Carpadium Consulting

I was reading a piece linked from DaringFireball yesterday and something really leapt out at me. Check out these two quotes pulled from the linked article, one from Tim Cook, Apple’s COO, and the other from Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s CEO.

Here’s Cook’s quote:

“Windows 7, from our point of view, is just another opportunity to remind everyone to switch to a Mac,” said Apple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook. “People are sick of all the headaches that go along with Windows.”

And here’s Ballmer’s quote:

“Let’s face it, the Internet was designed for the PC. The Internet is not designed for the iPhone,” Ballmer said. “That’s why they’ve got 75,000 applications — they’re all trying to make the Internet look decent on the iPhone.”

I really don’t understand Ballmer’s point. Leaving aside for a moment that there are 2 errors of fact and an irrelevance in the space of 3 sentences – what is he trying to say? It just does not make any sense. It even has an air of the Chewbacca Defence about it. Just what is their message? I have noticed this coming up again and again in recent Microsoft comments and not just from Ballmer. I guess if the message is confused at the highest levels, it’s difficult to see how it can get any clearer down the chain.

On the other hand, the message from Cook could not be clearer. And not only is it clear, but it’s said in a completely positive way. It’s a brilliant piece of communications that uses Microsoft’s own weight against it. It’s 31 words without a skerrick of weasel. It’s a piece of PR jujitsu.

M@

It can sometimes be tough when you come into a new development team to get a sense of how people are communicating.

One really simple trick that I have learned is to check the whiteboards. What I mean by this is to check out how often the stuff that is left on whiteboards changes. If you come into a meeting room and it has the same stuff as it had on a week ago, the chances are there’s not a lot people getting up and discussing what they are doing. Worse, if the only stuff that is ever left on the whiteboard is the last lot of scribbles that you made, then you can be sure that people are not really talking to each other about what they are doing.

Of course, there could be an alternative explanation. It might mean that everyone on the development team is telepathic.

M@