Hey, Bill Gates! We've found 14 IT HOTSHOTS to be the next Steve Ballmer Now for that question everybody's asking: who will be the new Microsoft chief exec once Steve Ballmer slips into retirement by next year? The software giant's co-founder and chairman Bill Gates, fellow company board member John Thompson and executive recruitment agency Heidrick & Struggles are tasked with cracking that puzzler …
Now I don't want to sound pedantic, but you waited as long as it took you to press the Enter key and type 'Nope', which didn't really give me the chance to respond. But since you asked, take your pick from any of:
XP -> Vista
Win7 -> Win8
Office with no Ribbon -> Office with Ribbon
etc etc
Yup. It's GOT to be Elop! He's certainly proven there can't be anyone in the world more fiercely loyal to Microsoft, he's acquired first hand experience in presiding over the annihilation of giant multinational tech corporations and he'll be looking for new employment before Ballmer's year is up. There can't be anyone more perfect.
...... so why not have 2 people filling the role, technical and sales. Sure there will be friction but at least there will be someone at the same level who can say 'that's the dumbest idea ever' without fear of being sacked.
MS did better with Gates and Ballmer together, why not return to that mix?
I suppose the decision over who gets the job will be more decided by what role does the CEO actually have in such a large organisation.
Now I don't mean what is the CEO's job description but is the CEO to be the person that runs the company or the person who appears to run the company?
Look at Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg, they are synonymous with their respective companies rise to fame and give the impression that they were involved with every aspect of the product that shot them to fame whereas any body who's worked for a large company (government included) knows that the higher up the food chain you go the less hands on and more broad picture you get.
Ballmer may have signed off on Windows 8 but it was Mark Sinofskwys baby and Gabe Newell didn't personally code the Steam Workshop himself.
Any major changes to a company like Microsoft is going to need the board and the shareholders approval and will need to bring the divisions over to their vision and the CEO post is mainly window dressing. They need to hire a CEO that can convince everybody they can run the company more thna they can run the company.
If they get one of those financial-manipulators, MS will have ceased to be within a decade.
They have a pretty big cash pile, but without compelling product they'll burn it very quickly.
That's been Ballmers problem - he's burnt a few billion in the last few years, and you simply can't keep doing that.
It's worth pointing out that Fred Goodwin did change RBS from a financial backwater into (briefly) the largest bank in the world. There was the disastrous ABN Amro purchase which nearly killed RBS, but it is still far, far larger than it was when he took it over.
Perhaps someone who gives the customer what he/she wants.
Such as different versions of Windows for differing classes of users. Microsoft's been in the Henry Ford business of offering 'any colour you like so long as its black' for too long. Now's the opportunity to escape.
"Obligatory Henry Ford quote: If I gave my customers what they wanted, I'd be making faster horses."
I'd have argues that Microsoft have been trying to sell faster horses to a customer base that wants rocket packs.
It's just that, to make the horses faster, they've cut off the head and stuck an extra pair of legs on that get tangled in the other four. And then telling the public that obviously a rocket pack needs a horse in order to do the job properly anyway...
Maybe this analogy doesn't work after all.
What MS needs in a CEO is someone who will come in, tear down the development silos, make the Office team play nice with the rest of the organisation, kill the practice of trying to compete with everyone who makes software or hardware for their OS, and focus on making their software suitable for purpose. That will include stop trying to force everything to run exactly the same OS, and acknowledge that phones and tablets are different from desktops and laptops, which are different from servers.
I think it needs to be someone fairly young, and who will stick around a long time to force the required philosophical changes through the organisation. That or they need to look at an interim CEO to tear down the silos, and then replace them with someone to build the company back up again.
Unlike many of the Win8 haters here I AM a long term MS customer and
I do NOT want different Windows for different user classes/systems
So we remain with Win8 and the "one to rule them".
Now excuse me, the Admins are playing "drown the Penguin" with the intern and will start turning up the load generator any minute now
The obvious choice is Michael Dell, together with a restructuring of both Dell and Microsoft to form two different companies (one a server-and-services company (DellSoft) and one a consumer company (MicroDell) doing phones and xboxes and...)
Dell runs DellSoft, Elop runs MicroDell and merges it with Nokia to form the industry colossus MicroNok.
There. Sorted.
-- Pete
After all, returning Founder as Temporary CEO worked out very well for Apple.
This is really the only solution . A leader is required. One with vision, that employees, investors and customers would get behind. Nobody of that callibre could stand to have BG driving from the back-seat. So they might as well bring him back to the front. Only one man needs to be convinced and the rest just falls into place. Perhaps Melinda could keep the whole Malaria / AIDS thing going on her own?
One of the perceived problems with Microsoft is its unpleasant HR system which puts bullshit and self promotion at an advantage. I have a two pronged strategy: make Hugh Laurie CEO and get a first class HR person to fix the internal relations.
No one person can really run a big company; why pretend. Put someone as the face of Microsoft who will make it seem rogueish but lovable, and has a track record of supporting privacy - image problem solved.
Microsoft should consider having separate companies that focus on their own strategies. Trying to make everything have one interface (Surface, Windows, Phone and Xbox) has looked forced and unwieldy. The best thing they could do is separate certain arms of the company (Phone, Windows, Xbox) and get the appropriate leader for each.
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