This failure taught me a lesson I’ll never forget

This failure taught me a lesson I’ll never forget

My friend and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has a new book out called Hit Refresh. It’s about the importance of finding opportunities to stop what we’re doing, rethink, and revitalize. It’s a great read—and has me thinking about some "hit refresh" moments of my own.

One of those moments came in 1995, when I was about to give the demo for a project I’d led at Microsoft. Its name was Microsoft Bob.

We’d started the project because we knew that only about a third of households had a personal computer, and people were still learning their way around them. You know all those things that are instinctual to us today—like looking for a menu of options at the top of the screen? Most people didn’t have those instincts yet. So our big idea with Microsoft Bob was to turn your desktop into something everyone understood: a house. To write, you clicked on a pen and paper; to check the date, you clicked the calendar on the wall—that type of thing.

If you haven’t heard of it—or you’ve only heard it as a punchline—I’m not surprised. The program needed a more powerful computer than most people had back then, and a lot of critics found the visuals too cute. One reviewer said it was designed “as if the program’s target audience were the under-12 set,” and called the program “unappealing to people seriously bent on getting a lot out of their PCs, or to adults of any kind, for that matter.” Yikes.

I understood that flops like this were part of the process—in fact, we used to joke that you had to have a major failure to get your first promotion—but that didn’t make them any more pleasant. Until that point, I’d made most of my mistakes on expense reports. Failing so hard—and so publicly—was a new experience entirely. Getting ready for that demo was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.

But then, my team and I came up with a brilliant idea: I’d walk out onto that stage in a T-shirt that had a Microsoft Bob logo on the front… and then, when I turned around, a bright red target on the back.

It got some laughs. But more importantly, it told people: let’s hear it. Our team isn’t just going to endure feedback—we’ll enjoy it. We want to know where we stand. Go ahead and give us your worst—and we’ll incorporate it until we’ve given you our best.

And as I stood there in that absurd T-shirt, I understood why the old joke about failures leading to promotions existed in the first place. They provided a chance to pause, learn something, and choose a new and better direction. Or, as Satya would say, they were opportunities to Hit Refresh.

(Oh, and if you’re wondering about the fate of Microsoft Bob, we killed the project—but some of its features wound up in other Microsoft products over the years. The weirdest one that survived? The font, Comic Sans. So you’re welcome for that.)

Thanks Melinda for its article. I was thinking about Bob and was a really nice interface, in the incorrect time. Fail is always an opportunity

Like
Reply
Nadeem Amode

Technical Merchant Support | ITIL | CTFL Agile

4y

25 years later. This original idea is now being applied to voice-activated interfaces like alexa and google home!  :)

Jean Degler

Color Technician at Fres-co System USA, Inc.

5y

Failure is nothing more than success training.....

Fatima Gillespie

Disabilities Capacities

5y

This reflective article has me thinking about the power of failure. It teaches as much of not more than success but truth I don’t want to live there visiting is enough🤓

Like
Reply
Wendy Hauk Kaiser

Creative / Owner at Smiles2all - Creative Projects

6y

I love Comic Sans - thank you. I’d never thought of calling them Refresh opportunities but that is a perfect concept vocabulary.

Like
Reply

To view or add a comment, sign in

Insights from the community

Others also viewed

Explore topics