mammal has snuck by to the barn and spoilt our seed stock?

I'd use another example, but I just can't decide which dead or dying horse to beat.

Every time I turn around, I see another bonfire burning to protect another isolated silo in the vast landscape that is Microsoft's corporate strategy to harness your potential for our passion.

Our passion for self-delusion by blowing shareholder's money hand over fist on pipe dream business models, strategies and leaders of average powers.

To wit:

Also in fiscal year 2004, Microsoft instituted the Shared Performance Stock Award (SPSA) program, a long-term incentive program for executives and other senior leaders that makes a significant portion of their stock-based compensation dependent upon the company's growth and customer satisfaction over a three-year period. The size of an employee's SPSA grant depends on competitive long-term compensation data, the person's job, and his or her anticipated contribution to Microsoft's long-term performance. (Source)

And so here we find ourselves again at review season. Any bets on what the SPSA (see note 14) award level will be this year? You should let the MSFT Board Compensation Committee members know what you think it should be.

Note that members of that committee set the SPSA award at their sole discretion.

Is there no one to stop this folly before the dogs of war are let loose in the courtroom?

Does this remind you of Microsoft?

noreply@blogger.com (Collision Domain) — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 14:50:00 +0000

Hey, it's the end of the fiscal year. People are tuning up their resumes and looking for new gigs inside the company.

Here's a cautionary tale to remind you to always look before you leap.

I thought this was pretty funny until I realized that it hit pretty close to home on the transfer issue.

Hello, my name is...

noreply@blogger.com (Collision Domain) — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 04:22:00 +0000

It's review season, and if you're the type who's kept your head down and worked hard and expect to be rewarded appropriately, it's time to take your head out of the sand. You work for Microsoft, where a good review really isn't about what you did but what your manager and your management chain thinks you did.

So what can you do to change the perception battle and maximize your merit, bonus and stock award?

* Do right by the company by doing good work and being customer-focused.
* Ask your manager how you're doing at least quarterly and what you can do to earn a better rating.
* Get in front of your skip-level and above managers in person, via email or at group events and tell them about the wonderful things you're doing and have done.
* Always tell them your name, your role and your manager's name.
* Cultivate internal business partners that can provide positive feedback for you.
* CYA. Document everything that can impact your review - good and bad. Don't let someone else spin your history for lack of evidence on your part.
* Keep at this through July and mid-August as calibration meeting are occurring. You want name recognition when your name appears on a list that your GM/VP has to sign off on for bonus, merit and stock awards.
* If your manager sucks at vouching for you, make sure you have a good relationship with your skip-level.
* Screwed for this year? Sandbag your commitments for next year and work hard on managing management's perception of you.

Good luck, and don't forget to tick all those boxes in the Performance tool.

Town Hall Transparency

noreply@blogger.com (Collision Domain) — Thu, 17 May 2007 05:37:00 +0000

It can be difficult to see things right in front of you if they are transparent or designed to show you some other object.

Case in point, yesterday's Microsoft Town Hall with Chris "Let me buy you breakfast to explain why the market isn't giving us a better P/E ratio" Liddel, Steve "Windows Mobile is on a rocket sled of growth and the iPhone is irrelevant" Ballmer and Lisa "Not earning enough? I guess we're not doing a good job of telling you how much you really earn." Brummel.

Watching those performances make it clear that we still have a long row to hoe before things stop getting worse and start getting better on our leadership front.

Come review time, I wish they were my skip-levels.

Bunnies!

noreply@blogger.com (Collision Domain) — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 04:40:00 +0000

That giant sucking sound you're starting to hear whistling past the door seals on Microsoft campus buildings are the hopes of (hundreds? thousands? tens of thousands?) employees being whisked into the void that is rapidly becoming LisaB's internal "I'm listening, but it's not in my commitments to do anything with what you tell me" blog.

The blog appears to have ground down to four camps. 1) People who will bitch about anything and everything, even when presented with positive information. 2) People who think we have some serious problems and propose serious solutions or proposals to fix things. 3) People who think things are mostly OK, and berate those in group 1 and 2 for their negativity and ungratefulness for how good we really have things and encourage people to vote with their feet if they don't like it. (Hi, Mini!). 4) The lurking group that is beginning to tune out as it appears the blog, which began with such great hopes, is a HR ploy to create the illusion that something is being done.

I was neutral on Lisa until her blog launched and it nudged my opinion of her up to positive. Six months on now and the needle has swung to negative based on her condescending comments.

Now, more than ever, it's clear that our executive leadership is completely disconnected from the reality that is working life for the lunch box crowd and that it is past time for change.

Let them eat bunnies, indeed.

Elbow Room

noreply@blogger.com (Collision Domain) — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 05:25:00 +0000

Overcrowding brings on all sorts of socio- and physiological problems. Depression, stress, aggression, increased risk of infectious disease, etc.

Sounds a bit like the cafeterias and bathrooms on campus, no?

It is with mixed emotions that Microsoft's chronic lack of office space issue surfaced again today.

Reading MSW's hard-hitting interview with Chris Owens makes it clear that we've turned the corner and that the future will be so bright in my future office, I'll have to wear shades. Then you read stuff like this and wonder if it will be worthwhile to hang around to luxuriate in all that space.

While it will be nice to ease the overcrowding, how about also thinning out the management ranks to create even more space? Perhaps we could start with clearing out the ones that caused the problem in the first place by authorizing the hiring binge and then not doing the simple math (more hires = need for more space)?

If something so basic as space planning has gotten so fudged up over the past few years, what does that say about other issues and endeavors?

Me? I'm heading down to my local elbow room to ponder who or what team will be the one cut the Gordian Knot that is Microsoft.

Spring Thoughts

noreply@blogger.com (Collision Domain) — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 15:15:00 +0000

Hey, how'd that Daylight Savings time shift work on your Outlook calendar? I pity building receptionists trying to sort out who booked which conference room first in the system before everything shifted an hour. Myself, I've only lost a few hours of standing around in meeting rooms stating, "I've had this conference room booked for months for my standing meeting." Not that the meetings themselves were all that productive when presenters read their slides instead of talking to those assembled.

Is it time for a dictator? At least dictators can get the trains to run on time.

For those "translucent-skinned" (inside MS blog joke) people who work 18 hours a day, get outside now and take a look at the cherry trees blooming. It may be the last beauty you see for a while as our Average Powers Leader starts moving the chess pieces around for FY08 planning.

Machiavelli is alive and well - it's like working on a thesis. You know you'll feel great when you're done, but it's bloody hard to get to some times when a gin and tonic is calling.

Spring weather also more people heading into the hills in the Pacific Northwest. Number two on the ten essential list is a compass. Was it just me, or was the Career Compass our HR overlords gave to us permanently affixed to point to Pain in the Ass? No wonder so many are heading to the hills.

This Just In...

noreply@blogger.com (Collision Domain) — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 04:46:00 +0000

For the record - Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is not responsible for the February 27, 2007 Microsoft stock price drop.

What if...

noreply@blogger.com (Collision Domain) — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 01:56:00 +0000

Jeebus.

I wanted to take some time off from the blog after a horrific winter storm that blew me off my axis a bit and a work environment that was starting to make slave labor sound like a better career option because I felt I was getting a bit too bitter and a bit too off-focus.

Time off was unfortunately spent watching some drivel telly show with Sir Lloyd-Webber and listening to depressing webcasts from Wall Street.

And I was thus sharply reminded why I started this bloody blog in the first place.

Microsoft's management sucks and blows.

Mr. Ballmer's most recent performance has had him pilloried in the public echo chamber because of the net result of his twaddlings, but if we keep the eye on the ball closely, we see that the stock drop is symptomatic, not systemic. Symptomatic of leadership and management's inability to capitalize on the labors and thoughts of tens of thousands of smart employees and billions of dollars of capital.

The regular town criers all have the same thing to say: it's time for Mr. Ballmer to exit.

Since everyone always talks about the weather but doesn't do anything about it, here's my butterfly wing flap: three people who could be Microsoft's next CEO. All battle-scarred turnaround executives, each brings something to the table.

A.G. Lafley of Procter & Gamble. Look at the quote that is attributed to this guy and what he's been able to effect with a multi-brand company. Just say "Microsoft", "brand" and "customers" in the same sentence to somebody and see how far their eyes roll up into their head. This is the guy to untangle Live and focus the factory back towards software that people want to use.

Anne Mulcahy of Xerox. She's a lifer there, but understands the engineering culture and can obviously hold her own with the misogynistic sub-culture that high-tech can sometimes breed like staph in a Pioneer Square toilet. Her keywords are "communication" and "listening". What if Microsoft had a CEO that not only listened to the employees but also knew how to act with that information?

Steven Reinemund of PepsiCo. At first blush, this comes across as a bit of a John Scully-like choice until you drill down a bit. (Though the synchronicity of this choice might presage Bill G. coming back to Microsoft...) Again, we have a global brands person who has kept a sharp eye on the bottom line.

Taking over the top job at Microsoft would be daunting. It is still profitable, still has a huge market share and still has growth momentum. It's not your ordinary turnaround gig. Might it be that the board has secret thoughts of dumping the current team, but just can't put their finger on anyone that could step up? Are we in a devil you know vs. the devil you don't situation?

Is there anyone else you think might be up to the task?

And in the "Since nobody asked" vein, couldn't you see Lafley as CEO of Platform, Products and Services, Mulcahy as CEO of Business, and Reinemund as CEO of Entertainment and Devices, all spun out as separate operating companies?

A serf can dream.

Stale Bread

noreply@blogger.com (Collision Domain) — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 14:40:00 +0000

Amidst wind and snowstorms,
lurches and launches,
leaders and losers,
I caught myself at times
thinking of the blog.

"I must!",
I thought, but did not.

"Now that's worthy."
I hear, but did not.

So it is time
to rest, to
read some books,
think some thoughts
before scribing yet again.

Bending to the will
is fire
yet the brand
of regret burns hotter.

Anon some morn
will be found
those thoughts
thunk,
writ in their
perpetual
orbits, echoing
across the hazy sea.

=+=+=+=
Collision Domain

Growth: Cure-all or Camouflage?

noreply@blogger.com (Collision Domain) — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 03:04:00 +0000

In some business circles, it is believed that sales growth can cure all operational or organizational ills.

With more money, (the thinking goes,) organizational gaps can be plugged, capital equipment needs can be addressed and the overall company attitude increases, which can lead to a productivity uptick since labor feels it may also benefit from the extra cash flow. This fallacy persists even despite many examples to the contrary.

Even a cursory perusal of business news from 2000-2001 will provide ample evidence of firms that had huge sales, but anemic or negative profit growth.

So, what does Microsoft's track record look like in this area?

Year over year profit growth, derived from the percentage of net income to total revenue, looked like this for the past eight years:

1999: 10%
2000: 2%
2001: -12%
2002: -10%
2003: 5%
2004: -1%
2005: 9%
2006: -2%

(Microsoft's fiscal year runs from July 1 - June 30. Data derived from Microsoft annual reports.)

By my calculations, and I'm no Investment Banker, this is a cumulative profit growth rate of -1.33% for the 1999-2006 period. Pulling in the time horizon a bit, from 2003-2006 it looks much better, producing an overall 11.4% growth rate.

How about the competition? Apple: 14.49% profit growth from 2003-2005. Google: 49.92% from 2003-2005. Yahoo!: 92.61% from 2003-2005. (Hopefully some kind soul will set me straight if I've bungled the math here.)

Is is any wonder why there is such emphasis on controlling spending and hitting budget targets at Microsoft today? Profit growth has been lagging our competitors, competition is more vigorous and our stock is underperforming the market.

The double-speak from leadership and management is starting to come into focus for me.

The stakes on our long-term big bets get higher every quarter, because we're doubling down on each one of these bets in the hope of scoring a pot. And our competitors are calling our bluffs because they've learned our tells after years of taking earlier pots from them.

What I and my colleagues are left to wonder is why we keep getting mixed messages on competition. We keep hearing how strong it is, but the ramifications of losing to them is never articulated. Only vague statements of lost potential future revenue.

Good leadership tells followers what the real hazards are. It fosters trust among the rank-and-file and forces those who are about to endure hardship to focus on avoiding the hazards or at least mitigate them as much as possible. Our growth is starting to look like camouflage for future ills.

Because the vibe in the trenches right now is that we're all about to land on the beaches of Gallopoli in the next few years, and our leaders are not courageous enough to tell us so.

Waiting for Godot, Guffman or Gratification?

noreply@blogger.com (Collision Domain) — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 02:12:00 +0000

Vista, Office, Exchange, Zune - Steve Ballmer was right. His pipeline is finally disgorging product.

Those of us ricocheting off the walls at work due to post-RTM deck chair shuffling are now holding our breath, waiting.

Waiting to see where leadership will lead us next.

Will 2007 be the year where Microsoft truly unshackles from the past and embraces Live up, down and sideways across the entire organization or will it be more of the same ossified structures and processes?

No matter where we go from here, 2006 will likely be the year that Microsoft historians point to as the last where the company's main efforts went to developing and delivering large, monolithic applications.

In this reflected by what our leaders are saying? Let's do the roundup:

Ballmer: "The next frontier for us is to embrace a new business model. And if we embrace it well and that business model is subscription and advertising, where we will be a market leader. If we do not embrace it well there will be issues."

Gates: "Now, at first they're kind of daunted by the realization of what a bubble they've been living in, but then once they get used to that they think, well, we can make it better." (Referring to Western cultural isolation from non-industrialized national health issues; it's strangely apropos for Microsoft though.)

Ozzie: ""It's our aspiration to create seamless Web, desktop and mobile experiences for all activities relevant to users and customers in all our markets."

Mundie: "[A]lmost every product Microsoft has sold has a service component associated with it."

Johnson: "At the foundation is how we weave that together in an operating system that delivers something for everyone."

Raikes: "It's rewarding to be able to send this release [Office] off to our customers and help them take the next big leap forward in productivity."

Liddell: "VFI will help connect those interested in promoting a positive technology agenda directly with policymakers who determine technology policy."

Turner: "When the customer wants a choice, we can provide that choice. I want them to know they made an investment in innovation. That's how we are aligning the company."

Alrighty then. Are any of you ready to crank out a memo about how we're going to do all that? Or at the very least, bop my management chain on their respective heads to get with the program?

Update: Fixed typo.

Delegated to the Dustbin of History

noreply@blogger.com (Collision Domain) — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 09:12:00 +0000

November 7th is the anniversary of the Russian Revolution, and there's no better day to pay homage to Trotsky and take a close look at the Mensheviks of Microsoft management and leadership.

Never fear, this isn't a Marxian analysis of Microsoft's management cadres, (even though it would be a hoot!), but an examination of a key management and leadership skill: delegation.

Walk into any rapidly expanding, successful startup company and ask the employees there if they are doing work outside of the scope of what they were originally hired to do and if they have taken on more authority to do their jobs as they see fit. More likely than not, most if not all will say yes.

Now try this experiment at Microsoft. You'll find that while most if not all employees are doing work outside of their original scope, their authority to change process or tackle issues outside of their sphere of influence is close to zilch.

How can it be that the most successful startup in history, which has a deeply entrenched corporate culture of entrepreneurism, limits the employees in the trenches to empower real change?

Simply put, its past hyper-growth reacted with a corporate desire to expand business lines, resulting in umpteen layers of management accreting. Concurrently, job scope for individuals and management alike narrowed while workload increased, and performance began to be measured against those narrowed scopes. This twin thrust has continued and even accelerated, resulting in thousands (tens of thousands?) of positions at Microsoft that have become corporate cogs in the machine.

Ironically, there is much talk in the halls about empowerment, doing the right thing, driver culture, etc. but precious few managers actually reward employee initiative that requires the employee to take on more authority. The root cause is that the current performance review system does not foster or reward delegation to achieve individual, group or corporate success.

In fact, delegation of authority tends to be anathema to management at Microsoft. Why? It is because of two reasons. Firstly, there are too bloody many micro-managers who are too paranoid to relinquish some control. Secondly, and more perniciously, it is too risky to delegate authority down because if employees screw up, it impacts manager's commitment achievements for review and bonus.

Let's look at micro-managers first. From my chair and on a daily basis I work with the direct reports of three micro-managers that span different groups. I can count on the fact that when I work with these direct reports, decisions that ordinarily could be made on the fly need to be cross-checked with their managers. Non-critical changes to projects trigger management review cycles. The icing on the cake is when those micro-managers complain to my manager that I'm not doing what they asked me to do because when I don't or won't jump through their hoops.

Because micro-managers don't/won't/can't delegate to their reports, it lowers our organizational agility, slows down development and selects for employees over the long haul that function best when told what to do all the time. I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to ponder the ramifications of natural employee selection working under micro-managers over a ten-year period.

In the second case, even good managers sense the risk in delegating too much to their reports. The new performance review tool goes so far as to tacitly codify this risk by the aligned manager commitment feature. It's been made crystal-clear to me and everyone in my organization that achievement of these aligned commitments will play heavily in next year's review cycle. The not so subtle message - "Don't screw this up, or we'll all get screwed."

Looking at this from a manager's perspective, there is a negative incentive to delegate anything of consequence to direct reports because if they drop the ball, it will directly impact the manager's review and bonus; maybe even everyone on their team. So much for stretching their experience. So much for widening their scope of authority. So much for my manager's manager giving my manager more authority to share around. it also means that everyone up and down the management chain becomes reluctant to delegate things off of their plates when they're overloaded.

Hello burnout.

There is a way out of this mess and the performance tool can even be leveraged to help lead the way.

Change the review system. Again.

Mini-Microsoft led the charge to scrap the forced curve review system and it bore fruit. Here's one feature request for the Microsoft v2.0 Performance Review harvest: reward successful delegation.

Tweak the performance tool to highlight and allow individual items within a manager's commitment to be delegated to a report by forking off a sub-item or assigning the whole item. Allow the receiver of a delegated item to further delegate it or fork it into multiple sub-items that could be delegated separately. There should be no limit to how many levels down an item could be delegated or forked into separate sub-items. Each delegated item or sub-item should be weighted based upon the overall contribution to the original parent commitment that it/they derived from.

Successfully achieved delegated tasks reward the delegator based upon the % of items or sub-items achieved by delegated reports with a bonus multiplier based on how many levels down the items or sub-items were delegated. Successfully achieved delegated tasks reward the delegate based upon the % of the item or sub-item assigned to them and a bonus multiplier if delegated farther down the chain.

This achieves several goals all at once. It encourages and rewards managers to push more authority down the management chain by delegating. By forking the items, the risk is spread across teams and encourages those who over-commit to delegate further. It encourages and rewards employees by empowering them with the authority to complete items as they see fit and exposing them to projects that they might not otherwise encounter. Micro-managers that don't delegate can't maximize their merit and bonus.

As an example, one commitment a GM might have is to develop a consumer electronic device that plays video. They fork the item off into research, marketing and production sub-items, each weighted at 33% overall and delegate each sub-item to different Directors. The Director receiving the production sub-item passes it down the chain and forks it into procurement, manufacturing and design sub-items each weighted at 11% overall but 33% each at their level.

Let's say that the device gets launched but there was a glitch in procurement, but overall it was a success. For that one commitment, the overall completion rate was 89% (100% minus the 11% procurement sub-item) with a multiplier of 1.2. (Two levels of delegation.) This results in an adjusted completion rate of 106.8%, (1.2 * .89).

Following the math on down to the production Director level, their multiplier is 1.1, but they had a completion rate of 66% for an adjusted completion rate of 72.6%.

I'll leave it to you, dear readers, to suggest how HR should use the adjusted completion rates to award merit and bonus.

A final thought before I wrap this overly long post up. Even if the review system isn't tweaked to encourage delegation, all Microsoft managers should take mandatory delegation training. Managers that don't know how to delegate should not be managers.

My fifth request of Microsoft management and leadership is to send all managers to delegation training and adjust the performance review system to encourage delegation.

Briefly - InsideMS Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Collision Domain) — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 15:16:00 +0000

Both thumbs up to LisaB for getting the InsideMS blog rolling last week.

Now that's a leadership decision I can get behind: real risk-taking along with unleashing and un-muzzling the staff to let us all use our 'big brains' to help solve what ills us. If only the rest of our leadership seemed willing to listen to the messengers instead of run them through with a pike.

One thing that surprised me when I read through the comments on the blog was the number of people of longer tenure commenting and their sharing of future career plans. Very interesting! Does this mean opportunities are coming our way to move the logjam or are we staring at opportunities lost?

In the compare and contrast department, copy just the comments from say, Mini-Microsoft, into a plain text document and line them up next to a plain text list of comments from InsideMS. Can you spot the differences? Trolls? Similarities?

(I know that I'll be giving "colleague" hires spelling tests from here on out.)

Letting Go

noreply@blogger.com (Collision Domain) — Sun, 15 Oct 2006 22:21:00 +0000

By Jove, you take a few weeks off to get some head space from the company meeting, attend to personal and career issues and the world just keeps on a-turning!

From MSFT's one year rate of return of almost 20%(!!!) to Vista invading Europe to Zune's increasing street-cred and momentum!

The pipeline is filling and everything, and I mean everything is going so great at Microsoft, there's hardly anything to write about.

Except that I was two hours late to the company meeting because the bus I was on was doing the milk run, my ass froze to my chair, I got stepped on when trying to wade into the feeding frenzy that was the lunch line and the lines to the bathroom were so insane I almost peed my pants waiting because of all the coffee I had to drink just to keep warm.

Don't even get my started about the 'Product Fair'. The crush of frenzied people lunging for cheap, plastic crap made a Who concert seem sedate by comparison. By the time it mellowed out a bit enough for me to try and take in all the wonderful goodness we're working on and about to ship by talking to people at the booths, there were the constant interruptions of, "Do you have any more Frisbees?", "Do you have any more t-shirts?", "Do you have any more badge clips?", which made me grab a glass of wine and look for some food.

Bad idea.

The only "food" that wasn't deep-fried, (hello, wellness?) was a few token veggies sitting next to coagulated Ranch dressing and cookies. Don't get me wrong, I love cookies, but wine + carrots + cookies = feeling ill on the bus. (At least it wasn't taquitos + chicken strips + wine + cookies = mess on the bus.)

Now that I have that off my chest...

On to: The Microsoft Company Meeting.

This was the first company meeting I've attended. It was likely my last.

Why? (Besides getting frostbite on my butt?) Because it was like attending a Jim Rose Circus show without the entertainment, music and booze. I was pretty much left with a gaping mouth and a disgusted feeling. Oh sure, I was one of the poor schulbs making noise every time my team was mentioned, but rest assured, it was because I was sitting in the same row as my GM and I certainly wasn't going to be one to commit career suicide in front of the rabid masses.

I did, however, find one point of entertainment and one point of real interest in the show.

The entertainment was that for all the noise about search, all the noise about advertising, all the noise about online services, all the noise about games and all the noise about beating back Google, Linux and Sony, the ghost of the past was still in the room. Google is still coming, coming, coming, coming and coming. Linux is still coming and coming and coming.

The entertainment was counting how many references were made to competitors by name during the company meeting and measuring that against the real threat to revenue streams. You can even play along at work or wfh by loading up the on-demand version of the company meeting.

You might expect that the top three would come out something like Google, Linux and Sony. Bzzzzt! Guess again.

(Here's a hint: it rhymes with Snapple.)

For all of the competitive threats online, (go re-read Ozzie's '05 memo and Gates' '95 memos for a quick refresher,) all of the competitive threats in the enterprise posed by Linux, IBM and SAP, and all the threats that Sony and Nintendo pose in games, Apple is the competitive ghost that still drives senior leadership.

What else can explain why Apple was mentioned more times than another other competitor at the company meeting and that it has never been clearly linked as a competitive threat in the online services arena other than as a purveyor of music and movies to the rank-and-file? So what gives? If Apple is a threat on par with Google and Linux, tell us so we can all update our commitments to fend of that threat as well.

Otherwise. It. Is. Time. To. Let. Go. Of. The. Corporate. Insecurity. We. Exhibit. About. Apple.

There, I've said it. Seriously people, it's time to move on.

Which brings me to the interesting part of the company meeting.

Ray Ozzie will help in saving all of our asses if we let him.

I had a hard time hearing him, as most of my co-workers attention drifted off and started chatting during his speech, but what I did hear gave me hope that the Microsoft that I really wanted to join might just be the one he helps to bring about. If you missed what he had to say, go listen to it. Twice.

Ray is not stuck in the past, fighting the last fight. He's firmly looking to the future what needs to be done to get us there and be a solid, respected competitor. And he might just help us realize that the future looks a lot more like this instead of this.

Next Up: Delegated to the Dustbin of History