An interview with Scott's ex-golf buddy; Mr. Steve Ballmer.
From CRN:
Steve Ballmer: His First Year As Microsoft's CEO
CRN: Microsoft maintains that the road to .Net is through Internet protocols and, to some extent, new partnerships among solution providers, ISVs and ASPs. Yet Gartner Group says the road to .Net is through the U.S. Department of Justice and claims Microsoft has made a huge error by not settling this case. They say Microsoft can't execute .Net until the case is settled. What's your take?
Ballmer: We are packaging, planning, behaving as if we have business as usual because that is what the court said we have. Nothing has changed. All orders have been stayed, and now we are back in front of the Appellate Court. Just what should we predict out of the Appellate Court? And the answer is, who knows. The last time this lower court ruled against us completely, this Appellate Court ruled for us completely. I don't know what the Appellate Court will do for sure, but I feel confident in the appropriateness of our argument. It would be as wrong to assume no change in the lower court ruling as it would be to assume complete change in the lower court ruling. Therefore, I don't assume anything. I just perceive business as usual, which is the flexibility that was granted to us when the lower court stayed its order in this case. So it's business as usual for us. We're not holding back in any sense. We're proceeding with the play that we think best serves our customers.
CRN: In order to preserve shareholder value and proceed confidently with .Net, Gartner advises Microsoft to settle this case, even if it means coming up with an offer that includes splitting the company. Do you wish at this point Microsoft had settled?
Ballmer: I always wish we'd settled the case, but on an appropriate basis for us to proceed as a company. It's not our grand desire to spend the time that we are spending in the legal system. So yeah, I wish we didn't have this thing ongoing, but we would not accept the settlement that impairs our ability to serve our customers.
CRN: Isn't there a two-way split you could come up with that would work? Like creating separate Windows Inc. and Microsoft Inc. companies that could be very closely related?
Ballmer: No. Splitting the company is a non-starter for settlement. There is no basis for a settlement that involves splitting our company. There may have been basis for settlement at different points in time, but in no case would we entertain a settlement discussion in which breakup is part of it.
CRN: Gartner claims that Microsoft's resistance to a split is more about egos and careers than preserving shareholder value and ensuring that .Net is achievable. What's your response to that?
Ballmer: They claim that [the way] we are behaving [is] about egos and careers? It shows a lack of understanding of our business and a lack of understanding of how our company can serve our customers.
CRN: You mean in terms of integrating your products?
Ballmer: In terms of integration, in terms of almost everything. Why was Windows popular? What caused Windows to get popular? What's your view?
CRN: Integration with Office.
Ballmer: And do you think if those were two separate companies they would have made the same bets on each other? You can't closely run the other like that's one company. You don't have [that level of integration with] two independent entities with independent shareholders. That's not legal. It's not proper. I mean, if it's one company you can make sort of a leap into the abyss together, so to speak. And you will [either] succeed together or you will fail together. It is very tough to have companies make a leap into an abyss that are independent companies. They may do it, but look who else leaped with us--Micrografx and Aldus, right? Who are the early Windows pioneers? So there are just a couple of companies that were willing to jump into the abyss. Lotus didn't jump with us. WordPerfect wouldn't jump with us. And I think [in] establishing any new significant platform, the only way to do it is [through one company].
CRN: It seems that at every given opportunity Sun Chairman and CEO Scott McNealy will throw a pot shot at Microsoft. Is that just showmanship? How deep does the animosity go?
Ballmer: Well, [Sun Microsystems] is suing us. It's not like I can say there has historically been a lot of personal animosity. I've played golf with Scott over the last several years, and certainly if you go back to the early 90s, I know [my wife and I] got a wedding present from Scott when we got married. I gotta say in the last five years it's just changed. It's not like I'd say Scott and I are best friends, but we have a lot of friends in common.
CRN: McNealy announced his support for the Bush campaign. Who are you going to vote for and why?
Ballmer: It's a very private decision that I will make, and the U.S. Constitution allows me to.
CRN: Have you decided at this point?
Ballmer: I think I have a pretty good sense of what I want to do on a variety of different elections that are up, but that's a choice I will make privately as I encourage all people to do.
CRN: But you don't want to say?
Ballmer: I was clear about that. It's interesting that [McNealy] would come out so aggressively for Bush.
CRN: During the course of the whole Justice Department investigation, there were a lot of really hard-core attacks on Microsoft and its executives. Given your role, how do you detach and continue to function?
Ballmer: I have no concerns about my own integrity. I have no concerns about the integrity of the people I work with.
I know [the attacks] are wrong. I'm not much affected personally by that stuff because I have a pretty strong sense that not only I but the people I work with have behaved well. They have done the right thing. They have behaved with great integrity. So I don't get much affected. What does affect me is the fact that our employee's families are subjected to this random and incorrect goop, and it sort of is a drag on them. That bugs me and gets me riled up, but I have great confidence in my own integrity and the integrity of the people I work with.
CRN: What's the most important thing you have learned over the past year? Something you didn't know before and maybe something that made you rethink having taken this job?
Ballmer: I have learned some things, but nothing that has made me reconsider taking this job. Let me be crisp about that up-front.
I think the No. 1 thing that I have developed great appreciation for is what the dynamics are that allow people to do a large -scale successful R&D/software development. And there are some principles that I understood well from my old days in development, but there are some things that I have been learning anew. We have a lot more people in R&D than we did eight years ago when I moved over to sales.
Where you are trying to change your strategy, but have some consistency, the people actually don't deal very well with change. A reorganization is not a comfortable thing for people. Not just in the sense of individuals changing, but the dynamics of the way groups work together. When you reorganize anything, all of the sort of unofficial ways people learn to work together have to be reinvented. So how do you drive change yet have sufficient consistency? How do you drive sharing and have sufficient autonomy? I have thought more and I have a more developed point of view on both of those issues than I did a year and a half ago.
CRN: What is your conclusion?
Ballmer: In terms of organization and strategy, consistency is even more important than I had thought it was. I used to think that change should be the norm. I'm exaggerating slightly, but I was on the side of the spectrum that said change is the norm. And the truth of the matter is consistency is the norm. You have to make sure that when you make change you make it for good reasons to make big enough change and then you leave it alone for awhile and let it work, whether it's strategy or organization. People want consistency. Your customers want it. Your internal people want it. We can say the world moves in Internet time and all that kind of stuff, but people don't. You need to pick your shots. That's why I am so excited about where we are with this .Net stuff. I see a way to get from here to there over the next five years. The details may change, but we have got sort of a strategy direction that I am very excited about and we have mostly an organization direction, I think, that supports it pretty well.
CRN: In your new role, you have to be more of a visionary. To what extent do you and Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates negotiate the balance of power in defining the vision?
Ballmer: I don't fool myself. I think I have had and I continue to have insights about what our customers want, etc. But I am not the visionary of our company. I wouldn't pretend to be. But I have to take ultimate responsibility for our company's abilities to succeed, to serve customers. And that means certainly that I have to be as I have had to be an appropriate sort of checkpoint and balance point for a variety of people inside the company. But, you know, Bill is the visionary of our company, and I'm okay with that. That's not our big problem.
CRN: But do you feel you can execute? What if, over time, you feel hampered in your ability to fully execute your plan if it differs with how Bill thinks it should be done?
Ballmer: Bill and I have worked together for 20 years and we don't always agree. And we always work things through [when] we don't agree on [something]. We will see if that remains the case, but there are a lot of great business partnerships. Hewlett and Packard were together for what? Thirty-five years?
CRN: What are the kinds of things you don't agree about?
Ballmer: It's hard to generalize. I think Bill will sometimes tend to underestimate how hard it is to get certain things done. I will underestimate how hard it is to get other kinds of things done, but we always work those things through.
CRN: You two have been friends since your Harvard days. Do you two still have time to play together or hang out?
Ballmer: We golf sometimes. That would be the No. 1 source of amusement. My wife told me yesterday our kids were playing together. [Bill and Melinda Gates'] youngest and our youngest are roughly the same age. And they are in what my wife calls "Baby Class" together, which is where moms take their young kids for their first socialization experience.
CRN: How many kids do you have? And what has that experience taught you?
Ballmer: We have three boys. It tries to teach me patience every day. And in a sense it reminds you of how it's important to be clear and firm with people about your views. I'm not going to say managing people is like managing children, but everything is sort of more obvious and clear [with children]. If you want a child to do something, you have to be unambiguous about it. It reminds you that people take direction best when you're calm and unambiguous.
CRN: And are you always calm with them?
Ballmer: No. Not always, but I work my best.
CRN: You said that when you were growing up you were painfully shy. A lot of people have a hard time believing that. When did you make your big transformation from this painfully shy person to the personality that you are?
Ballmer: I have gone through cycles. As I feel more comfortable with people, with content, with where I am, I get less shy. When I was a kid I really was very shy. If [my friends'] parents were home, I wouldn't go in the house--[if] people's dads particularly [were at home].
[When] I got to Procter & Gamble, the guy who I wound up rooming with and started the same day I did described his first meeting with me on my first day at Procter & Gamble as, "Hi, I'm Steve Ballmer, and my palm's really sweaty right now because I'm so nervous to meet you." And then I grew a little more comfortable in that environment.
I remember the first time I talked in class at business school. I could feel my voice cracking because I was so nervous to say something. Now people don't see it, and there aren't too many settings where people would observe that today.
CRN: What were your childhood aspirations?
Ballmer: I thought about being probably either a politician or a football player--neither of which I am. Later on, I thought I wanted to be a physicist or a mathematician, but that was in high school.
CRN: Are you happy where you ended up?
Ballmer: Yeah, absolutely.
I for one am _very_ happy where he ended up too.
crn.com |
