The 12 Simple Secrets of Microsoft Management

The 12 Simple Secrets of Microsoft Management: How to Think and Act Like a Microsoft Manager and Take Your Company to the Top
by David Thielen

WAIT! Don’t skip this particular review because you lack interest in technology or maybe even despise Bill Gates. This book offers its readers a wealth of information, ideas, and strategies that can easily be adapted to any organization. It’s a quick read, very candid and to the point. 

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 author reveals a dozen key elements he learned during three years at Microsoft. This book is an 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 the author. “There are other companies that produce better software, market better, and make fewer mistakes. However, no other large company manages its business as well.”

This book puts forth a convincing case for the competitive advantage that exists in Microsoft’s management style: a big company’s resources with a small company’s agility and focus. While other books talk about Microsoft’s success and what it has done, this books tells you how Microsoft became successful.

(This book review was originally published in 2000 as one of the Top 10 Books – Edition 5.)