Re:Ending the cult of the CEO
by TheOtherHobbes on Tuesday April 25, 2017 @04:51AM
(#14191802)
And some people would say they're both wrong.
Ballmer gets credited with XBox etc, but I always thought MS was doing a lot of spray-and-pray management during the Ballmer years, and there were far more failures than successes. There certainly didn't seem to be any realistic strategy or vision. (I remember going to a trade fair with a huuuge MS stand showing off some kind of library or book management service. That product was dead less than a month later.)
Nadella seems to like strategy so much he has a handful running all at the same time. Which is how you get something like "Cloud-first, mobile-first" - which doesn't even make sense.
Point being that CEOs are there to signify the existence of leadership[tm], not necessarily to provide it - and markets and investors don't appear to be able to tell the difference.
Ballmer gets credited with XBox etc, but I always thought MS was doing a lot of spray-and-pray management during the Ballmer years, and there were far more failures than successes. There certainly didn't seem to be any realistic strategy or vision. (I remember going to a trade fair with a huuuge MS stand showing off some kind of library or book management service. That product was dead less than a month later.)
Nadella seems to like strategy so much he has a handful running all at the same time. Which is how you get something like "Cloud-first, mobile-first" - which doesn't even make sense.
Point being that CEOs are there to signify the existence of leadership[tm], not necessarily to provide it - and markets and investors don't appear to be able to tell the difference.