Description:
You may admire him for his chutzpah or detest him for his audacity, but you can't deny that Bill Gates has developed a company capable of dominating any market it resolves to enter. This is not an accident, contends David Thielen--a 20-year veteran of the technology industry who once toiled at Microsoft as a senior software developer on Windows 95 and other projects--and in fact stems directly from the chairman's own unique attitudes on corporate administration. The 12 Simple Secrets of Microsoft Management, subtitled How to Think and Act Like a Microsoft Manager and Take Your Company to the Top, is Thielen's inside look at the way Gates and his lieutenants have successfully harnessed those particular practices that initially put the firm on the map and subsequently used them to build their business into one of the world's largest. "Microsoft's management style is its core strength," writes Thielen. "There are other companies that produce better software, market better, and make fewer mistakes, but no other large company manages its business as well." In chapters with titles like "The Top 5 Percent," "Require Failure," and "Shrimp vs. Weenies," he dissects Redmond's specific methodologies on hiring, quality control, budgeting, performance expectations, and more. --Howard Rothman
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