Micro-Managing Doing business - the Microsoft way.

Julie Bick arrived at Microsoft in 1990, fresh out of TheWharton School of Business, she quickly realized the biggest partof her business education was still to come. After starting out asa product manager for Microsoft Word, Bick advanced to become agroup manager in charge of more than 20 CD-ROM products. Hernational bestseller, All I Really Need to Know in Business ILearned at Microsoft: Insider Strategies to Help You Succeed(Simon & Schuster, $12, 800-223-2348), reveals insights fromher five-year tenure at one of the world's premiercorporations.

What Bick learned at Microsoft can work for you, too. Here, herhard-won tips for the entrepreneurial-minded:

Eat your own dog food. Live in your customer's shoes and seehow they fit. "Whether you're making chocolates orsoftware, you should try out the product yourself and live it asthe customer would live it," says Bick. At Microsoft, thatmeant everything from building a reality-based "home of thefuture" complete with a computer in the kitchen, to rollingout its latest e-mail product for employee use before it was readyfor prime time. "[By testing,] you realize how important thosethings are to real customers," she says.