The Customer-Driven Culture: A Microsoft Story

Chapter 2. Establish a Common Language

Famed linguist and pioneer Benjamin Whorf once wrote that “language shapes the way we think, and determines what we think about.”¹ Essentially, what we talk about and how we talk about it reflects our reality.

Now, the controversies over “linguistic determinism” are well beyond the scope of this book, but we should recognize that the words we use matter.

This has been the case with our journey in DevDiv. We found that when our leaders and product team members communicated using a common language, it was a powerful way to not only collaborate, but to connect ourselves to one another and our customers. Introducing a new way to talk about what we were doing and share the progress of our learnings was a powerful tool in developing our customer-driven culture.

It’s with that in mind that we share this first important hack.

How Language Binds Us Together

In the summer of 2007, Chris Messina, a product designer living in San Francisco, was frustrated. He was having trouble following along with a conversation happening on Twitter about Barcamp, a Silicon Valley meetup of entrepreneurs and tech geniuses. The messages and profiles were scattered all over the website, and there was no way to see all the conversations regarding the conference in one place.

He tweeted a modest proposal:

How do you feel about using # (pound) for groups. As in #barcamp [msg]?

Stowe Boyd, an anthropologist studying the future of work, tweeted support a couple days later: ...