TJ Elliott said:
>Not to get too cute with this but I think of Gates more as Bill Walsh
>(former coach now 49ers exec) or even Eddie DeBartolo (owner). The
>distinction is that Gates knows to go out and get the best players.
>("Don't get 10 people at $60,000, get the one best person at $600,000."
>This echoes in Tom Peters' recent "Best In World" stuff from Circle of
>Innovation.) He takes an executibve role in the strategy but realizes that
>his job is big picture monitoring and cultural symbolism. That symbolism
>is directed both to the outside world ("This is who the Microsoft team
>is.") and to the inside world ("This is who we are.") There are no
>perfect metaphors (they are representations, not the real thing) but the
>team one has advantages as Steve and Ben cite.
TJ, let me add an historical observation. When Walsh took over the 49ers,
one of the very first things he did was trade his one and only "$600,000"
player (OJ Simpson--I wonder whatever happened to him?) for ~10 "$60,000"
players (draft picks). He knew that if he were to build a team, in the
situation he was in, it had to be from the ground up. More importantly,
he knew that a great football team consists of 40 players, not one or two
or even 22. After he had achieved success, he could afford to bring in
the odd "$600,000" player (e.g. Steve Young) from time to time to perfect
his vision of what a team should be. Gates, of course, has a similar
freedom now (in fact his choice is more whether or not to get 10 people in
at $600,000 to research number theory, or build a new wing to his house).
I think the Walsh 1978 story is much more useful to the mass of
organisations today (who do not have the luxury of Gates' degree of
strategic freedom). On the other hand, I think the Gates story will be of
tremendous fascination to future historians, strategists and OD
practitioners, when MSFT finally falls. (Any of you out there who don't
think that MSFT will eventually fall, please look at GM and IBM or re-read
Gibbon, or the Chapter in Catch-22 where the dirty old man in the Roman
bordello debates with Nately the question of whether or not America will
have as long and glorious a history as the frog.)
Cheers for now
Richard Goodale
--Richard Goodale <fc45@dial.pipex.com>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>