I recently attended a Leadership breakfast where Robbie Bach, President of Microsoft (MS) and really the guy responsible for launching XBOX 360, gave a talk that boiled down to 3 things: Strategy, Leadership, and Life’s Lessons.
At WeekdayRx, we are always looking at how leaders like Robbie define success. In this case, it was interesting to observe and listen to some recurring themes about strategy and leadership. Knowing how to develop and execute a strategy, in other words, formulating a plan, is one of the keystones to success and what WeekdayRx focuses on for our clients.
In addition, we believe that there is always a human component to success that is sometimes overlooked or overshadowed by the bottom line. In his talk, Robbie talks about “life’s lessons”.
Strategy
At MS, they have a 3-30-300 strategy approach. If you have a concept, you have 3 pages to “pitch” the idea. Once it’s edited and receives nods of approval, you have 30 pages to expand on the idea, and then you have to be able to write the product requirements in 300 pages. For XBOX, Bach said it turned out to be more like 3000 pages.
While focusing on strategy, he first talked about his earlier failures before discussing his success with XBOX. He talked aboutproducts he would always have some regret or hard feelings about. He said that sometimes the strategy was there, and he was proud of what they developed, but that the timing, i.e. Zune, was way off. He reminded us that Zune was essentially Spotify about 5years too early.
Leadership
He discussed many topics in this section; however, what resonated most with me was about the trust that he had established with his team and the leadership at MS. There was only one guy on his team who understood hardware better than anyone at MS. And Robbie knew he needed to trust him because he believed in his superpowers. XBOX started out with a $6B loss, and despite that loss, he went back to leadership and asked for an extra $1B to fix a hardware issue his team told him needed fixing. The fact that leadership empowered him to make the right decision really comes back to trust and executing leadership on all sides. He knew he had a team that would support him, and they knew he would do everything to make it right. And we all know how successful XBOX has been since then.
Another takeaway from his talk was about knowing your superpower. To Bach, that means two things: know what you are good at and know what you are not good at. You then surround yourself with people who balance your strengths and weaknesses and trust them to do their job. He talked about how he and his second in command didn’t always agree. He said there were times when they both wanted to abandon (fire or quit) one another. Despite those feelings, their relationship endured and he attributes his success to that enduring relationship.
Life’s Lessons
This section was when I really leaned forward in my seat. Here, Bach shared the perfect combination of proud moments and lesser moments. He talked about his catholic faith and how it was important to him as a leader. He would call on his faith during some of his toughest hours at his job. For him, faith is not only his religion, it’s a philosophy of trust that he extended to his team – he had faith in both his people and his chief, Steve Ballmer.
He also talked about his family. He mentioned how he and his wife went to a ranch owned by two life coaches, somewhere in the Midwest (did he say Utah?) to spend ten days writing his life’s story and figuring out how to take control of his work life. He confessed that he fell victim to the demands of his job and that his family life had suffered. But he made it right. He learned to create boundaries around his travel schedule and team meetings so he could be at his kids’ games and important events. Everyone eventually adapted to his crazy request of booking all travel 9-months out.
He summed up nicely what it meant to be the person responsible for a multi-billion dollar achievement at MS while owning his failures.
I especially appreciate how much he learned to define his own success at a time when he was experiencing both highs and lows in his career. I was inspired by his talk and grateful to hear that he shares his knowledge with college students around the country.