Book Mark

Custodian of Values

Bill Gates is a new type of business leader. Over the years, he has repeatedly shown that he is the closest thing the computer industry has to a seer. His in-depth understanding of technology and unique way of synthesising data gives him a special ability to spot future trends and steer Microsoft’s strategy. This inspires awe among Microsoft fans and intimidates its competitors. (Gates himself is dismissive of the visionary role. “Vision is free. And it’s therefore not a competitive advantage any way, shape or form,” is a typical Gatesism).

But Gates also fulfills another important role at Microsoft. He is the custodian of the company’s culture and values. Some companies, such as Merrill Lynch have literally carved their values in stone (the company displays its founding principles in the entrance lobby of all its buildings). Others have documented them in books—Johnson & Johnson, for example, has its values written down in the Credo—which dates back to the founding fathers of the company. Employees of Hewlett-Packard have the H-P Way, which you find written out by hand and pinned up next to the picture of their family. Microsoft has Bill Gates, the company’s Residence luminary and global IT guru.

In recent years, he has taken this one step further by writing a book about the future of technology—‘The Road Ahead’. This is a somewhat risky strategy, but Gates obviously feels obliged to live up to his images as the computer visionary. Only time will tell whether the ideas of chairman Bill are more than transitory.

Sitting and Thinking

Today, companies are moving away from hierarchical command and control management structures. Leading the way are the new high-tech companies, which rely on knowledge workers such as software designers to carry out their work unsupervised. Microsoft was in the vanguard of this movement.

Gates says that he pays his people to “sit and think”. But even more than the Microsoft programmers, Gates himself regards his role as that of the company’s visionary. He is dismissive of the more mundane aspects of running a business, believing that his job is to chart the future.

“How do you manage the sales force and make sure that those measurement systems are really tracked down to the individual level to encourage the right behaviour? I will sit in meetings where Steve Ballmer talks about how he wants to do it, but that’s not my expertise. How do we advertise to get these message across? I sort of know where we are going long-term. I have got to make sure people are coming up with messages consistent when that future. But I am not expert in those things.”

What he does regard himself to be an expert in is unravelling the technological past from the technological future. Gates’ own talent is for understanding what’s just around the corner. His great talent as a leader lies in his ability to inspire the people around him with the challenge of helping him to transform the computer industry.

In recent years, he has made his role within Microsoft more explicit, responding to his own brief to “establish how things should get done”. “I’m in the leadership role,” he explains. “So generally that means working with the developers to ensure we are doing the right things, working with the right products and key customers.”

Ram Raider

Despite Gates’ reputation as a visionary, a criticism often made of Microsoft is that the company is not a great innovator, and simply raids the ideas of others—converting them into Microsoft products. Windows, Microsoft’s PC operating systems, for example, is still seen by many as an imitation of Apple’s Macintosh software.

The company has also been accused of a predatory attitude towards its partners. Microsoft has been described as “the fox that takes you across the river and then eats you”. But according to one industry insider, most of the criticism is sour grapes on the part of its competitors.

“Like the Japanese computer companies, Microsoft may not be an inventor, but it perfects products,” says Richard Shaffer, President of Technologic, an industry consulting group.

Gates has also shown that he is good at fostering innovation, and has created a culture that tolerates eccentric behaviour from creative employees. One software designer at Microsoft, for example, filled his workspace with soft toys. Colleagues knew if they saw him clutching a teddy bear under one arm then he was having a tough day and should be approached with caution.

Managing Creativity

Until recently, little was known about the actual management processes involved in channeling creative people. A recent research project, carried out by John Whatmore at the Roffey Park Management Institute in the UK, looked at how leaders of creative teams got the best from the special talents at their disposal.

Researchers put creative teams for fields, including improvisational theatre, drug research, sport, theatre, film and journalism under the microscope. “Creative people are often seen as difficult or impossible to manage,” says Whatmore, “but it is clear that some people have a gift for getting the best from the talent available, and even for getting more out of creative people than they thought they had to give. It often requires a different style of management—a lightness of touch on the reins.” The research indicates that people who excel at leading creative teams foster an environment conducive to innovation and which is supportive of the aspirations of the individuals involved. They also have their own ways of nudging people to get their best ideas—or as one leader put it, of “tickling their thinking”. People who do it well have a number of common characteristics, the research suggests:

• They are often gregarious individuals, with the ability to stimulate ideas by expressing the same issue in different ways;
• They have the ability to read others, a skill which enables them to push the right buttons to get their best performance;
• They understand the interplay between creativity and criticism, setting up “creative tensions” between team members and providing constant feedback; and
  They are adept at promoting social interactions between team members—often through informal meetings outside of work.

Beyond these personal skills, they have a vision of what can be achieved, based on a broad technical understanding of the field; they select team members with complementary differences, taking account not just of technical expertise, but of the mix of personalities and give them a great deal of freedom; and they shield the team from external pressures from other parts of the organisation.

Findings from the study suggest that effective leaders of creative groups do five critical things:

• They give members of the team a great deal of freedom;
• They encourage them to approach issues as a team to maximise the creative energy focused on any given problem;
• They give support to individual members, particularly in the period after a failure;
• They give extensive responsibility to individuals, allowing them to decide not just how they will do a task, but the tasks they choose to do; and
• They shield the team from external pressure from other departments.

But these elements are important to different people in different ways.

Excerpt from ‘Bill Gates Way’ by Des Dearlove. Published by Wiley India