Steve Ballmer’s latest reorganization of Microsoft “is one long homage to the Apple that Steve Jobs re-created between 1997 and 2011. Everything about the re-org sounds like Ballmer wants Microsoft to behave more like Apple,” Adam Lashinsky writes for Fortune.
“One of the key learnings of my research on Apple over the past five years has been the extraordinary degree to which Apple is organized by function. No other company its size has the audacity to organize this way as opposed to the typical corporation’s divisional structure,” Lashinsky writes. “The two most obvious examples of this are General Electric and, yes, Microsoft. GE’s aircraft and medical divisions are like companies unto themselves. Ditto Microsoft’s Xbox-purveying entertainment division.”
Lashinsky writes, “Steve Jobs hated divisionalization. He hated fiefdoms. He wanted one Apple, one strategy, one brand, one message. Software developers would contribute software across products. Finance would keep the books across product groups. And so on.”
“The under-appreciated part about how difficult this will be for Ballmer and his team to pull off is that taking a unified structural approach to a massive company requires inordinately good leadership,” Lashinsky writes. “The Stanford business professor Charles O’Reilly was adamant with me when I was researching my book that the unusual way Jobs ran Apple would only work for him. It works when a dictatorial, feared, charismatic, respected, multi-talented workhorse like Jobs is able to more or less directly oversee every important facet of the company. It also worked for Apple because Jobs ruthlessly insisted on simplicity. He wanted to attack only a few things at a time—a tremendous virtue for building Apple back from the abyss and for more than a decade after. But the act gets tougher when the company grows gargantuan and, critically, when the all-powerful wizard is gone.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We await Microsoft’s 2014 rearrangement of the deck chairs with bated breath.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Edward W.” for the heads up.]
Related articles:
Microsoft is the new Apple – July 12, 2013
Steve Ballmer’s reorganization email: ‘One Strategy, One Microsoft’ or something – July 11, 2013
Captain Ballmer working hard on rearranging S.S. Microsoft’s deck chairs yet again – June 3, 2013
Microsoft said to again reorganize marketing operations; may include hundreds of job cuts – February 1, 2012
Ballmer rearranges the deck chairs again; seeks to get engineers into executive ranks – February 8, 2011
Microsoft rearranges the deck chairs again; reorgs cellphone, games division – May 25, 2010
Microsoft rearranges the deck chairs – February 15, 2008
Why do tech pundits continue to pay “homage” to Jobs by bastardizing a comparison to Ballmer?
????? er…… because they do not know any better. As one can see from the articles that they write.
Just a thought.
“Learnings”???
Where did Adam Lashinsky go to school to come up with a learning like that word? I never had such a learning in my school.
Turning nouns into verbs (we’re gonna party) and non-nouns into nouns (the un-churched, the learnings) are all the rage in popular culture. Grammarians hate it, but you can’t stop language from evolving. I predict these trends are here to stay.
“Verbing weirds language” – Calvin (of Calvin & Hobbes)
The best reorg that MS could do would be one that shows Ballmer to the door
Ballmer, plus probably every other executive with a C or V in their title.
As Steve Jobs said, Ballmer is a salesman. Thats it.
He isn’t a visionary charismatic leader with ideas and open thinking.
He’s Bill Gates’s college buddy.
Its insane to even imagine that this dullard could understand ANYTHING that Steve Jobs did or said.
I hate even putting this moron in the same post as Steve.
Next, Microsoft will attempt to copy the Apple HQ design, but it will end up looking like a null sign.
More likely it would be a goatse you could see from space. Kinda sums up their attitude to the universe.
Ballmerless M$ by 2015.
Let’s hope not! Unless 2015 is when they turn out the lights and shutdown MS.
Ballmer recognized Apple successful therefore he wanted MS working like Apple. Except Wall Street, social medias are bashing Apple. We’re living in a crazy world.
“…taking a unified structural approach to a massive company requires inordinately good leadership”
“Inordinately good leadership” —- well there you have it, then. Three words express clearly how utterly doomed this initiative is.
Apple should be proud that not only MS wanted to copy Apple structures but also Samsung wanted to copy iPhone. At the same time, there are so many people who jealous of its successes. Human are so complicated eh.
I just want to know when the M$ Death Knell Clock is going to start ticking.
Leadership is critical, but I disagree that SJ was the only man with this talent. There are plenty of brilliant men and women at Microsoft, but Ballmer is not one of them.
Still… for as long as it takes. 😉
I think that Jobs’ talent actually was unique to him but I do agree that there definitely are talented people at Microsoft. The problem is that the people in control of the company are loathe to use them or their talents. The mediocrity, like shit, rolls from the top down and smothers all innovative thinking.
Windows 8 for dummies. No really, it is for dummies
Bomber was never a very smart man… He’ll NEVER get Microshaft above what it is now…. A crumbling has been.. Buh..bye..Syevo…You’re done.
Interesting.