Julie Bick, a product manager for Microsoft Word and Microsoft Office and a group manager overseeing more than 20 CD–ROM products, has written this small but information–packed book to provide “insider strategies to help you succeed.”

While acknowledging that people have varying perceptions of Microsoft, to Bick it is “the best training ground for anyone interested in business—any business. Experience that might take years to gain elsewhere comes in bursts of just a few weeks at Microsoft.”

She has provided a number of short lessons with examples of their application at Microsoft in five categories: running a business, doing my job well, being a good boss, communicating, and managing my career.

While many of her recommendations are common sense and can be found in other articles, books, and workshops on management and communications, the fact that they are treated as gospel by those who succeed in the intense, face–paced Microsoft environment give them added credibility.

The book is written in a breezy, insider tone that, when coupled with the short “lessons” makes it a fast read.

Example: Lesson 1 for running a business is to “eat your own dog food, and don’t believe your own press releases.” At Microsoft, this means that employees put in many days testing versions of all the company’s products before they’re ever released to the public. The point is to find as many glitches as possible and fix them before consumers ever have to deal with the product. Employees also live the scenario they’re expecting end–users to follow. Using your product yourself, rather than reading about all its great features in a press release, means you know the product you’re developing, testing, and selling inside out. And that gives you a competitive edge.

If Bick is to be believed, the Microsoft corporate culture fosters experimentation and mistakes, so long as people learn from them. The theory, she says, is that as long as you have cost the company money, market share, or whatever, you might as well learn from it. She tells the story of Jeff Raikes who, when he was product manager for Microsoft’s spreadsheet software, came to Bill Gates to announce that there was a major bug in the software and it would have to be recalled from retailers. Gates supposedly replied, “Well, you came in to work today and lost $250,000. Tomorrow you’ll hope to do better.” Raikes did hope to do better and is now a member of the company’s Office of the President.

Bick notes that there’s a “company–wide commitment to accepting mistakes as part of the process because so many new areas are being explored. Allowing people to fail with impunity (on the right occasions) paves the way for those people to take risks again in the future. And the rest of the company, watching from the sidelines, will feel emboldened as well. They’ll be more free with their ideas. They won’t shy away from a project that has a chance of going under. The freedom to fail helps the company move forward.”

Other wisdom from the various lessons includes:
•You can imagine or guess what your customers think about a product or service but there’s no replacement for asking them directly.
•Act like a leader. Take the high road. Don’t bash the competition. Stay humble.
•Know more about your customers than they know about themselves.
•Make decisions as if you own the company. Consider the broader impact.
•Sometimes you need to go with your “gut,” even when you disagree with the“experts.”
•The ideal relationship is when you make your boss look like a star, and the boss does the same for you.
•Bring solutions, not problems. And prepare your boss for bad news early.
•Give credit for good things and take blame for bad things.

It may not be coincidental that the last lesson in the book is “Ten Ways to Balance Work and Life.” Bick admits that, “Most Microsofties don’t balance their work with their outside life. Microsoft consumes all the time and energy you’ll give it.” But she lists ways that some of her colleagues have at least tried to maintain a balance, from having an ongoing midweek date with your significant other, to taking a night class in something totally unrelated to work, to getting season tickets to the theatre or symphony so you’ll feel guilty wasting the money not using them.

Item number 10 reads: “Microsofties can only think of nine ways (just kidding).” It’s a fitting close to a book that combines wisdom with humor and can help all of us who are trying to do well in an organization of any size and complexity.