End of Gates era? Thoughts on Leadership Transition

Yesterday, Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft has announced that he will leave his full-time appointment in Microsoft and facilitate the leadership transition within the company within 2 years from now. Here are some thoughts in looking at corporation leadership about this piece of news.

The news yesterday

Microsoft chairman Bill Gates said Thursday he will transition out of a day-to-day role at the company. His intention is to spend more time on global health and education work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Within Microsoft, chief technical officer Ray Ozzie will immediately assume the title of chief software architect and begin working with Gates on all technical and product oversight responsibilities. Similarly, chief technical officer Craig Mundie will immediately take the new portfolio of chief research and strategy officer and will work with Gates on the company’s research and incubation efforts.

Although I am not a fan of Microsoft operating systems, I cannot help but think that there are some lessons to be extracted from the way they operate. Microsoft’s success rests on one simple tenet, even though they might not have the fancy and powerful innovations like Apple. That tenet is team. They have a strong team in managing growth. They are my favourite examples of not having the best product, but able to appeal to the mass market and control their growth cycle very well. Here are these lessons which I thought that the strongest corporations in Singapore to the student enterprise should think about:

• Orderly transition of leadership: I don’t like American’s type of hype in marketing stuff. However, one thing I respect them for is the way in how they handle leadership. The best companies from the US are not family-driven. They are founded by passionate people who subsequently passed the baton to someone who is competent and able to take the company to the next stage. It is not only demonstrated in their government, their private sector (Disney, Microsoft) and also to their student enterprise (MIT-$100K, not 50K anymore). To them, institutional memory and transition are important. Here is one thing I notice in most student enterprises in NUS and practically everywhere in Singapore: they are all “one hit wonders”. They don’t think about the team who took over the leadership from them. Somehow, the issue is in the passing of the vision. The new team tries to reinvent the wheel instead of harnassing existing core competencies to build the society to the next level. Consistency and ability to sustain their core competency are the real tenets of a successful organization. Even if their egos are that big and want to be remembered, people only remember leaders who build a legacy and pass it on successfully. As I am in the process of facilitating one for this society, I will hope that my students will take heed of this lesson. Even in the passing over of leadership, they are very slip-shod in transferring the information.
• Culture of family in Asia: We don’t really trust external people to build a successful corporation other than our family. Strangely, I am not from that culture. I barred my uncle from investing in my company when I was in the UK. Instead I work with people that I hardly know. It’s better that way because a lot of family businesses failed and caused relationships to go sour. A study done by a professor from INSEAD showed nicely that 1 out 7 family businesses survive. A lot lies in the ego of the CEO and his ability not to pass to his son. As usual, I refer to business entities and not the analogy does not extend to politics and other unrelated areas.
• Organization is above one individual: That’s the key part. Bill Gates is always synonymous with Microsoft. However, it is an organization that is bigger than the individual. With a proper transition, a new team will take over his place to help to move the company to the next stage. Besides, he will stay on as the advisor. Letting go and learning how to exit at the right time, seems to be one of the corner stones of successful CEOs.

No matter how much I hate about Microsoft operating systems, I still qualify Bill Gates as an entrepreneur in the broadest sense with two key features. He has a vision to start with, “putting a computer in every household” and he is a philanthropist. Asia is lack of philanthropists today as compare to the past. Notice you walk around the universities, you hear about one of our forefathers, Lee Kong Chian, who is a successful entrepreneur and philanthropist. Then look at today and see all those so-called entrepreneurs around, you wonder whether they are really entrepreneurs or not. I will leave that to your thoughts.

Other thoughts of the day:
Seems that everyone is changing the design of their blogs, check out the new designs on the blogs of Design Sojourn, Justin. One of the interesting things which happened today, is that Design Translator is taking out his anonymity clause.

References:
[1] The picture is extracted from News.com website.

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