Will Bill Gates have to do a Steve Jobs

Quick history lesson of Apple Computers, now mostly forgotten.

Once upon a time (1976) two people (Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs) designed the Apple I and started Apple computers.

Apple Computers grew quite nicely for some time until in the fullness of time (1985) Apple decided that it would prefer to go into the wilderness than follow its leader (Mr. Jobs). Preferring the wilderness to himself the Mr. Jobs decided to leave Apple and established NeXT.

Apple wandered in the wilderness for 12 long years until the leader (Mr. Jobs) was brought back (1997).

With it’s leader back in place Apple left the wilderness and started to grow and build again.

The rest is a history that is visible in the ears of millions of people.

I wonder whether the announcement that Microsoft’s talisman leader (Bill Gates) is moving aside will be a replay of the Apple history.

There are very few IT organisations which have successfully moved from being first-generation organisation to being second and third-generation organisations. By that I mean, that there aren’t many IT organisation which have moved beyond the leaders that established the organisation without going through some form of wilderness experience. There are an increasing number of organisation that are going to have to do it though.

Here are some similarities I have noticed. Remember: “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

So what are the similarities with Apple (and other organisations) that might suggest that Microsoft will go into the wilderness – and what are the differences which might suggest the opposite.

Some would argue that Microsoft is already in the wilderness and that would be a similarity with Apple. Jobs didn’t leave Apple because it was all going well, he left because there were problems and he wanted to make changes that others wouldn’t follow him into. That’s where I think that this particular similarity breaks-down; I don’t think Bill is leaving because he isn’t getting the buy-in from his management team.

While in the wilderness Apple was lead by John Sculley, the business man to Jobs’s technology savvy (some would argue). With Bill Gates stepping aside at Microsoft it could be viewed that the person taking over is Steve Ballmer – the business minded one. But is Steve Ballmer really the one taking over, or has Microsoft been planning this for some time and managed to build a new ‘brain trust’ already. I suspected that when Microsoft bought Groove that it was more for the people than for the product. With Ray Ozzie moving into the Chief Software Architect role that suspicion seems to be confirmed.

Steve Jobs left and established NeXT Computers; Bill Gates is leaving to do something more interesting that is primarily outside IT. Jobs’ NeXT was always being compared to what Apple were doing, it was bit of nagging sore. I doubt anything Bill Gates does with the Bill and Melissa Gates Foundation will be directly comparable to anything Microsoft does, and they are keeping him there as Chairman to make sure it’s not a problem anyway.

I’m sure there are a lot of other parallels, but these seem to me to be the major ones. I don’t know enough about the history of other organisations to make sensible comment, but I do know that transition from first-generation leadership to second-generation is very, very difficult for any organisation. Time doesn’t stand still for IT executives and it’s inevitable that all of the remaining first-generation leaders will need to transition to second-generation leaders sooner rather than later. The transition to second-generation leadership is an issue which Apple are going to have to face all over again.

See Microsoft Monitor for more comment.

Do I think that Bill Gates will have to do a Steve Jobs and come back to sort it all out? I doubt it.