Resolve and Fortitude : Microsoft's ''SECRET POWER BROKER'' breaks his silence by Joachim Kempin

containing the contract on my desk, and when the screaming did not stop, I hurled it across the room at his chest, imploring him, “Undo it yourself!” It sickened me to see that Steve’s blind intervention was sacrificing a several-million-dollar deal. Angrily, he stormed out of my office.
    All later arguments fell on deaf ears. In the end, the agreement got undone. I was furious and took the unusual step of complaining to Jon, recommending to him first, and a couple of days later to Bill, to fire him. Jon stared at me in awe, replying only, “Are you serious? You can tell Bill. I won’t.” Bill just laughed at me. I soon learned the episode would come full circle back to haunt me later.
    The incident pours a direct light on two different management styles. First off, Steve’s intent was misunderstood by Rob. Secondly, scolding others and not apologizing for miscommunicating hurts morale. Finally, not empowering subordinates to take significant market share away from a competitor runs counter to Auftragstaktik principles. Undoing the deal displayed zero respect for Compaq, our largest customer, you must, at times, swallow your pride. I didn’t work for Steve directly then, but I knew Bill dealt differently with me. When he gave me directions, they were never meant to be prescriptions. The incident smelled of a rigid and hierarchic command doctrine combined with micromanagement, an ossified structure the Prussians had abandoned centuries ago. Would he learn from this incident?
    As long as the OS development group was managed by him, the delays continued and got worse. A frustrating experience considering that we extended Steve’s promises to customers verbatim without any real certainty how the company could fulfill them. Second guessing the unrealistic plans did not help much either. While management below Steve got reshuffled several times, he seemed protected. I looked on in disbelief and thought, In order to get ahead and be bulletproof in MS, you need two stamps on your forehead—the first one saying you’re smart and the second saying you are personal friend of Bill or Steve. Ideally of both! Over the years, I observed how a lot of personal favors were dished out to this class of people. I knew I had at least one stamp on my forehead, and I never tried to get the second one from either of the guys. When running a business, only performance and respect need to count, not personal friendship!
    In hindsight, the undoing of Compaq’s deal was a hidden blessing for my group and our overall business relationship. LAN-Manager came out with so much delay that Compaq would have had no chance to bundle it with the designated servers. This first version was buggy like hell, and Compaq would have been utterly unable to serve her customers reliably. It wasn’t until version 3.0 that we produced a mature and competitive product with NT technology. I felt lucky not having to suffer the inevitable avalanche of Compaq’s complaints. Undoing the license nevertheless left a mark on the Compaq / Steve Ballmer relationship, which never fully recovered. In a way, I got my revenge, helping Richard Fade to convince 3Com to come to the rescue and assist MS in developing a vastly improved version. A fragile partnership was the result. 3Com marketed the product independently and paid OEM royalties. At least some revenue was headed my way.
    On the OS/2 front, the IBM/MS relationship was unraveling fast. As we geared up for Windows 3.0, our performance in regard to project OS/2 had, in IBM’s opinion, deteriorated to outright disappointing. Without being directly involved, I had to trust the grapevine’s signaling and confirming that we had our best development resources primarily working on Windows. My group in turn was fully occupied selling its soon-to-be-released new version, hardly mentioning OS/2 anymore. Only IBM wore a lonely champion of OS/2 badge any longer.
    Our planned ten-million-dollar launch event in NYC should have