On 6/19/06, jeff <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
How does someone go from starting a business to becoming the richest man in the world in 30 years by being a bad manager?
The business outgrows him. Bill Gates is a very smart man, and he made some really good moves early on in the PC revolution. He still is no fool, and I wish him a great and successful career with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. We are all depending on his success. But the techniques he used to grow Microsoft -- the "Bill meetings" the hands-on supervision -- just don't scale past a certain point, and the industry changed. Bill wanted a computer on every desktop and he got it. He wanted Windows on every computer, and he got close. Information at your fingertips, check. I don't minimize his successes. He amassed the largest fortune ever by a single individual, and his company created more millionaires than ever done before. But there came a point where Microsoft wasn't the scrappy little startup any more, and it was time to become the industry leader, setting "The Road Ahead" and moving everyone, friend and foe, partner and competitor, towards a more mature industry. Microsoft knows how to compete, and compete hard. They play hardball, they don't hesitate to crush a competitor. They don't hesitate to cut off their competitor's oxygen. What they don't know how to do is how to lead. That's why it was time to go. And Bill was smart enough to recognize that. This isn't a sudden inspiration. He's been saying all along that he models his life on Carnegie: amassing a fortune in the first half of his life, and then giving it away in the second. -- Ted Roche Ted Roche & Associates, LLC http://www.tedroche.com _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: [email protected] Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
