5 Solution 4: Creating a Family‐Forward Culture
In 1997, I was a punk 29‐year‐old kid whose sole focus in life was work. I was single with no kids and had never heard of the phrase “work‐life balance.” In fact, I'm pretty sure the phrase had not yet been coined. And if it had, it had certainly not penetrated the hard Microsoft bubble, inside of which we were maniacally focused on our internal priorities and nothing else.
I will never forget what a jerk I made of myself one Halloween afternoon when the office closed “early” at 5:00 p.m. to allow families to trick‐or‐treat inside our building. The halls were wall to wall with employees from other divisions and their kids. I was already several years into my tenure in the attention‐grabbing and fun Games Division, a division that others at the company viewed with a sort of disdain and fascination at the same time. Disdain because we were probably having way too much fun. Fascination because we were the strategic inroad into the living rooms of users. For Microsoft parents/employees from the heartland divisions of “Systems” or “Office,” the games division became the obvious Halloween destination for family members.
Our hallways were adorned with dynamic and colorful marketing collateral: giant posters for games like Age of Empires, Starlancer, and Mechwarrior. Nearly 75 percent of people's offices (mine included) sported action figure collections to rival any ComicCon vendor's booth. My own specialty was vintage robots from ...