"Love 'em or hate 'em, there's a lot to learn from Microsoft; they win a lot of the time."

SCHINDLER: Do you have any feedback that indicates to you that all or most of these lessons are applicable in other industries outside of computers and software?
BICK: Oh, I've had tons of feedback to that effect. A guy from the Boston Globe said this is good for any entrepreneur. And I've been asked to speak at the Washington state dental association, if you can believe that one. And places like Marriott and Lucent have called. So really, a whole variety of places have called to either get more information or to have me speak.

SCHINDLER: If you had to choose a particular chapter or a particular piece of advice in this book to emphasize, what would it be?
BICK: I guess, probably the most interesting part of the book is how Microsoft treats failure, and I think it's a good lesson for a lot of people, a lot of corporations. If you figure, well, Microsoft really does focus a lot on success you know, their big marketing budgets and their "I want to win the whole world" kind of attitude. And it's true down to every level.

There's a manager who came back from a trade show, and the product team had won nine out of 10 possible awards for the product, it was Word for Windows, and he sent out this e-mail joyously announcing this to the group, and within 24 hours he had 40 e-mails back asking which was the one award they had not won and why.

So you can tell they really focus a lot on success. But given that, the way they treat failure is rather surprising. They don't just fire the person that screwed up, or demote them, or send them away to some crazy subsidiary. They really figure, well, if this person can sort of dust themselves off and learn from the experience and go on. They'll be smarter. So we shouldn't fire the person that failed.

There's a great story. There's a young guy, and he had to break some bad news to Bill Gates a couple years ago. He said there's a bug in the spreadsheet and we're going to have to recall it from all the stores, and it's going to cost all this money. It's kind of a disaster. His knees are probably shaking presenting all this to the CEO. But Bill kind of looks at him and says, "Well, today you lost a quarter of a million dollars, tomorrow you should probably do better." And that guy now, Jeff Raikes, is in the office of the president at Microsoft. So you can really tell that they do let people fail and move on.

SCHINDLER: I’m sure you know there is criticism of the Microsoft culture for being too aggressive and for a willingness to skate right up to the edge of the rules. Judging from the positive tone of your book, I don't believe that you would characterize the culture in such a way. But did you see elements in the culture while you were there that, taken to an extreme, might have a negative effect on the externalities of Microsoft?
BICK: Well, I guess anything taken to an extreme could have a negative effect, but it's funny because with things like the whole Department of Justice suit and having the government tell Microsoft what they can and can't do, and, you know, taking that culture and shackling it a little bit, is like asking the people at Microsoft not to make the best product they can, which is kind of like asking the slugger on a baseball team not to hit for the fences. It's like I know you can probably hit a home run, but don't even try. Why don't you just try for a double. The fans want you to hit a home run, and you want to hit a home run, your manager wants you to hit a home run, but ... people are saying, 'Hey just go for a double, you know let the other team have a fair shot,' that's kind of what it's like.

PAUL SCHINDLER: How about the arrogance problem? First of all, do you even concede it? A lot of people at Microsoft don't. Would you concede Microsoft as an entity and some of the people at Microsoft individually can come off as arrogant when they're speaking to outsiders?
BICK: Yes, definitely.

PAUL SCHINDLER: When I talked to Bob Herbold, he said he recognized that, and he said arrogance is not always a good thing. He said it's not even necessarily mostly a good thing, and he said that he'd like to introduce -- he didn't use the word humility -- but the import of his remarks was that he'd like to introduce some humility to the culture. Do you think a little humility would be helpful to the Microsoft culture?
BICK: Probably. It's funny because sometimes it'll take Microsoft three versions to get a product really good or it'll take three plans to get a corporation to buy the product or something like that. Well, maybe it takes three tries to figure out how to be a little better spoken -- either with the government, or partners, or competitors, or whatever. So maybe they're working on it.

"I think it is completely and utterly a reflection of Bill Gates. Completely."

PAUL SCHINDLER: Is all of Microsoft really a reflection of a set of principles that Bill Gates and Paul Allen had coming in? The culture?
BICK: I think it is completely and utterly a reflection of Bill Gates. Completely.

PAUL SCHINDLER: So if you understood Bill Gates you'd understand Microsoft?
BICK: I think so. I mean the example I gave about failing and letting people fail, that was Bill Gates that let that guy fail and then moved him all the way up to president. Well, when Bill does that, his next line of managers do that, and the people who report to them do that, and so on down to the lowest level of interns, who can screw up and still get hired back if they're smart and people think they're going to learn. So it's really what Bill does, the rest of the company does.

PAUL SCHINDLER: As you may know, outsiders have a perception of Bill G.'s reviews as being peculiarly unpleasant experiences. His biographers suggest that one of his favorite catch phrases is "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard." In fact, he's said it to me twice. Is that a positive atmosphere for a product review. I'm baffled.
BICK: I can't say it's positive. It's very challenging. It's scary, but it really makes people prepare very well for it. And the thing is, once you've prepared everything you know about your competitors, your product, the market, your customers, the technology, the international scene, once you've prepared all of that so you can get grilled by Bill, you are pretty much set for the rest of the year. You've just passed the final, and you know your stuff for the rest of the year.

"Once you've prepared everything you know about your competitors, your product, the market, your customers ... so you can get grilled by Bill, you are pretty much set for the rest of the year."

PAUL SCHINDLER: Is there such a thing as a positive review from Bill?
BICK: Oh, definitely. Actually, my husband works on Slate magazine, which is an online political and cultural magazine, and they got some e-mail from Bill that just said that he thought the magazine was great and even though it's small right now, he wants to commit a lot of marketing funding to it and he gets compliments on it all the time. I think my husband probably framed that e-mail and put it on his wall.

PAUL SCHINDLER: Is fear and trepidation really the best motivator to do your homework? Wait, no, that's not fair.
BICK: It really isn't.

PAUL SCHINDLER: But it happens to be the way he works.
BICK: That's what we deal with. People who can survive that do well at Microsoft. It might not be the best way to manage things, but it seems to work so far.

PAUL SCHINDLER: The other thing I wanted to ask you, in fairness, is that he is also known to be fairly generous with his praise. Occasionally in person, and much more frequently in e-mail. Isn't that true?
BICK: That's true, that's more like the example I just told you about him sending e-mail to Slate magazine and how great he thought it was. Even though it's so little on his radar screen. It's probably one one-millionth of the size of the windows business. Or something like that.

PAUL SCHINDLER: Does he practice management by walking around? If you are a non-managerial level employee, what are your odds of ever running into Bill, say if you're there for five years?
BICK: Gosh, when I first came to the company and there were only 5,000 employees, you would see him walking around. He'd give a lot of presentations for new hires, and that sort of thing. But when I left, the company was about 20 or 25 thousand people and there were just campuses all over the city pretty much. You really rarely, rarely saw him.

PAUL SCHINDLER: Is he important internally as an icon? If you had a five-year career there and never saw him and never had a Bill G. review would you feel like you were less of a Microsoftee because of that?
BICK: I don't know about less of a Microsoftee, but I'd say you probably missed out on an interesting experience, it's sort of like, you know, working with Andrew Carnegie or Henry Ford of their era. I think Bill Gates is sort of that guy for now.

SCHINDLER: Is it enormously important at Microsoft to maintain the culture you've described in your book, and do you think they can do it? Have they done it so far, in the time that you were there?
BICK: They've definitely maintained it. As you said, there may be some rough-around the edges parts of the culture that are not so great to keep, you know, the super-aggressiveness and things like that, but the desire to win and the desire to make the best product, and the desire to please customers, and all that sort of stuff -- I hope they hold onto it.

SCHINDLER: Do they seem to be concentrated on holding onto it as far as you can tell?
BICK: Yes, I happened to be having lunch with a friend of mine at Microsoft the day they were broadcasting Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, and Bob Herbold doing basically a pep talk about the Department of Justice thing. They basically said, 'Hey, let the lawyers deal with all that stuff, and you guys just keep making the best products you can make, and pleasing customers.' I swear to God, it could have been five years ago about the Apple lawsuit, it could have been sometime ago with the IBM OS/2 shenanigans or whatever. I was just really happy to see it because it was just like, OK, they're still doing the same winning kind of stuff, rah, rah, make the best products and don't worry about all the craziness going on, on the side.

SCHINDLER: You were a woman in marketing and management at Microsoft, did you ever sense that it was a culture that was not really amenable to women?
BICK: I think the only way the culture is not amenable to women is that the company will take every ounce of your energy that you will give it, and if you have small kids at home who will also take every ounce of energy you will give them, you're kind of going to run up against a problem. Actually we have a lot of M.B.A. friends that are couples, the man and woman both work at Microsoft and a lot of the women have left, to work part time to hang out with the kids, and the guys have all stayed. I guess that says something.