Robert Scoble took two weeks off from blogging and has returned with a vengeance with some radical thinking for his employer Microsoft. Some ideas do more than me for others but what I love is the passion and freedom with which he speaks. For instance, in how many companies could you get away with saying things like this?
In my travels around Bill Gates’ empire I do my usual Channel 9 stuff, but off camera lately I’ve been asking “how can we make Microsoft better?”
See, I’ve decided to stick around and make Microsoft better. I own a very very very small slice of Microsoft and so as an employee owner I figure I gotta do my part.
And, generally, what I’m finding on my tours is angst. Angst over stock price (it’s gone up about $3 since I’ve joined three years ago). Angst over marketing issues (why do we make cool names like “Sparkle” lame by changing that to “Expression Interactive Designer?”) Angst over vision and direction. Angst over leadership. Angst over advertising like our “dinosaur” ads (which are loudly derided by customers whenever I go to conferences and talk about how we’re being perceived).
That’s another small nail in the coffin of grandiose branding via overblown advertising.
