Gates Vs Ballmer...

All men are mortals, their success does not make them infallible. Success is really a decoupled commodity from maturity. It is really a folly to expect a well rounded personality just because someone had been really successful in life. A lesson well learnt for me when i had the oppurtunity to go over some recently published papers on Gates and Ballmer relationship.

I had really thought Gates really propped/groomed Ballmer as a replacement for him. Looks like it is not really so. When Gates really stepped down to No.2 in MS he really did not like him being a second fiddle to his chosen man. I could not really grasp this. A man without any force willingly makes his closest buddy the top man of his company but looks like without even understanding his own decision to sidestep he kept interfering in his friend's territory. If he wanted Ballmer to be just a namesake CEO he should have named himself as COO and should have devoted more time as he had done before in running the affairs of MS but he did not choose that route . He wanted a reduced work load to concentrate more time on philanthrophy and at the same time he could not satiate his ego to take commands from his friend. In meetings and in other events this became very evident ,he kept snubbing Ballmer passing murky comments about Ballmers ability in front of other Vice presidents some times even reducing ballmer to tears.

Going through that WSJ artcle , i really felt that Google was allowed to grow because of the simmering cold fued between these two men. MS was considering NetDocs a web/net version of its famed Office product suite,long before Google had any idea of offering it, but this product was caught in the cross currents of the ego clash between these two and it never saw the light of the day in the end.

It took the cajoling of Melinda gates and some VPs to make these two meet in a Restaurant to defuse their cold war type fued. After this meeting Gates really realised and admitted his mistake of not playing the role he assigned himself but indulging too much in Ballmer's territory. The meeting had a miraculous effect on Gates and the other VPs in MS could really feel the difference in the attitude of Mr.Gates.

Now Bill has even decided to walk down into retirement. At the end of day in June 6 of this year his involvement in MS would be just reducted to that of the chairman of the board. He has now vacated his corner office for his buddy ballmer. The hawk has really sung its swan song.

Here another wise man's observation also seemed to have failed. I still remember the late Dewang Mehta's comment on Mr.Gates, Mehta had said Bill would never loose the drive to create more money. But as Gates finally steps out of Microsoft's day today activities on June 6,2008 to devote full time on philonthrophy I can sense the tiredness in the man, the thirst which dewang Mehta saw has really been quenched. The angry young man has become a mellowed do gooder.

But one thing is for sure he has left the corporate world with a long shadow looming on it which would be very tall for any one to measure up against.