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No matter what department you're in, everyone's on the same team

Usually, explaining this is difficult without an example, however, in today's lesson, everyone's favorite cheerleader, Microsoft's own Robert Scoble, has provided us with a sterling example of why forgetting whose side you're on is bad.

In a post from Sept. 9th, he took an interview in APC Magazine with Nigel Page, from Microsoft Australia, and said:

Sorry, Nigel (the guy they quoted) is wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

I've been interviewing lots of teams about what Windows Vista will need and it's nowhere near what this article says.

I have a video coming up next week that'll answer a lot of these concerns.

“Well, Scoble, why don't you just tell us the minimum requirements then?” I can hear some of you saying that. Sorry, can't do that yet. The teams are still doing performance work. That work won't be done until next year. But Windows Vista works just fine on Tablet PCs (which aren't known for being very bleeding edge in hardware).

And, Nigel, please talk with the team that wrote the display engine in Windows Vista and find out more about what the real requirements will be.

On the surface of it, what do we have? Some damage control, and a very public correction of another Microsoft employee by one of the most public faces of Microsoft. (I really don't care to hear Scoble's protestations that his blog is not an official Microsoft Press outlet. He's turned it into one over the years, so that's what it now is.) Now, if Robert had been correct on his facts, then the only real problem is that Robert has all the professional relationship skills of a spoiled child tattling on his brother.

Here's a tip kids, and if you're ever in a leadership position, make it a rule:

Praise in public, criticize in private

On the other hand, if Robert had been right, okay, just a social/interpersonal relationship problem.

The problem was, Robert's always had a bit of an issue with holding off on the post button long enough to check his facts. It's burned him, and he's been burned by others doing it to him. But in the fever pitch to do the damage control, he forgot one, very important thing:

Check.

Your.

Facts.

From a post dated today, 12 Sept, 2005:

...Anyway, the long and short of it is that his talk was taken out of context and wasn't reported well. His talk was focused on hardware evolution. He was talking about what's coming in hardware....Anyway, now that I have more facts, I said I'm sorry for making it sound like he had given out facts that he hadn't. Glad I could clear up the story.

So, from Friday to Monday, thanks to someone else on the same team, Nigel looked like an ignoramus, too silly to bother sending an email to get his facts straight. Thanks to Robert he looked completely stupid.

When I pointed out in the comments for the original article:

I'm REAL sure they have “Teh Intarweb” in Australia and that, go with me on this, AUSTRAILIANS speak ENGLISH. So, and here's the kooky part, what if MS sent out an EMAIL that had the CORRECT info, and told people “THIS is what you will say about Vista”.

Wouldn't that just be wild. I suppose actually communicating with each other won't happen until the PDC either?

“Welcome to the PDC...from now on, everyone at MS will be able to not just send, but receive email from each other. In a form that we can read. We really think this will help make Windows Vista the best OS Evar!”. (Yes, it's harsh. But Robert's like a puppy, he doesn't learn unless the newspaper makes his nose sting)

Robert replies back with:

John: heh. Do you work in an organization bigger than 15 people? It doesn't sound like it. People make mistakes. Some people are, um, not informed or miss the memo (intranet published it might be). Hell, you catch me a lot of times in my ignorance. It happens. No big deal. Onward.

Considering how wrong he really was, there's more than a little irony to that reply.

My final response:

Communication, whether between 60 people or 60,000 is a relatively simple task if you give a rat's ass about doing it right. Now, we are talking about MS, the shining example of “Screw 'right' we're 'good enough'” so the fact that they can't handle internal communications right is no real surprise here.

It's in the last reply to that post, (Not from Robert), that we see how unintentionally on the mark my comment was:

I think everyone should go read what Michael Kleef has written: http://blogs.technet.com/mkleef/archive/2005/09/12/410592.aspx
From Michael's post it seems like Nigel was misquoted. The date on this comment is...ready? 12 Sept. That's right, the same day as Robert's follow-up and apology.

I didn't believe that a PR wonk like Robert would leave a fellow employee to twist in the wind like that without even the courtesy of an email or a voicemail asking if the guy had really said that. But accuracy and teamwork be damned, there was PR to do.

People, when you work for a company, be it Microsoft, Apple, or Mom's Corner Deli, you work for the company. Regardless of division, or project, you work for the company. You are all ON THE SAME TEAM. When you start screwing over your teammates like this, they all make note of it. You lose their trust, because they know that you will stab them in the back and step over the body, facts be damned. Behavior like that is a cancer. It kills living cells, or worse yet, mutates them so they have the same behavior.

The fact that Scoble did this doesn't make it any better or any worse. It just happened to be such a blatantly public version of it, that I didn't have to do any real work to turn it into an article.

When you're on a team, and the door is closed, you scream, you yell, you criticize freely. That's one of the reasons for a closed door, so you can say things without worrying about what outsiders will think. If you are going to criticize a teammate in public, then you damned-well have your facts double - and triple - checked first. You make sure you give them a chance to defend themselves. You include exculpatory as well as damning evidence. They're a teammate, you don't hang them without solid reason.

That kind of behavior would be, in a world that cared about such things, punished by termination so fast and so public it left scorch marks. In lieu of termination, a very public apology, not just on the originating site, but on the company intra/extra/whatever net is the minimum compensation for such a public lynching by blog.

As a favorite mailing list of mine states as its motto: You save my ass, I'll save yours. If you cannot trust your own teammates to watch your ass, and give you the benefit of the doubt, even when the evidence seems conclusive, then why should you have the privilege of being on that team?

Categories: Leadership

Posted by John C. Welch at 20:56 | Permalink

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So, yet another 'soft' peeve of mine is siloism, or the practice of departments within a company forgetting that they're all on the same team, and acting like polite enemies in a confederation instead.\n\nUsually, explaining this is difficult without an example, however, in today's lesson, everyone's favorite cheerleader, Microsoft's own Robert Scoble, has provided us with a sterling example of why forgetting whose side you're on is bad.\n\nIn a post from Sept. 9th, he took an interview in APC Magazine with Nigel Page, from Microsoft Australia, and said:\n\nSorry, Nigel (the guy they quoted) is wrong. Wrong. Wrong.\n\nI've been interviewing lots of teams about what Windows Vista will need and it's nowhere near what this article says.\n\nI have a video coming up next week that'll answer a lot of these concerns.\n\n“Well, Scoble, why don't you just tell us the minimum requirements then?” I can hear some of you saying that. Sorry, can't do that yet. The teams are still doing performance work. That work won't be done until next year. But Windows Vista works just fine on Tablet PCs (which aren't known for being very bleeding edge in hardware).\n\nAnd, Nigel, please talk with the team that wrote the display engine in Windows Vista and find out more about what the real requirements will be.\n\nOn the surface of it, what do we have? Some damage control, and a very public correction of another Microsoft employee by one of the most public faces of Microsoft. (I really don't care to hear Scoble's protestations that his blog is not an official Microsoft Press outlet. He's turned it into one over the years, so that's what it now is.) Now, if Robert had been correct on his facts, then the only real problem is that Robert has all the professional relationship skills of a spoiled child tattling on his brother.\n\nHere's a tip kids, and if you're ever in a leadership position, make it a rule:\n\nPraise in public, criticize in private\n\nOn the other hand, if Robert had been right, okay, just a social/interpersonal relationship problem.\n\nThe problem was, Robert's always had a bit of an issue with holding off on the post button long enough to check his facts. It's burned him, and he's been burned by others doing it to him. But in the fever pitch to do the damage control, he forgot one, very important thing:\n\nCheck.\n\nYour.\n\nFacts.\n\nFrom a post dated today, 12 Sept, 2005:\n\n...Anyway, the long and short of it is that his talk was taken out of context and wasn't reported well. His talk was focused on hardware evolution. He was talking about what's coming in hardware....Anyway, now that I have more facts, I said I'm sorry for making it sound like he had given out facts that he hadn't. Glad I could clear up the story.\n\nSo, from Friday to Monday, thanks to someone else on the same team, Nigel looked like an ignoramus, too silly to bother sending an email to get his facts straight. Thanks to Robert he looked completely stupid.\n\nWhen I pointed out in the comments for the original article:\n\nI'm REAL sure they have “Teh Intarweb” in Australia and that, go with me on this, AUSTRAILIANS speak ENGLISH. So, and here's the kooky part, what if MS sent out an EMAIL that had the CORRECT info, and told people “THIS is what you will say about Vista”.\n\nWouldn't that just be wild. I suppose actually communicating with each other won't happen until the PDC either?\n\n“Welcome to the PDC...from now on, everyone at MS will be able to not just send, but receive email from each other. In a form that we can read. We really think this will help make Windows Vista the best OS Evar!”. (Yes, it's harsh. But Robert's like a puppy, he doesn't learn unless the newspaper makes his nose sting)\n\nRobert replies back with:\n\nJohn: heh. Do you work in an organization bigger than 15 people? It doesn't sound like it. People make mistakes. Some people are, um, not informed or miss the memo (intranet published it might be). Hell, you catch me a lot of times in my ignorance. It happens. No big deal. Onward. \n\nConsidering how wrong he really was, there's more than a little irony to that reply.\n\nMy final response:\n\nCommunication, whether between 60 people or 60,000 is a relatively simple task if you give a rat's ass about doing it right. Now, we are talking about MS, the shining example of “Screw 'right' we're 'good enough'” so the fact that they can't handle internal communications right is no real surprise here.\n\nIt's in the last reply to that post, (Not from Robert), that we see how unintentionally on the mark my comment was:\n\nI think everyone should go read what Michael Kleef has written: http://blogs.technet.com/mkleef/archive/2005/09/12/410592.aspx\nFrom Michael's post it seems like Nigel was misquoted. The date on this comment is...ready? 12 Sept. That's right, the same day as Robert's follow-up and apology.\n\nI didn't believe that a PR wonk like Robert would leave a fellow employee to twist in the wind like that without even the courtesy of an email or a voicemail asking if the guy had really said that. But accuracy and teamwork be damned, there was PR to do.\n\nPeople, when you work for a company, be it Microsoft, Apple, or Mom's Corner Deli, you work for the company. Regardless of division, or project, you work for the company. You are all ON THE SAME TEAM. When you start screwing over your teammates like this, they all make note of it. You lose their trust, because they know that you will stab them in the back and step over the body, facts be damned. Behavior like that is a cancer. It kills living cells, or worse yet, mutates them so they have the same behavior. \n\nThe fact that Scoble did this doesn't make it any better or any worse. It just happened to be such a blatantly public version of it, that I didn't have to do any real work to turn it into an article.\n\nWhen you're on a team, and the door is closed, you scream, you yell, you criticize freely. That's one of the reasons for a closed door, so you can say things without worrying about what outsiders will think. If you are going to criticize a teammate in public, then you damned-well have your facts double - and triple - checked first. You make sure you give them a chance to defend themselves. You include exculpatory as well as damning evidence. They're a teammate, you don't hang them without solid reason.\n\nThat kind of behavior would be, in a world that cared about such things, punished by termination so fast and so public it left scorch marks. In lieu of termination, a very public apology, not just on the originating site, but on the company intra/extra/whatever net is the minimum compensation for such a public lynching by blog. \n\nAs a favorite mailing list of mine states as its motto: You save my ass, I'll save yours. If you cannot trust your own teammates to watch your ass, and give you the benefit of the doubt, even when the evidence seems conclusive, then why should you have the privilege of being on that team?