Microsoft - The Economy, ThinkWeek, Innovation,...
In my last post I mentioned my new role in the Microsoft Technical Strategy group and the promise of more on the subject. So here is some late breaking news, hot of the press, on one of our programs – ThinkWeek.
Context - Economic Realities
We are all effected (some more than others) by the current World economic conditions and Microsoft is no exception. The news is full of comparisons to the economic crisis in the early 80’s. This current economic down turn brings back some painful personal memories. I graduated from Dowling High School in West Des Moines, Iowa (Home of the best Steak, Corn and Wrestlers in the World) in 1981. Damn, I’m getting old, but like fine wine … After graduation, I soon lost my Father who was a tremendous influence in my life and shaped my core values - Honesty, Integrity, Work hard and be a man of your word to a name a few. I married at the age of 20 in 1983 and I became a father myself (hard to imagine). The stress of trying to provide for a new family during one of America’s most difficult economic down turns since the depression was a tremendous burden. Iowa was so depressed that I couldn’t find a minimum wage job, even at the typically hiring establishments like McDonald’s. And believe me, when I tell you, that eating government cheese, peanut butter and a meal about every other day (those years of Wrestling paid off when dealing with hunger) makes a job at McDonald’s seem like a glorious thing when you could have had a double cheeseburger with fries *and* be employed. What a treat that would have been.
I typically keep my personal life separate from my professional life, but I wanted to share some personal experiences as they are reflective of these difficult times. As you may have read, Microsoft recently went through a second wave of cut backs in response to the economy. Our team survived, but we lost some very good people as well as some of our program offerings. My thoughts and prayers continue to go out to many of those I know who are experiencing the difficulties I lived through in the early 80’s. Hang in there. This too shall pass.
Context - What is ThinkWeek?
As borrowed from my peer, Tricia Mayer, our much more articulate and capable Director of Marketing and Communications.
“ThinkWeek is a long-standing tradition at Microsoft, initiated by Bill Gates. Over the years, ideas generated through ThinkWeek papers have inspired direction and great thinking. Now that Bill has moved on to a more prominent role at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the ThinkWeek process is changing.
ThinkWeek is an open and voluntary forum that enables any Microsoft employee to share their thoughts and ideas in the form of a thoughtfully written paper, circulated among influential managers and senior leaders.
ThinkWeek is grounded in the premise that sharing diverse ideas and great thinking are key elements of maintaining our competitive advantage and thought leadership around the world.”
ThinkWeek and the Economy
Again from Tricia,
“As all groups at Microsoft undergo the evaluation of cost to value benefit for programs and projects, we are also applying the same scrutiny to the ThinkWeek program and process. Until that evaluation process is complete, the ThinkWeek09 cycle has been placed on hold.”
I was made aware there was some leaking (outside of Microsoft) of this programs “hold” status, so I felt now was the time (read below) to share some information on the subject from someone (Me) who has first hand information on the subject. Note that we received a lot of feedback from employees on the ThinkWeek “hold” status.
I believe the ThinkWeek concept has been around for ~27years. It has been a long standing tradition embraced by Bill Gates and was affectionately referred to as “the BillG ThinkWeek”, in part, because Bill would take a week off to read the papers and incorporate the input into the fabric of Microsoft’s product development. I doubt Bill truly unplugged. Remind me to tell you a personal experience that has become an urban legend on Bill’s work ethic.
On a personal note, In April 2001, I submitted a paper on MSN’s .Net Migration – “Porting a Multi-tier Distributed Platform”, with a little help from my friends (shout out to Mahesh and Stephen). The paper was based on the re-architecture of our content fetching/aggregation tool I invented and originally wrote in Perl and ported to “Cool”, which was the code name for C#. Participating in a program that allows you to reach thought leaders and influencers throughout Microsoft was (is) a privilege and an honor. Seriously! I make mention of this, along with my Microsoft ship-it awards, on my resume.
Signs of recovery
There is more positive news about the economy recovering and while certainly not the sole decision to launch the *new* ThinkWeek program, both are positive signs in my mind.
Yesterday, Ray Ozzie, announced in his Engineering Excellence forum keynote (a Microsoft campus event) that the new ThinkWeek program will launch next month!
And again,
“Over the past several months, the ThinkWeek program has been redesigned based on the feedback we have heard from Microsoft employees worldwide. The next generation of the ThinkWeek program will be launching on July 6, 2009.”
In conclusion
For those Microsoft employees reading this blog, submit those thoughtful papers and please give me feedback on the new site.
For those that read about the leaked information this should clear things up.
For those that are hearing about ThinkWeek for the first time, this should give you some insight into some Microsoft culture, employee participation in shaping Microsoft, and continued support for invention, innovation, and feedback by *all* employees.
I will continue to share more on the Technical Strategy Group programs (in additional to ThinkWeek) as well as more on innovation and Microsoft culture if my readers find the subjects interesting. Do inquiring minds want to know?
Now I have to get back to work as I recently picked up a number of new work items, requirements, expectations, and a firm ThinkWeek RTW date J
