Throughout my time as Vice President of HR when I had many one-on-one meetings with him, I learned many things from Bill Gates. Here are three lessons that have stuck with me:
Dig for Answers
Six of us joined two program managers and the owner for an introduction to Bill: two top developers and myself as development manager. We were unaware how extraordinary a small face-to-face encounter with him would be.
Pleasantries were rushed through quickly, and soon enough we understood why we were there. Our product, FoxPro, competed against Cirrus (later released as Access), which belonged to Microsoft’s portfolio at lightning-fast speeds compared to its competitor. And so began his quest to understand why this happened.
He immediately identified Eric Christensen — who is undoubtedly a pure genius—as responsible for developing such an exceptional product like ours by asking detailed questions about the movement of single bits and the size of the Intel 80386 instruction cache. It was like a Star Trek mind meld.
As quickly as it began, the meeting ended with Bill nodding and smiling, almost proud of himself for getting his money’s worth. We were free to go.
In subsequent years, I saw Bill do this same kind of exercise time and again. He was always curious, always wanted to understand more details by drilling down into them aggressively at times when he was younger but mellowed out in later years without losing his passion for detail.
Smell The Bull
A significant part of why he drilled down so much went beyond fascination with details; it helped him identify people who slung bull or made things up when cornered.
Bills learned early on that pressing until failure resulted in two kinds of responses: those strong enough to admit “I don’t know” even if they faced the then-richest man globally and those who started making things up—guessing answers or pulling information from thin air.
Bill wielded that cudgel skillfully. His response to obvious bull would be something along these lines: “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.” If someone provided egregiously wrong information, he might throw in a personal insult or two questioning their parentage or education level (although this faded over time after receiving feedback about how little personal invective helps).
However, Bill’s ability to smell falsehoods only seemed to improve with age. Later on, you could tell you were in trouble just from his facial expressions—the look of disappointment telling you it may be best to retreat here.
I found myself in those rooms many times and picked up some of that skill. I learned to watch for flittering eyes, unsure tones or the smell of desperation. In time, I could recognize someone’s face who would rather die than say “I don’t know, but I’ll find out and get back to you.”
Synthesize From Nothing
Bill’s greatest strength was his ability to see a mess and find structure within it—to synthesize clarity from a whole lot of nothing.
I witnessed this skill in action countless times during project updates with Bill. Teams met him at least twice: once for the project kickoff to ensure things were headed in a good direction aligned with Microsoft’s goals; then shortly before release confirming objectives had been met (mostly just getting Bill’s stamp of approval).
The most significant or important projects underwent interim reviews—sometimes two or three—as they progressed through development stages. It was here where synthesis often happened.
A team would bring in an intricate set of issues—for example, fractured product markets with lots of competition and various technical opportunities available—and have miles of data along with dozens of opinions on which path made sense.
Within seconds, Bill absorbed everything presented by finding the two or three variables that mattered most. He’d blurt out something like “Don’t you see? This is what matters! You should do X!” The room fell silent as everyone realized how right he was—the agreement reached quickly after charting a clear path forward.
When I first saw this happen, I thought people agreed because he was their boss—but later realized that wasn’t true since Microsoft culture wouldn’t allow such behavior if he were wrong about something senior members called him out on it instead saying things like “That’s the stupidest thing ever heard” and laughing. But he was almost always right, finding the two or five things that mattered and changed the equation.
Some of this came from sitting at the top of a large organization in a vast market with contacts, perspective, and visibility many didn’t have. However, most of it resulted from his skill to see both details and whole pictures simultaneously while figuring out what matters—more importantly than anything else: what doesn’t matter.
I’ll admit I never learned how to do this—at least not on Bill’s level—but admired him for it. And I was fortunate enough to get one-on-one time with him using these lessons myself as well as leading various teams within Microsoft.
All the noise around his personal life surfacing recently has done little to dampen my appreciation for everything I’ve learned by being in rooms with Bill Gates. When thinking about how much those opportunities taught me over time spent together during our careers there—it just makes me smile!
Throughout my time as Vice President of HR when I had many one-on-one meetings with him, I learned many things from Bill Gates. Here are three lessons that have stuck with me:
Dig for Answers
Six of us joined two program managers and the owner for an introduction to Bill: two top developers and myself as development manager. We were unaware how extraordinary a small face-to-face encounter with him would be.
Pleasantries were rushed through quickly, and soon enough we understood why we were there. Our product, FoxPro, competed against Cirrus (later released as Access), which belonged to Microsoft’s portfolio at lightning-fast speeds compared to its competitor. And so began his quest to understand why this happened.
He immediately identified Eric Christensen — who is undoubtedly a pure genius—as responsible for developing such an exceptional product like ours by asking detailed questions about the movement of single bits and the size of the Intel 80386 instruction cache. It was like a Star Trek mind meld.
As quickly as it began, the meeting ended with Bill nodding and smiling, almost proud of himself for getting his money’s worth. We were free to go.
In subsequent years, I saw Bill do this same kind of exercise time and again. He was always curious, always wanted to understand more details by drilling down into them aggressively at times when he was younger but mellowed out in later years without losing his passion for detail.
Smell The Bull
A significant part of why he drilled down so much went beyond fascination with details; it helped him identify people who slung bull or made things up when cornered.
Bills learned early on that pressing until failure resulted in two kinds of responses: those strong enough to admit “I don’t know” even if they faced the then-richest man globally and those who started making things up—guessing answers or pulling information from thin air.
Bill wielded that cudgel skillfully. His response to obvious bull would be something along these lines: “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.” If someone provided egregiously wrong information, he might throw in a personal insult or two questioning their parentage or education level (although this faded over time after receiving feedback about how little personal invective helps).
However, Bill’s ability to smell falsehoods only seemed to improve with age. Later on, you could tell you were in trouble just from his facial expressions—the look of disappointment telling you it may be best to retreat here.
I found myself in those rooms many times and picked up some of that skill. I learned to watch for flittering eyes, unsure tones or the smell of desperation. In time, I could recognize someone’s face who would rather die than say “I don’t know, but I’ll find out and get back to you.”
Synthesize From Nothing
Bill’s greatest strength was his ability to see a mess and find structure within it—to synthesize clarity from a whole lot of nothing.
I witnessed this skill in action countless times during project updates with Bill. Teams met him at least twice: once for the project kickoff to ensure things were headed in a good direction aligned with Microsoft’s goals; then shortly before release confirming objectives had been met (mostly just getting Bill’s stamp of approval).
The most significant or important projects underwent interim reviews—sometimes two or three—as they progressed through development stages. It was here where synthesis often happened.
A team would bring in an intricate set of issues—for example, fractured product markets with lots of competition and various technical opportunities available—and have miles of data along with dozens of opinions on which path made sense.
Within seconds, Bill absorbed everything presented by finding the two or three variables that mattered most. He’d blurt out something like “Don’t you see? This is what matters! You should do X!” The room fell silent as everyone realized how right he was—the agreement reached quickly after charting a clear path forward.
When I first saw this happen, I thought people agreed because he was their boss—but later realized that wasn’t true since Microsoft culture wouldn’t allow such behavior if he were wrong about something senior members called him out on it instead saying things like “That’s the stupidest thing ever heard” and laughing. But he was almost always right, finding the two or five things that mattered and changed the equation.
Some of this came from sitting at the top of a large organization in a vast market with contacts, perspective, and visibility many didn’t have. However, most of it resulted from his skill to see both details and whole pictures simultaneously while figuring out what matters—more importantly than anything else: what doesn’t matter.
I’ll admit I never learned how to do this—at least not on Bill’s level—but admired him for it. And I was fortunate enough to get one-on-one time with him using these lessons myself as well as leading various teams within Microsoft.
All the noise around his personal life surfacing recently has done little to dampen my appreciation for everything I’ve learned by being in rooms with Bill Gates. When thinking about how much those opportunities taught me over time spent together during our careers there—it just makes me smile!
