Fear and not so Loathing at CES

All throughout Microsoft, there are hundreds if not thousands of really smart people who work really hard trying to make a difference and to the right thing by Microsoft customers, partners, and developers.  And there are lots of examples of RSS feeds, forums, webcasts, etc, where I believe I can convince anyone that the company has made great strides in many areas.

That's why being witness to the old snot nosed arrogance coming from those that should know better is so painful.

Consider this true story which happened yesterday on the CES show floor:

A Microsoft guy walks into a booth and says "So, what do you do?"  The friendly people in the booth explain the technology, customer base, happy people, cool stuff, etc.  All normal, all happy happy.

Microsoft Guy: "Oh. Well, I've been in our research department and they do what you do, so, well, bad for you."  

The booth CEO says, in effect, I don't think so, we have 9 patents, millions of users, and do this that nobody that we know of does.

Microsoft Guy: "Well, research has stuff that we can use and it probably is good enough."

A former Microsoft guy steps in (me) and says so, how long have you been with the company?  18 months says Microsoft guy. 

Amazing but it gets better.  That evening this CEO is sitting with the CEO's of 5 other companies and for two hours they rail on Microsoft led off by a the story I just told you. Two solid hours of a self-inflicted wound by an 18 month MBA wonder kid.

The obvious lesson: Don't crap on anything when you have stuff others can crap on.  Never say anything but, great people, they work hard, when asked about any other company in your space. If you are in a booth and get a briefing you smile, say thank you for you time, very interesting, and leave   Yup, all of this is obvious 101 stuff and I'm sure that you tell all of your employees be nice out there, praise in public, laugh in private. Somebody didn't get the MSFT folks the memo.

Way back during the heyday of the 90s, Brad Chase used to give the pre-COMDEX/pre-CES briefings about never, ever doing anything other than be nice when you walk the floor, keep the swagger at home, the arrogance in your pocket.  The MSFT HR department needs to set up the remedial be nice classes and soon.

The not so obvious observation: The collective group of CEOs didn't care. They weren't at all intimidated. They vowed NOT to work with Microsoft, to send email about these goof balls to higher ups in Microsoft no longer fearing or caring about the big bad machine from Microsoft.  One claimed she had instructed his staff not to talk with Microsoft people and specifically say, sorry, I can't speak with people from Microsoft, you'll have to come back another time.

I'm not suggesting for a minute that any of this will have an impact on people buying an Xbox and I'm sure the 8 people who bought a Zune won't return them. 

What I am saying is that Microsoft's big challenge and yours as well, is to make sure your prevent one (or ten) arrogant people from destroying the hard work of 1000s of others.

Comments

[JonR]

this story is funny AND sad.

[C-J]

You're absolutely right about the importance of conducting business in a professional and prudent business manner. However, every company of any significance has its share of MBA wonder kids and other jerks. I’ve met many representatives from Microsoft, and they’re by no means worse than people from other companies, so I don’t know if it is such a challenge for Microsoft. Sure, this kid might have ruined a few business deals, but then some other kid at IBM does the same mistake making customers jump from IBM to Microsoft instead. I think it equals out in the end (for large companies, that is).

[Priya]

Rick, thanks for sharing and bringing this to people's notice. Too bad, that one such incident ruins a lot of positive work that we do as a company to create the right branding in terms of customer experience, candidate experience and employee experience.But, I wonder if amongst other things, we should expect HR to become the ppl police?

[anon]

To me the obvious lesson is: Don't listen to MBAs when they talk about technical things. They might know about business and marketing, but are almost always clueless when it comes to any serious discussion of a technical topic.