How to Change Culture

Buried in yesterdays Stratechery Daily Update on Microsoft's recent re-org, Ben Thompson highlighted a masterful bit of organizational management for one way to change culture within a company.

Whilst you could always drop the axe on day one to rid yourself of a problem, that method tends to waste a significant amount of political capital.

For a company like Microsoft, if that problem has to do with a multi-decade long symbol of pride and identity, like Windows, the trunk of the problem let alone the root structure is simply too big to cut down in a single swoop.

So Nadel simply re-org'd Windows into a separate division with other non-strategic assets and instructed the division leadership to do their jobs (i.e. make money). As Windows simply hasn't been a money maker for a number of years, the leadership (since they aren't dumb) had no choice but to reach the conclusion that Windows is simply no longer able to support its own division.

So the Windows Division is no more at Microsoft. A major part and symbol of their culture is gone.

The key is that the leadership of that division reached this conclusion by themselves. It took a little longer to reach, but it allowed for a cathartic break to occur in the hearts and minds of most staff who finally accepted that it was time to excise a significant vestigial product of the olde culture.