steve ballmer microsoft presentation

Steve Ballmer: The Bombastic and Brilliant CEO Who Transformed Microsoft

• by history tools
• March 26, 2024

When Steve Ballmer first walked through the doors at Microsoft in 1980, he was employee number 30 at a promising but still fledgling startup. Yet over the next 34 years, his sheer force of personality and competitive intensity would drive Microsoft to unprecedented heights as he helped architect key products, energized legions of employees as CEO, and infused innovation across the technology landscape.

Humble Beginnings

Born in 1956 in Detroit, Michigan to an affluent Ford Motor Company manager and a mother active in philanthropy, Ballmer’s early life showed flashes of greatness. He graduated at the top his class at Detroit Country Day School and was admitted to prestigious Harvard University, where he met and befriended a sophomore named Bill Gates.

Their shared passion for coding quickly drew them together. After graduating magna cum laude himself in 1977, Ballmer bounced between jobs at Proctor & Gamble and even a brief unsuccessful stint screenwriting in Hollywood before finding himself drawn back into Gates’ orbit.

The Right Hand Man

When Gates convinced his hyper-energetic and brilliant classmate to join his fledgling software startup called Microsoft in 1980, neither could have predicted Ballmer’s meteoric rise within the company over the ensuing decades:

• 1980 – Microsoft Employee #30 and 1st Business Manager
• 1983 – Heads development of Microsoft’s first Windows operating system
• 1992 – Executive Vice President of Sales & Support
• 1998 – Named Company President, overseeing daily operations
• 2000 – Becomes CEO after Gates steps down

In fact, when Microsoft formally incorporated in 1981, Gates rewarded his friend with an 8% stake in the company for helping land their first crucial contract to provide the operating system for IBM’s personal computers. It cemented Microsoft’s dominance of the nascent PC ecosystem.

Growth & Innovation Under Ballmer‘s Leadership

Though Gates is often credited as the genius founder, insiders note it was Ballmer’s bombastic energy, sharp business acumen, and almost maniacal competitiveness that fueled Microsoft’s staggering growth from $25 billion to over $70 billion in annual revenues during his 14 year tenure as CEO from 2000 to 2014:

Key Microsoft Stats Under Ballmer:

• Windows OS Market Share: 85% to over 90%
• Profits: Tripled from $9 billion to $29 billion
• Employees: Approx 30,000 to over 99,000
• Stock Price: $39/share to over $140/share (peak of $59 in 2000)

Ballmer‘s Key Growth Areas:

• Enterprise – Expanded beyond OS into enterprise cloud services
• Xbox – Backed the video game console side project that sold over 100 million units
• Skype – Oversaw the $8.5 billion purchase to move Microsoft into internet communications

Beyond profits and products, former employees credit Ballmer with cultivating an internal culture that encouraged innovation. Riskier bets like Xbox, the Zune music player, and enterprise cloud services stemmed from Ballmer urging product groups to take chances pursuing great ideas wherever they may lead.

But he also had no patience internally for failure to execute at the famously demanding levels he set. There are legendary stories of chairs hurled in rage when he deemed teams as not working hard enough. “I’m loving this! I’m loving this!” he would exclaim – but not everyone always felt the love.

Retirement From Microsoft

While Ballmer drove Microsoft to record growth, he was not without flaws as a leader. Despite early traction, he failed to challenge the iPhone‘s momentum in mobile where Microsoft languished.

In mid-2014 at age 57, Ballmer announced his retirement after 34 years – his entire professional career. He handed Microsoft’s reins to successor Satya Nadella. Though no longer CEO, Ballmer remains heavily invested as the company‘s largest individual shareholder with a stake once worth over $100 billion at its peak.

Life After Microsoft

If anyone wondered how the hyper-intense Ballmer would handle a more slow-paced retirement, they rapidly got their answer:

• 2014 – Led $2 billion purchase of NBA‘s Los Angeles Clippers
• 2017 – Launched non-profit civic data site USAFacts.org
• 2021 – Joined exclusive club of centibillionaires based on Microsoft stock

The competitive fire in Ballmer clearly still burns hot, even if now channeled into new directions beyond tech.

As owner of the Clippers basketball franchise, Ballmer displays his trademark animated engagement from the sidelines spurring players on rather than employees. He’s heavily invested in building a championship-contending roster and new cutting edge arena for the historically underdog Clippers.

His non-profit USAFacts initiative aims to improve government accountability by collating key metrics on taxes, spending, legislation effectiveness, and societal outcomes. It’s an ambitious extension of Ballmer’s evidence-based, metrics-driven approach now focused on civic progress rather than just corporate profits.

A Legacy of Generosity

While certainly not lacking in wealth, Ballmer has also long maintained a generous philanthropic spirit instilled by his mother from an early age. His donations exceed over $700 million lifetime to date.

Some Notable Ballmer Contributions & Causes Supported:

• Harvard University – $60 million gift for computer science faculty and students
• University of Oregon – $50 million donation to strengthen science facilities
• $10+ million – USAFacts seed funding through Ballmer Group
• Jewish National Fund – Over $1 million donated. Part of Chairman’s Council

Ballmer‘s largest donations aim to strengthen opportunities for students and faculty within computer science and adjacent fields. A self-described “numbers guy” at heart even before his business career, he knows firsthand the power an analytical education can unlock.

In recognition of Microsoft‘s economic influence elevating living standards worldwide under his tenure, the French government also awarded Ballmer one of its highest honors in 2011 – knighted as a Chevalier de la Légion d‘Honneur .

Personality & Leadership Style

Beyond the staggering career numbers and pivotal moments that defined his Microsoft journey lie deeper insights into the unique personality behind Ballmer‘s success:

Maniacal Intensity

“There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share.”

Ballmer pulls no punches and exudes absolute confidence pursuing his self-imposed high standards. What some call arrogance, others recognize as the intense competitive fire fueling his drive to win.

Bombastic Stage Presence

Ballmer’s physical exuberance and booming voice amplify his enthusiasm whether unveiling Windows software or rallying a crowd of Microsoft employees . He brings a force of energy and conviction described by some as almost religious zealotry for technology’s potential.

Data-Driven Analyst

Beneath the bombastic exterior lies Ballmer‘s sharpest strength – his analytic, numbers-driven strategic mind.

"We will make our products work out of the box."

Ballmer intensely scrutinizes market statistics and financials, relentlessly questioning things not backed by quantitative data. He leaves less room for excuses and ambiguity than his predecessor Gates.

The larger-than-life Steve Ballmer undoubtedly made an immense impact over his 34 years at Microsoft‘s helm. Though retired from tech, his force of personality continues impacting new domains like sports and philanthropy.

Ballmer helped instill the competitive "win at all costs" ethos that Came to define Microsoft. His bombast, brilliance and intensity drove the company to unprecedented commercial success. Though not without flaws in his stretch as CEO, Ballmer‘s legacy helped shape Microsoft into the global tech titan it remains today.

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A brief history of Steve Ballmer's epic freak-outs

In what was arguably ballmer's most memorable moment, the then-microsoft ceo jumped up on a stage, yelling and dancing, before beginning a presentation at an early 2000s microsoft event. many people refer to the moment as ballmer's "monkey boy dance.".

Watch it on YouTube »

At another event, he got really sweaty while chanting "developers, developers" over and over.

At a conference in 2008, an attendee asked Ballmer to get up and show his love for web developers. He happily obliged.

Ballmer teamed up with Bill Gates to film a couple of parody shorts that were screened at Microsoft events in the '90s. Here they are dancing like characters from "A Night at the Roxbury."

And here Ballmer does his best Dr. Evil impression.

In his last speech before stepping down from his post as CEO, Ballmer cried, high-fived Microsoft employees, and lip-synced to "The Time of My Life," also known as the finale song from "Dirty Dancing."

Ballmer wasted no time getting everyone pumped up about the Clippers. Here he is making his debut as team owner in August 2014.

Then he got on stage and yelled a lot.

Ballmer has been nothing short of entertaining throughout the season. When Fergie put on a surprise performance during a game in January, he went nuts.

He looked extremely happy after Blake Griffin made an acrobatic dunk in Game 1 of the Clippers' playoff series against the Spurs.

But he totally lost his cool when Game 6 in the series came down to the last few plays. The Clippers eventually won 102-96 to force a Game 7, but Ballmer looked like he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown

Watch it on ESPN »

H??e jumped and danced around when Chris Paul made an incredible shot to win Game 7 of the first round.

And though the Clippers eventually fell to the Houston Rockets in the second round Sunday, Ballmer really gave it his all from the sidelines.

Now read about another extremely wealthy tech exec.

ANGELA AHRENDTS: How last year's highest-paid female exec spends her millions »

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Steve Ballmer exits final Microsoft company meeting in classic style

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Steve Ballmer is known for his outrageous keynote presentations, and at his final annual company meeting, the Microsoft chief executive made sure to deliver one more outrageous, teary-eyed speech.

Speaking to 13,000 Microsoft employees, Ballmer took the stage at Seattle’s KeyArena and jumped around to a variety of songs, as he tends to do.

Among the background tunes were “Can’t Hold Us” by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis, “Wanna Be Startin’ Something” by Michael Jackson -- a track the company played at its first employee meeting in 1983 -- and then Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes’ “I’ve Had the Time of My Life,” during which he screamed that he’d had the time of his life with the company.

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In case you aren’t aware of how crazy Ballmer can get, check out the video at the top of this post.

Earlier this year, Microsoft announced that Ballmer would be retiring within 12 months, so this is the last time the long-running executive will address his troops. Understandably, there was a lot of emotion.

“We have unbelievable potential in front of us, we have an unbelievable destiny,” Ballmer said, according to Reuters . “Only our company and a handful of others are poised to write the future.”

With tears running down his face, Ballmer paused to enjoy the moment.

“You work for the greatest company in the world, soak it in,” he said, according to the Verge .

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Steve Ballmer: A Dynamic Leader Who Transformed Microsoft.

Steve Ballmer, the high-wattage former CEO of Microsoft, is a name synonymous with the transformation of one of the world’s most influential technology companies. From 2000 to 2014, Ballmer steered Microsoft through a period of unprecedented growth and innovation, leaving an indelible mark on the company’s history.

Ballmer’s journey with Microsoft began in 1980 when he joined the company as employee No. 30. A Harvard graduate who dropped out of Stanford’s MBA program to pursue his entrepreneurial ambitions, Ballmer quickly became an integral part of the Microsoft team. Working closely with co-founder Bill Gates, Ballmer played a pivotal role in shaping the company’s vision and strategy.

As CEO, Ballmer’s leadership style was characterized by his boundless energy and unwavering commitment to Microsoft’s success. He was known for his passionate and dynamic speeches, often electrifying audiences with his enthusiasm for the company’s products and initiatives. Under his guidance, Microsoft experienced significant expansion and diversification, venturing into new markets and forging partnerships with key industry players.

One of Ballmer’s most notable achievements was the successful launch of the Windows XP operating system in 2001. This iconic release introduced a more user-friendly interface and improved performance, solidifying Microsoft’s dominance in the PC market. Ballmer’s emphasis on innovation and user experience helped drive the widespread adoption of Windows XP and cemented Microsoft’s position as a leader in the technology industry.

During his tenure, Ballmer also oversaw the development and release of other groundbreaking products, including the Office Suite, Xbox gaming console, and Azure cloud computing platform. His strategic investments in these areas positioned Microsoft for long-term growth and ensured its relevance in an ever-evolving digital landscape.

Beyond product innovation, Ballmer prioritized cultivating a culture of diversity and inclusion within Microsoft. Recognizing the value of diverse perspectives and talents, he championed initiatives to foster a more inclusive workplace. Under his leadership, Microsoft made strides in increasing the representation of women and underrepresented minorities in its workforce, setting an example for other tech companies to follow.

However, Ballmer’s tenure as CEO was not without challenges. The rise of mobile technology and the rapid growth of companies like Apple and Google posed significant competition to Microsoft’s dominance. Despite efforts to enter the mobile market with the Windows Phone platform, the company struggled to gain traction and ultimately fell behind its competitors.

In 2014, Ballmer announced his retirement as CEO, marking the end of an era for Microsoft. While his leadership left an enduring impact on the company, his departure signaled a new chapter in Microsoft’s history, one that would be shaped by a new generation of leaders.

Today, Steve Ballmer continues to be involved in philanthropy and social initiatives. Through his foundation, he has dedicated resources to various causes, including education and public health. His commitment to giving back and making a positive difference in society reflects his belief in the power of technology to transform lives.

Steve Ballmer’s contributions to Microsoft and the technology industry as a whole cannot be overstated. His visionary leadership, relentless drive, and passion for innovation propelled Microsoft to new heights. While his time as CEO may be over, his legacy lives on, serving as a source of inspiration for future leaders and reminding us of the transformative potential of technology.

In conclusion, Steve Ballmer’s tenure as the CEO of Microsoft marked a period of significant growth and innovation for the company. His leadership and strategic vision guided Microsoft through various challenges and propelled it to the forefront of the technology industry. As an accomplished entrepreneur and philanthropist, Ballmer’s contributions extend beyond the corporate world, leaving an enduring legacy of innovation.

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Top 5 Steve Ballmer memorable moments

Steve Ballmer is a bit of a controversial figure, depending on who you ask, but no matter how you twist it, he was the CEO of Microsoft for a long time, spawning multiple memes, memorable moments and both good and bad memories.

We collected a set of the most memorable Ballmer moments, in honor of his "Microsoft anniversary;" Ballmer was named the company's president and CEO on January 13, 2000, 18 years ago today.

Without further ado ...

1. Developers, developers, developers!

This fascinating meme has spread way beyond the Microsoft community and infected minds worldwide with its rhythmic nature. When Steve Ballmer gave a presentation on Microsoft's twenty-fifth anniversary, Steve couldn't handle his maniacal energy, and he let it all out by shouting "developers" multiple times as loud as he could, while energetically (and sweatily) waving his hands. It became a huge internet meme which has stayed with us to this day. In 2008, Steve slightly altered the meme by changing it up to "web developers," which proved that he was aware of the comical nature of the whole thing.

2. Ballmer's last speech as Microsoft CEO

When Steve Ballmer held his last speech as the CEO of Microsoft in 2014, a lot of people found it to be very emotional. No matter if you liked the man or not, you have to agree that this particular company meeting was ... heartwarming. Steve Ballmer cried on stage while he was thanking employees for everything they had done, and he wished them good luck in the future under the lead of Microsoft's current CEO, Satya Nadella.

3. Laughing at the iPhone

Ballmer has had more than one infamous moment that is laughed at today, but this one, in particular, is especially memorable. He laughed off the iPhone as being too expensive, not functional enough, and Ballmer said that there was no way that it would sell well. That was almost a decade ago when the iPhone was first announced. The iPhone today is the biggest success in the history of consumer electronics, and Windows 10 Mobile is slowly fading away.

4. The Windows 95 release presentation

The Windows 95 presentation was a huge thing for Microsoft, as well as its customers. It was the most consumer-friendly OS Microsoft had ever released, and because of the huge excitement that filled the people presenting the product, the presentation resulted in a small dance by cofounder Bill Gates, Ballmer and a few other high-profile executives at Microsoft. As expected of Steve, he took things a little too far. The (in)famous internet meme that's known as the "Steve Ballmer monkey dance" was born.

5. What is love?

Ballmer and Gates have a long common history behind them and one of these famous moments was a little play on the song, "What is love?" Gates and Ballmer both decided to record a small parody to highlight the Windows 98 launch. The two have recorded multiple different videos together, but this one, in particular, is very memorable and very funny. The parodic and comical nature of the video once proved that Ballmer can be a really funny guy.

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Happy birthday, Steve! And if you simply can't get enough Microsoft memes, check out this list of the best of the best:

• 10 marvelous Microsoft memes you don't want to miss

Updated January 12, 2018: We double-checked this post and reran it in honor of the 18-year anniversary of Ballmer being named Microsoft's chief executive.

Dennis Bednarz is a former writer for Windows Central and the guy behind ModMy. He has been a recognised member of the Microsoft community for years and owns everything from Lumia phones to Surface PCs. He occasionally likes to rant about Windows Phone and drink tea. You can go ahead and follow him on Twitter at  @DennisBednarz

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Steve Ballmer: Evolving as a Leader as Your Company Grows

The Microsoft CEO says there’s a big difference between managing an upstart computer company and an international technology giant.

September 01, 2008

As Microsoft has grown from an upstart to an international computer technology giant, CEO Steve Ballmer says his leadership style has had to evolve, too.

“It’s almost like two completely different universes,” said Ballmer, who dropped out of Stanford GSB to join Microsoft after being recruited by his college roommate, company cofounder Bill Gates.

Ballmer outlined his thoughts on leadership and challenges ahead for Microsoft on September 25 during a “View From The Top” speech that drew a standing-room-only crowd of Business School students.

What it took to be a good leader of a company with one line of business — personal computers — and 30 employees back in the early 1980s is vastly different from what it takes to run present-day Microsoft, which has nearly 90,000 workers and an increasing number of products, including internet search. In an effort to grow beyond the desktop software business model, Microsoft has also expanded into servers, consumer electronics, and information/media.

That’s led Ballmer to evolve from being strictly a hands-on manager.

“Moving levers everyday; that’s not what I’m doing” now, Ballmer told the group. “I know the advertising business, but I’ve never operated our advertising business. You’ve got to really delegate and trust people.”

Instead, Ballmer determines the best business strategies for the company and spends time getting to know key employees, whether they are new up-and-comers or members of the senior management team. “There are about 300 to 400 people I really feel like I can and should have some real involvement helping shape what they do next,” he said. “Nurturing and developing the top talent; for me, that ends up being the number one thing I spend time with.”

If he could change one decision he made since becoming CEO, Ballmer said he’d have pushed the company to start developing internet search products years earlier. Right now Microsoft has about 10 percent of the search advertising market, Ballmer said, trailing both market leader Google and Yahoo.

“No question,” he said. “We really got into the research and development business around search five years ago. If we’d gotten in eight years ago, we’d be in a very different place than we are today. We should have gotten started even though the business model wasn’t clear.”

To ensure they recognize future trends, the company has made changes. “I have more time invested thinking about how you run an innovation-based company than most people do,” said Ballmer. “We have big projects, little projects, incubation efforts, research, acquisitions, and internal development.”

Soon after Microsoft was founded, Ballmer dropped out of Stanford’s business school in 1980 to work for the tiny startup at the invitation of Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates. Gates was one of Ballmer’s former classmates at Harvard, where Ballmer had received a degree in applied mathematics and economics in 1973.

Ballmer said he passed up summer job opportunities in consulting, finance, and other established industries in 1980 to join Microsoft, what he called a “crazy little software company.” A short time later, after Gates vigorously balked when Ballmer said the 30-person firm needed to hire 18 more people, Ballmer said he almost quit in disgust. But, Ballmer said, Gates assured him that the company would “put a computer on every desk and in every home,” a phrase that became Microsoft’s mantra. Ballmer stayed, and over the years went on to hold a variety of roles that placed him second only to Gates. Ballmer played a crucial role in Microsoft’s growth, and became Microsoft’s president in 1998 and chief executive officer in 2000.

When asked by a curious student for more details about his decision to leave Stanford’s business school, Ballmer said it was the right thing for him to do.

“It’s not for everybody,” Ballmer admitted. “You’ve got to be in the right place in your life and it’s got to be the right opportunity. If you see the right opportunity, you should seize it.”

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Steve Ballmer played a powerful part in Microsoft’s comeback

Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer did not leave the company on a high note.

Ballmer held the role from 2000 to 2013, while Microsoft tried again and again to convert its software dominance into a viable hardware business, similar to the way Apple had leveraged the iPod and iTunes to own the MP3 player category. It objectively did not go well. The Zune , an iPod competitor that the author personally loved but was plagued by horrific software and an extremely useless online music store never lived up to the iPod’s legacy. The Kin , a very round iPhone competitor, lasted on the market for less than two months. The Windows phones all flopped, in a multibillion-dollar loss for the company. Windows Vista—Microsoft’s attempt at refreshing its operating system in the era of the internet—was widely panned, and Ballmer fought tooth and nail to extend the business model of selling Windows licenses, rather than embracing the cloud strategy that would be installed by his successor.

When Ballmer told the Microsoft board he was stepping down in 2013, according to one report directors quickly agreed (pdf) that “fresh eyes and ears might accelerate what we’re trying to do here.” The company’s market capitalization hadn’t moved much since Ballmer had became CEO more than a decade earlier. Meanwhile, competitors Amazon and Google had started growing into the behemoths they are today.

The media has not been kind to Ballmer. There are listicles with titles like, “ Steve Ballmer’s Biggest Mistakes As CEO Of Microsoft .” Vanity Fair described his tenure in a headline as “ Microsoft’s Lost Decade .” The New Yorker had a particularly blunt story on the day Ballmer stepped down as CEO, titled “Why Steve Ballmer Failed.” Here’s a taste:

Ballmer is roughly the tech industry’s equivalent of Mikhail Gorbachev, without the coup and the tanks and Red Square. When he took control, in 2000, Microsoft was one of the most powerful and feared companies in the world. It had a market capitalization of around five hundred billion dollars, the highest of any company on earth. Developers referred to it as an “evil empire.” As he leaves, it’s a sprawling shadow.

These assessments are supported by plenty of well-worn examples of Ballmer’s retrospective missteps. But they overlook Ballmer’s undeniable positive contribution to Microsoft’s current success—that even as Ballmer fought (too hard, in retrospect) to keep Windows as the crown jewel of Microsoft, he was also responsible for laying the groundwork that makes Microsoft the new company it is today.

Current Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is rightly given credit for focusing Microsoft on moving its legion of products to the cloud and working with partners to use more and more cloud capabilities. Yet it was Ballmer who originally created Azure, named Windows Azure when it launched in 2010.

“For the cloud, we’re all in,” Ballmer said at a 2010 keynote, according to Network World . “Literally, I will tell you we are betting our company on it.”

Nadella was actually installed by Ballmer to lead the creation of that business, in the role of president of Server and Tools.

“A lot of the seeds that Ballmer started, like Azure, were the right kind of strategy moves,” says Brent Bracelin, equity research analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets. “I think where Satya has really differentiated is empowering the employee base to go execute on some of that early kind of strategy, kind of seed planting that Ballmer did.”

Even before launching Azure, in 2001 Ballmer acquired Great Plains, a company that made a business management software called Dynamics. Nearly 20 years later, Microsoft still uses the Dynamics name, though the product has evolved into a cloud service for accounting, enterprise resource management, and customer relationship management. Dynamics 365 is now one of Microsoft’s top cloud earners. While the company does not break out Dynamics revenue in its earnings, the product was categorized by executives as a billion-dollar business in 2013 and has seen consistent revenue growth year over year since then.

Yes, it could have theoretically been an even better business. While today Dynamics is a flagship business product for Microsoft, Salesforce was founded in 1999 and enjoys $120 billion in market capitalization. It’s unlikely that Marc Benioff could have convinced top brass at Microsoft to deviate from their lucrative licensing business to cloud services so early, and Salesforce’s $1.1 billion tower in SF stands as a testament to the money Microsoft missed out on not dominating the business tools market.

But as Bracelin says, Satya’s strength has been refocusing the company around the myriad long-term bets that Ballmer had set up.

“That cloud-first mantra is really something that you can give ownership to Satya, even though some of these strategies and products were under started under the Ballmer era,” he said.

It’s easy to make fun of Ballmer—for his business decisions, his mannerisms, his sweat — but the predominant narrative is too simplistic. Ballmer missed the boat on search, mobile, and media, but he set the stage for Microsoft as it stands today: something that could evolve into something larger and more fundamental than all three.

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Steve Ballmer Speech Gives Language A Stretch

A certain stage presence and style characterises the Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer. Energetic, dynamic and loud! Of course, that style has proved useful as the CEO advances the Microsoft strategy around the world; not least since Bill Gates stood down from active Microsoft duties. So a Steve Ballmer speech is something to seek out.

Therefore his most recent speech at the University of Washington was a big draw for the student body and teaching staff. So, standing room only was the order of the day.

Steve got a great introduction and an equally warm reception. And quite rightly so. Because he’s a charismatic and competent speaker. Besides, who can remember the Longhorn speeches?

Steve Ballmer Speech Mixes The Language

But on this occasion, despite the support of his team and their superb multimedia, there was an issue. That’s because Steve had gone native. Leaving all thought of syntax and language structure aside, the CEO of one of the most important businesses in the world approached his speech as if he was in his first year at college. For example his use of the phrase, “sort of” was continual:

“sort of a place… sort of highlighting… sort of is… sort of recent… sort of the sub-history… sort of stimulated… sort of describe… sort of story… sort of creative commons… sort of PhotoSynth… sort of information… sort of me… sort of natural gas…

Now this sort of sloppy approach to language is one thing for a, like, industrious student. But for a man who heads up the world’s kind of leading software language coding businesses? No, of course not. Because it’s different.

So, let’s hope that the Microsoft approach to cloud computing is more rigorous than the language of this speech. Sort of. Because we should opt for more effective public speaking with language.

Of course, you can always pick up public speaking tips from Time to Market with a personalised training package. That's because one-to-one public speaking skills coaching will give you the skills and confidence you need to become an effective public speaker. So, please don't hesitate to get in touch when the time is right.

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Andrew Ivey

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Steve Ballmer and Microsoft Senior Leadership Team: One Microsoft Conference Call

July 12, 2013

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(Operator Direction.)

FRANK SHAW: Thank you, operator, and thank you, everyone, for joining us this afternoon.

With me today are Steve Ballmer, chief executive officer, and the Microsoft Senior Leadership Team.

We’re glad that we have some time to share a little bit more of the thinking behind the changes we’re announcing and what they mean for our future. And with that, I’d like to turn it over to Steve, who will make a few prepared remarks. After that, we’ll open it up for questions. Steve?

STEVE BALLMER: Hi. Thanks, everybody, for joining us today, and it’s great to have a chance to chat with you, along with our leadership team. This is certainly a big day for all of us.

During today’s call, we thought it would be valuable to share with you some additional context on the announcement, and then have a chance to take questions.

Over a year ago, we started a shift in our business to a devices and services company, software development as a core asset, delivered through devices of our own and our partners, as well as services.

Since then, we’ve shipped a lot of great products. We launched Windows 8, Surface, Windows Phone 8, Office 365, and we very significantly advanced Windows Azure. We brought a consistent user interface to PCs, tablets, phones, and the Xbox, and connected all of the content customers care about in the cloud via SkyDrive, all while moving to continuous product cycles.

However, we’re excited to deliver more and to do it with even greater speed, efficiency and capability. To do this, we really wanted to refine both our mission and the strategy that we’ve laid out, and then put in place the right structure to execute against that mission.

As we thought about our mission, we went back to what has been our core mantra for the last 10-plus years, to help people and businesses throughout the world realize their full potential. That mission still drives us today, and it’s core to who all of us are.

So going forward, our strategy as a company will focus on creating a family of devices and services for individuals and for businesses that empower people around the globe, at home, at work, and on the go for the activities they value most. And I’d underscore that, activities people really value. That’s at the heart and soul of what it takes to help people realize their full potential.

We’re a company who helps people get stuff done. When it comes time to lean in, even if it’s for serious fun like Xbox, we’re the company that delivers great high-value experiences for work and for play.

We’re going to do this by leveraging our strengths. We’ve actually been in the business of thinking about devices for many, many, many years. Really, in a sense, Windows is the definition of a device called the PC, and we’ve had the great honor to be part of shepherding that forward for many years; Xbox, a product we’ve had in market for over 10 years. We’ve certainly focused in on high-value experiences through products like Office and Skype, a more recent acquisition, which focuses in on the moments in life that are most important and most valuable.

And we’ve certainly focused in on business and enterprise customers, as well, through products like Windows Server and Exchange.

The form of delivery of our value will shift to really thinking about devices and services versus packaged software, but the focus in on the high-value activities in people’s lives will not change.

The frontier of high-value scenarios that we enable will continue to march outward, and we have strengths and proven capabilities on which we will draw to define new experiences in expression, meeting, research, tasks, the way corporate information gets managed and held securely, and much, much more.

All of this means that we need to move forward as one Microsoft with one strategy and one set of goals. We’ll have one approach to the marketplace, whether it’s business partners, innovation partners, developers, IT people, or consumers. We’ll have one technology base to enable us in core areas as opposed to two or more. We’re one Microsoft.

The next thing we’ll do is ensure that every discipline — legal, finance, marketing, business development, et cetera — at Microsoft becomes stronger. And the best way to get strength in each discipline is to pull them together.

In the engineering area specifically, the best way to get to one technical base or one technology base is to make sure that we’re pulling together things and having people collaborate where they need to, not duplicating efforts, and, of course, investing in very strong engineering systems and tools.

So we will pull together into fewer core engineering groups, and we will pull together all of the other functions, all of the other disciplines, under leaders who work for me directly.

In order to execute then on this one Microsoft strategy, we’re organizing by discipline and by engineering area.

Of course, at the end of the day, we have to deliver great products, a great family of devices and services and experiences that help people realize high-value activities.

So we will have teams that function across the company and across engineering areas to deliver on a high-value experience or device type like Windows, which literally has engineering content already today from our entire company, and involvement from a variety of innovation partners.

So we have the notion today that teams work across the company. That’s fundamental. But we’ll formalize, we’ll organize by discipline, and we’ll have product champions who bring together our cross-company teams to deliver our core products and high-value scenarios.

Certainly the new organization structure introduces changes to many of our employees. However, perhaps the larger change of each employee’s experience over time will be new ways of working. We have the most talented people in the industry. Their ideas, passion, focus and energy are paramount to us delivering delightful, new high-value experiences to the billion-plus people around the world who are customers today and the billions more we aspire to serve.

To harness all of that, we’re moving forward and working in new ways. With our employees today, we shared five characteristics that we want to embody in each and every one of us. The first is being nimble. In a world of continuous services, the timeframe for product releases, customer interaction and competitive response are dramatically shorter than ever before, and we need to make the right decisions and make them more quickly, balancing all the customer and business imperatives.

The next is communicative. In the new rapid-turn world, we need to communicate in ways that don’t just exchange information but drive agility, action, ownership and accountability.

The third is collaboration. That means the ability to coordinate effectively with and amongst our teams and disciplines to get results, build better products faster, and drive customer and shareholder value.

The fourth is decisive. We have a clear strategic direction. We’ve laid it out, one Microsoft, focused in on a set of high-value experiences, delivered through devices and services for businesses and consumers. But we need to now empower the employees who are closest to the customers to make decisions in service of that larger mission.

The last is motivation. Our employees are incredibly motivated by the real opportunity we have to impact positively the lives of our customers when they’re doing the things that are most important. In our industry, every day brings more opportunities than the day before, but we do have such an amazing opportunity to make a difference in the lives of billions of people around the world, and that motivates us in a significant way. I’m thrilled when talented new hires tell me they joined Microsoft to change the world. That’s what we do today, and that’s what we’re motivated to do tomorrow.

I hope this gives you a little greater perspective on where we’re headed and how we’ll get there. As I said earlier, it’s a big day for me and the women and men around the table who form the Microsoft leadership team, and we appreciate your taking time from us. We’re ready to take Microsoft in bold new directions and really delight both our consumer and business customers.

Thanks for your time, and we look forward to your questions.

FRANK SHAW: Thanks, Steve.

We want to get as many questions as we can, so please stick to just one question and avoid long or multipart questions.

Operator, go ahead and repeat your instructions.

BRENT THILL, UBS: Thanks, Steve. If you could just discuss the impact to revenue and operating expenses, as certainly I understand in the near term it won’t have a dramatic impact, but how you think about this long-term if your game plan plays out relative to the revenue and operating expenses?

STEVE BALLMER: Well, the key goal, of course, is to extend the impact we can have in the efficacy, the innovation, and the breadth of footprint of the innovation, which is a real focus in on innovation and the revenue and profitability that goes with it. I’ll let Amy Hood, our CFO, fill in additionally.

AMY HOOD: I think that’s right. As we said, this is really about setting us up for long-term profit growth. And I look forward and believe that sets us up to do that.

FRANK SHAW : Operator, next question please.

DINA BASS, Bloomberg News: Steve, do you anticipate any job cuts as a result of this? For example, in the marketing area, you used to have a central marketing group and then marketing in the individual product units. Those are now being consolidated into one unit. Do you expect that will result in a redundancy?

STEVE BALLMER: We have no plan for layoffs. We certainly want to extend what we’re doing, and obviously part of the reorganization is mapping people to a set of new and expanded needs. And we anticipate lots of opportunities to do that.

DINA BASS: Thanks.

FRANK SHAW : Operator, next question.

JANET TU, Seattle Times: Hi. I’m wondering how this reorg will be reflected in the financial reporting, and what will be the divisions in the earnings report when that’s reported?

AMY HOOD: Hi, it’s Amy again. Obviously, we have an earnings announcement next week. I will be reporting using our current operating section plans. Obviously, the requirement over a period of time is to report your systems in the way that the CEO manages it. So as we go through this reorg and through the realignment, we’ll obviously investigate any needed changes over time.

FRANK SHAW : Great. Next question.

HEATHER BELLINI, Goldman Sachs: Hi. Great. Thank you, and congratulations on the announcement. Steve, I was wondering if you could share with us a little bit on how this realignment might enable you to change your go-to-market strategy on the device side of the business, in particular things like Surface, and your ability to maybe embrace the partner channel a little bit more as a result, and maybe get involved in some bundled selling with some of your existing offerings like Office?

STEVE BALLMER: Perhaps I’ll let Tami Reller lead off, and then Kevin Turner also can give some comments.

TAMI RELLER: Great. Thanks, Heather. This is Tami. I think that definitely behind this one marketing strategy and organization that we have, we fundamentally believe we’re just going to be able to go to market much more effectively in an integrated way. I think that’s something that our partners, whether it’s retail partners or the OEM partners that we work so closely with, have been asking us to consider. It will help them be more efficient, and I think it will make us more effective in the field. And we think that’s something that will help our sellers, whether they’re Microsoft employees or our partners.

KEVIN TURNER: This is Kevin. On the first-party hardware side, as well as the third-party hardware side that we have, we are driving both changes in our go-to-market approach. We’ve retransitioned some people, repurposed some people around device selling, and we’re also driving device quotas. In addition to that, something we haven’t done in the past, you’re also seeing us do some strategic partnerships with the likes of Best Buy and others, as well as our own stores, to be able to light up the scenarios and the experience and really get the learnings firsthand. So yes, we’re really tuning the go to markets and radically changing them in some capacity to really ramp up the devices and services go to market.

STEVE BALLMER: Maybe just one other thing I would add on the OEM front, our work with HP, Dell, Lenovo, I would say we have always had a very, very, very engaged relationship, but the level of engagement continues to dial up. The level of innovation in their devices keeps dialing up.

Kevin and I were both just at our Worldwide Partner Conference — actually many of us were. We had a device bar, we call it, at the conference that had, 105 different devices from probably 50 different manufacturers. And I think we’re starting to really see that shift from our partner base to kind of a modern-looking device. It’s almost hard to call the new Windows devices PCs in all cases. They look so different than “traditional PCs,” but it’s good to see Windows and our OEM partnerships and devices with Intel processors changing so much and adapting to the needs and changes in the world.

FRANK SHAW : Great. Next question, Operator.

WALTER PRITCHARD, Citi Research: Thanks. My question is actually a follow-up to what was just asked on devices. And, Steve, you even from your shareholder letter last year talked about devices, and you now have a whole group focused on it with a competent leader. And it just seems as though the footprint out in the market today is relatively minimal, especially versus where it was five years ago. It hasn’t changed a lot. And I’m wondering as we think forward to the next, I think lastly you’ve added sort of Windows abstractly as part of the device portfolio. As you look forward over the next three to five years, can you talk about how we should expect to see that device portfolio expand? I understand you’re not going to preannounce product, but just in an abstract sense, how we should think about areas of the business… Thank you.

STEVE BALLMER: Yes, I think what we highlight in our communication with our folks is, whether it’s the very smallest or the very largest device, we need to ensure that we see innovation in our operating system, in our partners’ hardware and in our own hardware to meet the opportunities that we see in the market for quite a broad range of device types. And with Xbox One coming to market here over the holiday season, with some of the work we’ve done with Surface, with some of the work our partner Nokia has done with the incredible line of Lumia phones, you certainly see an expanding breadth of Windows devices quite dramatically, and I would say expect to see it.

I can tell you one thing, if you want to have a knock-down, gorgeous experience with an enterprise customer, you show them our 82-inch Windows 8 tablet, sometimes known as the PPI board. I don’t fail to get every CEO who sees one to say, “Give me one in my Office and, oh by the way, we’d better get the devices, the phones, the tablets, the PCs that work well with that.” So you’ll see us invest across a wide range of device types, both first party and third party.

FRANK SHAW : Next question, please?

ADRIANNE JEFFRIES, The Verge: Hi, thanks so much. My question is, Steve, with Julie and Terry leading separate software and hardware teams, how do you feel you can bring devices to the market in a way that Apple and other competitors do? Will they work closely enough and collaboratively enough to compete with Apple?

STEVE BALLMER: Yes, Julie and Terry will answer that.

JULIE LARSON-GREEN: I think it’s a perfect way for us to approach it. Terry and I have worked together for a long time. We both have worked on the operating system side. I’ve worked on the hardware side, and it’s a good blending of our skills and our teams to deliver things together. So the structure that we’re putting in place for the whole company is about working across the different disciplines and having product champions. So Terry and I will be working to lead delivery to market of our first-party and third-party devices.

STEVE BALLMER: Yes, and maybe just also have Tony Bates add a little bit. Tony is going to have a critical role running business development evangelism, our role with our hardware innovation partners, our OEMs.

TONY BATES: Yes, I would just add to that. Julie alluded to this — first party, there’s also a third party — and I think having a single interface to our key innovation partners, but two bringing together the way we think about offers with our partners is going to be absolutely critical. So when we think about how we work together, I think of going back to one strategy, one team. So we’re all going to be part of that. It’s going to be critical that we have that interface going forward.

ADRIANNE JEFFRIES: And is Terry there?

TERRY MYERSON: Yes. I thought Julie and Tony had it very well said. We’ve got innovative ideas coming from our OEM partners, and Julie’s team has some very innovative ideas. And the platform needs to span from the PPI whiteboard that Tony talked about to Xbox, to our phone, and beyond. So it’s exciting to have all these hardware partners in the Windows ecosystem, or in the Microsoft ecosystem, and all the innovative ideas and to bring it to market together.

FRANK SHAW : Thanks very much. Next question.

(Operator direction.)

JUAN PEREZ, International Data Group: Hello, thanks for taking my call. I assume that under the Applications and Services Group, you have under that division consumer online services like Bing and also the Office stack, including Word, Excel, as well as the server side products like SharePoint and Exchange. If you guys could comment on what’s the goal there and what you hope to accomplish with that particular product realignment?

STEVE BALLMER: Qi Lu will handle that one.

QI LU: Yes, thanks for the questions. So if you look at our strategy, the key focus is for Microsoft to deliver scenarios that enable our users to pursue activities they value the most. The new groups, the application services groups for Bing, as we mentioned, our mission is always to help people not just find information, but complete tasks, because when people search, they’re always doing search in the context of accomplishing a task. They look at Office — its strong, strong server assets enable people to get more done. Skype in our new division is a key asset in Lync, to connect all the people, because you do all these things always in the context of collaborating, sharing with somebody else.

So from that perspective, the Application and Services Group’s fundamental focus is to use all those assets to truly deliver high-value scenarios that enable our users to accomplish their goals doing things they value the most.

STEVE BALLMER: One other thing I would add is one of the technologies we believe in very much is machine learning, and we need to both develop more capabilities that serve our users through our applications, as well as make machine learning basically a strong service to support other developers. And maybe Satya can just talk a little bit about kind of where we’re going with the cloud and some of the things we’re trying to do as we learn from our own first-party applications.

SATYA NADELLA: Yes. Our strategy as far as the cloud goes, it all stems from this one strategy and mission that the company has. So if you look at our cloud footprint, in fact, it starts with all of the first-party applications from Xbox Live to Bing to Office 365. So we build the cloud infrastructure and our datacenter footprint in support of our first-party applications. That not only battle tests our infrastructure, which then we provide to our third parties, both as a public cloud service in Windows Azure, as well as our server products, and our server products are increasingly getting better because of that reinforcing cycle we have with our first party.

And machine learning is one set of technologies that we learned in Bing, now we are productizing as a set of services inside of Windows Azure and the data services that we have, and that is something that you will see in many other instances as well.

FRANK SHAW : Thanks. Next question. Operator, next question.

EDWARD CHEN, Reuters: Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. So there’s a sense out there that there’s been a growing level of, how do you say, an unproductive proliferation of red tape, and even a little infighting in past years that might have stifled, as you say, time to market for products. To what extent was that a part of your thinking and planning in this reorganization? And kind of a follow-up question to that, does this effectively hand more direct control over the process to Steve?

STEVE BALLMER: Let me make a comment or two and then pass it to Lisa. We spent as a leadership team literally hundreds of hours over the last six months further developing this notion of devices and services; what capabilities does the company need to really execute well? What capabilities do we need in engineering, operations, sales, in our business development function in order to reach out more effectively? How do we add depth to it? And we’ve really fleshed out what we’re thinking about high-value activity. How do we really execute on it?

Qi Lu likes to say we have to be more like a football team — that is, we all play a specific position, and we run every play together — than we do like a baseball team where athletes are oftentimes more individual in their orientation, if you will. And so from strategy to execution, we’ve been driven on this thing. And I think that’s quite important.

The truth of the matter is a company this size doesn’t run in any one person’s brain. And in a way. it’s much better a way to run the company, because now every day we have a whole group that’s involved in the company strategy as opposed to just a handful of people who are involved in the whole company strategy. And I think it lets us go stronger and deeper as a leadership team, frankly, than our old approach.

Lisa Brummel maybe wants to make a comment or two also.

LISA BRUMMEL: I’ll just add that I think bureaucracy stems from people trying to translate how they should work together. And when you have singular units, you have to put in a lot of translation layers. As we go to one strategy and one team, there’s a lot less translation that needs to happen, and I think that’s what you’re going to see going forward.

FRANK SHAW : Great. Thank you, and we have time for one more question, Operator.

RICHARD WATERS, Financial Times: Thank you. Hello. Does this mean that senior managers won’t have direct profit/loss account responsibility that they might have had before? And, if so, how are you going to hold people accountable, and what kind of measures are you going to use; what kind of incentives and measures are actually going to make this new senior management team work?

STEVE BALLMER: Suffice it to say, the level of accountability we all feel for the success of the company rises when we all have to look at the company’s integrated profitability. I’ll let Amy talk a little bit about sort of the concepts. I don’t know that we’ll go into the specifics, but the concepts in terms of how we’re thinking. And there are pieces, obviously, that will have to have attention.

When it comes time to how we’re doing with our consulting business, which is a multibillion dollar business that doesn’t get discussed much, I think we’re all pretty clear. Kevin is on point. He thinks about it. He lives it. He eats it. He breathes it. He sleeps it every day. And I sleep well knowing that. There will be pieces, but I think the problem we’ve had in a sense — not the problem, but the opportunity we have — is if you subdivide the thing into too fine a set of parts you don’t think about your R&D investments as a general corporate resource that should be repurposed and used very broadly. It’s my resources, my business, and so this notion even from a P&L and resourcing perspective of getting to a one Microsoft strategy is very important, and yet we need to have strong financial accountability, and maybe Amy can talk about that.

AMY HOOD: Yes, I would not say that  I wouldn’t necessarily associate this new org chart to any reduction in accountability from a financial perspective. I think we have always thought about personal accountability around this table to product success. And I think that will not change in the new organizational structure. Steve’s used words like that already. I think whether we call it accountability or a P&L or financial accountability, it will still remain just as it has in the past.

STEVE BALLMER: In fact, because of the focus on increasing discipline expertise, particularly in a devices-and-services world, we have a basis to improve our financial accountability particularly in these new delivery formats where frankly it’s different to deliver something that has production costs than it is software, which basically has no production costs, and we’re going to get excellent at that, and part of accountability and excellence is what drives us in this transformation.

FRANK SHAW : Thank you very much. That wraps up our Q&A. We appreciate you taking the time today and the opportunity for us to talk a little bit more about what we announced today, and that concludes our event.

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The C.E.O.s Who Just Won’t Quit

What happens to a company — and the economy — when the boss refuses to retire?

Credit... Hannah Whitaker for The New York Times

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By Emma Goldberg

Emma Goldberg is a business reporter for The Times focusing on the culture of the workplace. She has covered the rise of corporate personality testing, the shrinking of downtown economies and how anticapitalism reached top business schools.

• May 9, 2024

In September 2013, in a darkened auditorium, Microsoft’s chief executive, Steve Ballmer, faced a roaring crowd of his employees. “You work for the greatest company in the world,” he bellowed. “Soak it in!” Ballmer was known for his exuberance. He had been nicknamed “Monkey Boy” for the bar-mitzvah-style dance moves he deployed to motivate employees at another company meeting. He once damaged his vocal cords while giving a presentation on software.

Listen to this article, read by Sarah Mollo-Christensen

Even so, there are few scenarios in which a middle-aged corporate executive can be treated like an aging rock star by thousands of fawning employees. But on this day, Ballmer was doing something truly admirable: He was retiring. “Microsoft is like a fourth child to me,” he said as he left the company’s stage, his eyes glistening with tears, to the opening chords of “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life.”

Ballmer’s retirement earned him the corporate equivalent of a Viking’s funeral. But most people seemed to agree that his departure, 14 years after he took over the company from his college classmate Bill Gates, should have happened years earlier. Around the time Ballmer announced his plans to go, the company’s stock price was lower than when he started the job. The media was bemoaning Microsoft’s “ lost decade .” While its tech rivals had seized on new markets, Microsoft had changed fairly little. Apple dominated smartphones, Google prevailed in search and giants like Facebook — which didn’t even exist when Ballmer took the reins — stood atop a whole new sector of the economy. With the arrival of Ballmer’s successor, Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s stock price soared.

Of the many riddles that confront corporate chief executives in the course of their work, perhaps the most important is when to quit. It’s the maneuver that cements a C.E.O.’s legacy. The cost of overstaying is steep, especially when tallied in missed opportunities: Ballmer famously scoffed at the invention of the iPhone, believing that businesspeople would never want it because it didn’t have a keyboard. Reflecting on Ballmer’s leadership, the Harvard Business School executive fellow Bill George told me: “It was obvious certainly at the 10-year mark, maybe before, what he was doing was cheering on the strategies Bill Gates had put in place.”

Over the last several decades, as Americans have lived longer, career has become the ascendant source of meaning in a country increasingly eschewing religion. And now, perhaps inevitably, workers of all kinds and levels say they are going to defer retirement. That’s especially true of striving and hard-driving institutional leaders; just look to Washington D.C. But particularly for the people running corporate America, the reasons to overstay in leadership are even more compelling. There’s the authority, the personal assistant, the corner-office views, the feeling of being needed, the flattering, the deference and, of course, the money. American chief-executive pay in 2022, across the S&P 500, averaged $16.7 million. When power and pay is that densely concentrated, people will cling to it whether or not it’s good for business.

The executives with the longest tenures — Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway (54 years), Jamie Dimon of J.P. Morgan (18 years) and Jensen Huang of Nvidia (31 years) — often get to stay so long because they’re considered effective. But even for them, long tenures can become excessive and ill advised. A chief executive who overstays might make a rushed decision about succession — and putting the wrong person in charge can be unimaginably costly.

But just what constitutes overstaying is hardly clear. The ideal tenure is 4.8 years according to a group of researchers scattered across several universities in the United States and China who studied 356 businesses from 2000 to 2010 and tried to measure their health with factors including stock price and product quality. It could very well be longer. When the search firm Spencer Stuart examined every S&P 500 chief executive over more than two decades, it determined that the companies had some of their highest performing years once their chief executives had put in 11 to 15 years of their own. And according to George, the sweet spot is around a decade.

After advising dozens of chief executives over the years, George has found that when top bosses stay too long, they become risk-averse. He believes that long-serving leaders tend to fixate on short-term stock prices because they crave validation of the strategies that defined their tenure. With every passing year, it gets harder for them to accept when they are being shortsighted — that’s just part of the job.

“Most leaders, left to their own devices, will not know when it’s the right time for them to leave,” says Ranjay Gulati, a professor at Harvard Business School. “It’s really hard to stay grounded and humble when everyone is telling you you’re right.”

In the early 1980s, with C.E.O. compensation and corporate profits ballooning, Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, now a professor of business at Yale, embarked on a project to interview 100 of the country’s top chief executives and study their retirement plans. The result was his 1988 book, “The Hero’s Farewell,” in which Sonnenfeld maps C.E.O. approaches to retirement onto a matrix partly inspired by the psychoanalyst Otto Rank, a student of Sigmund Freud’s. On the Y axis is the desire to be immortal; on the X axis is the desire to be seen as a hero.

In Sonnenfeld’s taxonomy, the executive who wants both heroism and immortality is the “monarch,” like Rupert Murdoch of Fox or Sumner Redstone of Viacom. The executive driven mainly by heroism is the “general,” like Disney’s Bob Iger, who was ready to move on but felt called back to clean up a corporate mess. The executive who wants to be immortal is the “governor,” someone who hops from one C.E.O. job to the next. And the executive driven by neither is the “ambassador,” comfortable with stepping back and having good relationships with successors. Paradoxically, it’s those executives so attached to their reputations that they can’t move on who can end up ruining the legacies they painstakingly built.

When Sandy Weill was the top dog at Citigroup, he was clear about what he sought in a successor: loyalty. He recommended Chuck Prince, who, Weill recounted in his memoir, “understood my thought process like no one else.” Weill called up Prince and invited him to the Adirondacks for the Fourth of July weekend in 2003, intending to offer up the job. Prince balked because he wanted to spend the holiday in Nantucket with his fiancée, so Weill recalled offering to fly him back and forth. In the end, Prince accepted the role. Weill celebrated, seemingly content with the transition process, which he detailed in his book “The Real Deal,” released three years later.

But perhaps the tell-all came too soon. In the two years that followed its publication, Citi was toppled by the financial crisis, torpedoed by its own risky investments, watched its shares plummet from $55 to about a dollar, lost billions of dollars and had to be repeatedly bailed out by American taxpayers. Prince was pushed out, and he and Weill stopped speaking. In interviews at the tail end of the financial crisis, Weill conceded he had failed in his approach to succession and blamed many of the bank’s problems on Prince. (Weill did not respond to a request for comment. Prince declined to comment.)

Sonnenfeld views Weill as a classic example of a monarch, someone whose drive for legacy prompted him to overstay. Monarchs tend to surround themselves with loyalists, creating boards that are loath to push them out. But the reasons C.E.O.s on the verge of retirement often avoid it are, generally speaking, more predictable.

“I won’t have a jet!” That’s what Peter Crist tends to hear from executives wondering whether to retire. Crist is a corporate recruiter who has been advising executives for nearly 50 years. “I need more airplanes,” he says. “I need more trappings. That’s definitely in the DNA of some people — not all — who just cannot give up the reins.”

“Everywhere you go, people defer to you,” is what Bob Sutton, a former Stanford professor and an executive adviser, often hears from those resisting retirement. One corporate leader, Toby Cosgrove, told him: “When I became C.E.O. of the Cleveland Clinic, I became better-looking, and my jokes got funnier.” (“There’s no question my jokes got funnier,” Cosgrove told me.) Sutton describes why executives overstay in leadership using a mnemonic device, the four “P”s: power, prestige, privilege and pay. Given that so many are male, one of his colleagues added, there might be a fifth as well.

Charles O’Reilly, a Stanford professor who studies narcissism in leaders, noted that many come to believe almost messianically that they are the sole figures capable of steering their companies, a belief reflected in the Silicon Valley joke about Oracle’s chief executive who stayed on 37 years: “The difference between God and Larry Ellison is that God doesn’t think he’s Larry Ellison.”

After a C.E.O. spends close to 20 years running a company, and after hauling that company from financial precarity to prosperity, it’s tempting for him to believe that nobody else is qualified for the top job. “You interview a million people, and you will be hard pressed to find anyone who loves his company and loves what they do as much as I do,” says Greg Brown, 63, who has been chief executive of Motorola since 2008. “I don’t even consider it work. I don’t have hobbies.”

The chief executive of KnowBe4, a Florida-based cybersecurity company, reacted to the notion of retirement as though he had been nudged to wear his dirty laundry to the office. “Oh my God, retirement? Boo! Hiss!” said Stu Sjouwerman, 67, who has run the company since its founding 14 years ago, waking up at 6 a.m. to chug matcha tea and spending weekends writing newsletters on industry trends for his customers. (“I feel 25!” he told me.) Asked when he would be ready to step down as chief executive, Sjouwerman didn’t skip a beat.

“When I die,” he said.

Then he turned to his chief of staff, chuckling, to repeat both the question and his own response: “Lauren, ‘When do you know you’ll be ready to step down as C.E.O.?’ When I die!” She burst out laughing, right on cue.

Chip Bergh, who ran the denim company Levi’s for nearly 13 years, might fall into Sonnenfeld’s “ambassador” camp. Bergh, 66, retired this spring. When he started, the company was in a slump. During his tenure, its revenue grew by 55 percent, and last year Levi’s was the top-selling denim brand worldwide. When Bergh arrived at the company, he decided to focus on making the brand feel relevant again. He seized on moments when celebrities wore Levi’s — like when Beyoncé wore cutoff shorts at Coachella in 2018 — and pushed products like the now omnipresent T-shirts with the red “bat wing” logo. He also knew that his priorities wouldn’t sustain company growth forever.

Bergh’s board members, he recalled, encouraged him to pick a “mini Chip” as his successor. But he was more interested in someone with new talents. He and the board chose Michelle Gass, who previously ran Kohl’s and had retail experience to offer. Levi’s is trying to sell more directly to customers in its own shops, instead of in the crowded corners of superstores.

Bergh has been out of the job for roughly three months. “I can honestly say I don’t really miss it,” he told me. But Bergh may be unusual; most chief executives find the transition daunting. “Many are terrified about life after power,” says Jim Citrin, who leads the C.E.O. advisory group at Spencer Stuart. “They’re terrified that they’re not going to have their phone calls returned.”

“They get home, their kids yell at them, their wife complains they’re not paying attention and they’re told to do the dishes and go shopping,” says Sutton, the executive adviser. O’Reilly, the Stanford professor, remembers speaking with one chief executive who woke up the morning after retiring, agreed to get breakfast with his wife and then unthinkingly got in the back seat of his car expecting to be chauffeured.

In 2022, Eileen Fisher announced that she was transitioning out of being the C.E.O. of her apparel company, but has stayed so involved that her successor has a metaphor to describe their different leadership styles. “I joke that she’s the fun mom who lets everyone stay up late having a dance party,” Lisa Williams, the new chief executive, says. “I’m the uptight mom fretting about getting the people to bed on time with the next day’s lunch already made.”

The night that Steve Ballmer stepped down from running Microsoft, he went out to dinner with his best friend and his wife at a swanky Seattle restaurant, and got emotional thinking about who he would be when he wasn’t in charge of a $300 billion company, when his email address wasn’t [email protected]. It was hard to picture — that life would continue when thousands of people weren’t hanging onto his every decision, that the company’s software would keep humming along without him in charge.

“People say, ‘Well, I love what I do — will I ever love anything else as much?’” Ballmer, now 68, told me recently. “The message I would have for people is that it is an abyss. But life’s going to change at some point anyway.” He has mixed emotions about post-Microsoft life. Though he misses the all-consuming sense of purpose, he did regain some freedom: “There’s nobody other than my wife who can tell me how to spend my time.”

In June, Bill George, the Harvard Business School fellow, will teach a newly added course for former chief executives on how to fill their lives after corporate leadership. When he’s doling out advice to these almost-retirees, he tends to recycle a few nuggets of wisdom: Don’t make commitments for the first year; involve your spouses in decisions about where to live and what to chase next. He runs people through a checklist of questions. How is succession shaping up? What parts of your personal life have you been neglecting? But George’s basic advice would be familiar to anyone staring down retirement: Stay busy.

That’s something that Garry Ridge, 67, the former head of WD-40, has taken seriously. When Ridge stepped down after 25 years leading the household lubricant company, he lined up a bunch of work, including coaching other C.E.O.s on topics like succession, and working on his book, “Any Dumb Ass Can Do It.” Ridge has had to adjust to no longer having his executive assistant, Holly, manage his life. He has recently learned how to use calendar apps. And he confesses that if he hadn’t had shareholders to answer to, he might have handled stepping down differently — less like an ambassador and more like a king.

“If WD-40 was a private company,” he says, “I’d probably be a bit like Warren Buffett and say ‘I’m never leaving.’”

Prop stylist (opening pages): Noemi Bonazzi

Read by Sarah Mollo-Christensen

Narration produced by Anna Diamond and Tanya Pérez

Engineered by Sharon Kearney

Emma Goldberg is a business reporter covering workplace culture and the ways work is evolving in a time of social and technological change. More about Emma Goldberg

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Bill Gates never left

Insiders say he's still pulling the strings at Microsoft

In 2017, just before Microsoft forged a partnership with a then relatively unknown startup called OpenAI, Bill Gates shared a memo with CEO Satya Nadella and a small group of the company's top executives. A new world order, Gates predicted, would soon be brought on by what he called "AI agents" — digital personal assistants that could anticipate our every want and need. These agents would be far more powerful than Siri and Alexa, with godlike knowledge and supernatural intuition.

"Agents are not only going to change how everyone interacts with computers," Gates wrote. "They're also going to upend the software industry, bringing about the biggest revolution in computing since we went from typing commands to tapping on icons."

At the time, the memo struck those who read it as far-fetched. "It seemed super futuristic," a Microsoft executive who spoke on the condition of anonymity said. Microsoft had been widely mocked for its previous attempts at creating personal "agents," from its failed Office assistant Clippy to its racist chatbot, Tay. Few at the time would have believed a new generation of these agents would transform Microsoft.

Today, though, it's clear that Gates' secret correspondence anticipated Copilot, the artificial-intelligence tool that has helped propel Microsoft to become the world's most valuable public company. Powered by a version of OpenAI's GPT large language model, Copilot debuted last year as a tool within Microsoft products to help users with tasks such as preparing presentations and summarizing meetings. "Copilot now sounds exactly like what he wrote," the executive said.

That's not by accident.

Publicly, Gates has been almost entirely out of the picture at Microsoft since 2021, following allegations that he had behaved inappropriately toward female employees. In fact, Business Insider has learned, Gates has been quietly orchestrating much of Microsoft's AI revolution from behind the scenes. Current and former executives say Gates remains intimately involved in the company's operations — advising on strategy, reviewing products, recruiting high-level executives, and nurturing Microsoft's crucial relationship with Sam Altman, the cofounder and CEO of OpenAI. In early 2023, when Microsoft debuted a version of its search engine Bing turbocharged by the same technology as ChatGPT, throwing down the gauntlet against competitors like Google, Gates, executives said, was pivotal in setting the plan in motion. While Nadella might be the public face of the company's AI success — the Oz who built the yellow-brick road to a $3 trillion juggernaut — Gates has been the man behind the curtain.

"What you read is not what's happening in reality," another Microsoft executive said. "Satya and the entire senior leadership team lean on Gates very significantly. His opinion is sought every time we make a major change."

When Nadella took over the reins from Steve Ballmer a decade ago, Microsoft was seen as a dinosaur of the computer age it had helped pioneer. Peter Thiel bashed the company as "a bet against technological innovation." So Nadella, who had worked at Microsoft since 1992, turned to his former boss for help. On the day Nadella became CEO, he asked Gates to spend 30% of his time as a technical advisor, in part to help motivate his staff. "When I say, 'Hey, I want you to go run this by Bill,' I know they're going to do their best job prepping for it," he told Wired at the time.

In 2020, when Gates stepped down as chair of Microsoft's board, Nadella showered him with praise. The company, Nadella promised, would "continue to benefit from Bill's ongoing technical passion and advice to drive our products and services forward."

But a year later, Nadella's embrace of Gates appeared to change — at least publicly. In 2021, as Gates and his wife, Melinda, were divorcing, The Wall Street Journal reported that Gates had been forced to step down as the company investigated him for having an affair with an employee. As news of Gates' misconduct went viral, the squeaky-clean reputation he and his public-relations team had meticulously crafted over the years unraveled . Several female employees came forward with stories of Gates asking them out, and his meetings with Jeffrey Epstein, including a flight on Epstein's private jet, came under renewed scrutiny. Suddenly, Nadella's mentor had become his greatest liability, and he and Microsoft quickly distanced themselves from Gates.

"The Microsoft of 2021 is very different from the Microsoft of 2000," Nadella said at the time. "The power dynamic in the workplace is not something that can be abused in any form." The company's greatest responsibility, he later added, is "cultivating a culture where everyone is empowered to do meaningful work."

But among the people whom Nadella secretly empowered to do meaningful work, BI has learned, was Gates himself. Rather than banishing him from the company, Nadella continued to draw on his advice and expertise — making Gates a key player in Microsoft's efforts to vie for dominance in AI.

The common lore about Microsoft's marriage with OpenAI is that it was brokered by Kevin Scott, the company's chief technology officer. Scott had known Altman for years, and in summer 2018, he arranged a meeting between Altman and Nadella. Later that year, the three men hammered out an initial deal, and the rest is history.

According to two executives, Gates' memo treated as gospel, sparking Microsoft's push to take the lead in the AI arms race.

But lost in that origin story is that Gates had been regularly meeting with OpenAI since 2016. Ever since he published "The Road Ahead" in 1995, Gates had been dreaming of a world in which everyone would navigate the internet using software that would "have a personality you'll be able to talk to in one form or another" and that would "learn about your requirements and preferences in much the way that a human assistant does." Under Gates' leadership, Microsoft had launched several primitive and widely ridiculed versions of agents — from Rover, a cartoon dog that guided you through Windows 95, to Clippy, the most hated paperclip of all time. Now, it seemed, OpenAI might offer Microsoft a way to help forge the AI future that Gates had long envisioned. After the two companies formed their partnership, OpenAI's leaders conducted regular presentations for Gates at his 66,000-square-foot mansion in Washington, keeping him apprised of critical benchmarks and significant obstacles.

It was Gates, in fact, who played a pivotal role in turning OpenAI and Microsoft into a power couple. In mid-2022 — two years after he was ousted from the board — he privately challenged Altman and OpenAI to create a model capable of passing an Advanced Placement biology exam. Gates didn't think it could be done. Altman and OpenAI debuted GPT-4 for the first time outside the company at Gates' house in August 2022 during a dinner; Nadella was among the guests. When it aced the test, Gates was shocked, calling it "the most stunning demo I've ever seen in my life."

The demo prompted Gates to write another memo — what one former executive referred to as " the memo" — spelling out how Microsoft should use GPT-4. Gates stressed that the large language model, trained on the entirety of the public internet, could finally usher in the era of personal agents. "Think of it as a digital personal assistant," he wrote in a version of that memo later posted on his blog. "It will see your latest emails, know about the meetings you attend, read what you read, and read the things you don't want to bother with."

According to two executives, Gates' words were treated as gospel, helping spark Microsoft's push to take the lead in the AI arms race. Soon after Gates' dinner, Nadella hosted a meeting on Microsoft's campus, where he challenged the teams to incorporate AI into search, cybersecurity, and its Microsoft 365 suite of business applications, which includes Word and Outlook.

Early the following year, Microsoft introduced a new version of its beleaguered search engine, Bing — now turbocharged with a GPT-enabled agent that would later be named Copilot. Almost overnight, thanks to Gates' maneuvering, Microsoft had transformed Bing from a search engine on life support to an AI-powered tool that had a chance to give Google a run for its money.

In February 2023, Microsoft held an event at its headquarters similar to a Steve Jobs iPhone launch. Nadella, beaming, declared war on Google. Gates did not appear to be in attendance.

Today, Gates remains close with Altman, who visits his home a few times a year, and OpenAI seeks his counsel on developments. There's a "tight coupling" between Gates and OpenAI, a person familiar with the relationship said. "Sam and Bill are good friends. OpenAI takes his opinion and consult overall seriously." OpenAI spokesperson Kayla Wood confirmed OpenAI continues to meet with Gates.

Last fall, Nadella and Microsoft scrambled to quell the chaos when OpenAI's board abruptly fired Altman. Frank Shaw, a Microsoft spokesperson, told BI that if Gates was speaking with Altman, it was not on behalf of the company. "Bill is not at Microsoft and not involved here," Shaw told BI at the time.

During the five-day fracas that followed, Gates — with his own recent experience with an ouster — reached out to Altman to offer support as he negotiated a return to the leadership of OpenAI.

Today, insiders say Gates' sway at Microsoft extends far beyond OpenAI.

Executives from across the company — including its business-applications boss, Charles Lamanna; its chief scientist, Jaime Teevan; its Teams chat-app boss, Jeff Teper; and its head of cybersecurity, Charlie Bell — meet regularly with Gates to review products. He's also personally involved in recruiting and retaining important executives for Microsoft. "Gates is very involved with product reviews and one-on-ones with executives," a former executive said. Last year, Gates told Forbes he spent about 10% of his time in Redmond, Washington, advising Microsoft on product road maps.

Gates over years has also pushed Microsoft to be more consumer-focused, despite many consumer technology failures. In March, many observers were shocked when the company announced it was hiring Mustafa Suleyman, who cofounded DeepMind and spent many years at Google, to lead a new consumer-AI organization. "Bill G. thinks the major opportunity is consumers," one insider said. "If you look at the new consumer-AI organization, that looks like Bill's influence on Satya." Shaw said Gates was not involved in hiring Suleyman.

All this is a far cry from the perception that Gates has been kept at a distance ever since he was ousted from the board. Gates, who has continued to keep a low profile, has emerged from the scandal largely unscathed; today, the allegations of his misconduct aren't even mentioned in his Wikipedia entry. The Microsoft of 2024, it appears, is not as different from the Microsoft of 2021 as Nadella would have everyone believe. Gates is not gone, but his checkered past has been largely forgotten.

Shaw said there hadn't been any substantial changes in Gates' role as a technical advisor since he left the board in 2020. The "insistence on portraying the role of Bill Gates as 'pulling strings' at Microsoft," he told BI, "is fundamentally inaccurate and at odds with reality." Gates declined an interview request and his representative did not respond to a request for comment.

Near the end of "The Road Ahead," Gates got existential. "It's a little scary that as computer technology has moved ahead, there's never been a leader from one era who was also a leader in the next," he lamented at the ripe age of 39. "So from a historical perspective, I guess Microsoft is disqualified from leading in the highway era of the Information Age."

Then the middle-aged Gates revealed his true ambition: "I want to defy historical tradition."

Now approaching 70, Gates is still defying history — this time from behind the scenes. And if the revived fortunes of Microsoft are any indication, he appears to be winning.

April 30, 2024: This story has been updated with an additional comment from Microsoft.

Ashley Stewart is a chief technology correspondent at Business Insider. She reports on enterprise technology companies including Microsoft and Amazon Web Services from Seattle.

Are you a Microsoft employee or someone else with insight to share? Contact Ashley Stewart via email ( [email protected] ), or send a secure message from a nonwork device via Signal (+1-425-344-8242).

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After another early exit, the Clippers proved you can’t buy NBA glory

Former Microsoft executive Steve Ballmer has poured unlimited resources into the Clippers, but they continue to come up short in the postseason.

Over the past three seasons, Los Angeles Clippers owner Steve Ballmer has spent more money on player salaries than all of his rivals except the Golden State Warriors. The Clippers’ payroll topped $200 million this season alone, a staggering sum that reflected only a small percentage of the former Microsoft executive’s investment in his passion project. Ballmer paid a then-record $2 billion to buy the Clippers in 2014 , and he has spent an estimated $2 billion more to construct Intuit Dome, his futuristic new arena that opens in Inglewood, Calif., next season.

But Ballmer’s decade of decadent spending has proved that money can buy respectability in the NBA — but not glory.

The Dallas Mavericks eliminated the Clippers from the playoffs with a 114-101 home victory Friday in Game 6, sending Ballmer and company home in the first round for the second straight season after they missed the postseason altogether in 2022. Though the series began on an optimistic note with an impressive Game 1 victory , the Clippers spiraled into another early exit. Franchise forward Kawhi Leonard returned from an extended absence because of a knee injury for Games 2 and 3, but his limited mobility and ineffective play disrupted the team’s rhythm and chemistry. The Clippers shut him down before Game 4 and subsequently crumbled without him.

With the series tied at 2 entering Wednesday’s Game 5, the Clippers lived down to their long-standing reputation as big-game flakes with a demoralizing 123-93 home loss. This was sour note stuff: The Clippers’ final home game after 25 years at downtown Los Angeles’s Crypto.com Arena was their worst playoff loss in franchise history. The Mavericks followed that up with an emphatic Game 6 win as their star tandem of Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving easily outplayed Paul George, James Harden and Russell Westbrook.

“When you’re in that small group of teams that have a chance and you don’t quite get everything out of what you put into it, it’s frustrating,” said George, who had 18 points on 6-for-18 shooting in the finale. “We didn’t do enough to move on. That’s on us.”

With another campaign ending with a whimper, it’s fair to ask what, exactly, the Clippers have to show for Ballmer’s generosity.

In the 10 seasons before his arrival, back when the disgraced Donald Sterling was still the owner , the Clippers tallied a .463 winning percentage — a 38-win clip across an 82-game season. During Ballmer’s run, that number has jumped to .605 — equal to a 50-win clip. In the 10 seasons before Ballmer, the Clippers won three playoff series and missed the postseason six times. Under Ballmer, they have won four series, made the franchise’s first Western Conference finals trip in 2021 and missed the playoffs just twice.

Ballmer’s billions have buoyed the Clippers through countless injuries to Chris Paul, Blake Griffin, Leonard and George, ensuring the Clippers’ lows aren’t nearly as low as they were under Sterling, who was banned by NBA Commissioner Adam Silver for making racist remarks.

But the highs the free-spending Warriors have enjoyed — four championships and six Finals appearances since 2015 — have nevertheless proved elusive. Golden State cultivated a long championship window because it drafted centerpieces Stephen Curry, Draymond Green and Klay Thompson; Ballmer, by contrast, unsuccessfully attempted to reverse-engineer a contender in 2019 by poaching Leonard in free agency and trading a huge stockpile of draft capital to acquire George.

Besides his ambitious arena project and his big swings for Leonard and George, Ballmer has poured resources into his coaching staff, front office, practice facility and medical team, plus a host of community service initiatives. He has paid up to keep his stars in place and bolstered his team’s depth with midseason trades in recent years. He then acquired Harden from the Philadelphia 76ers last fall to add a fourth future Hall of Famer to his roster.

The go-for-broke strategy worked well enough during the regular season — Los Angeles ran off an impressive 26-5 stretch starting in December and finished fourth in the tough Western Conference with 51 wins — but it predictably went belly up in the playoffs. The Clippers were the NBA’s oldest team, and they showed their age against the Mavericks. Leonard, 32, was unable to complete the season healthy for the fourth straight campaign. George, 34, and Harden, 34, lacked the stamina to score consistently in the decisive final two games. Westbrook, 35, was almost entirely useless, shooting 26 percent for the series.

“It’s always the what if,” Clippers Coach Tyronn Lue said, nodding to Leonard’s absence. “I give our guys credit for sticking with it through all the ups and downs and all the negative scrutiny. ... There’s nothing I would correct. We did what we had to do. We fought through a lot of adversity. We got to this point, and it’s just unfortunate we ended up shorthanded.”

The major theme of this NBA postseason has been a wholesale changing of the guard: Veteran headliners such as LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Curry, Jimmy Butler and Damian Lillard have been replaced by younger stars such as Doncic, Anthony Edwards, Jayson Tatum, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Tyrese Haliburton. The Clippers, like the Warriors, Los Angeles Lakers and Phoenix Suns, are clearly on the wrong side of the trend.

Leonard, George, Harden and Westbrook are years removed from their most effective postseason play. While Leonard smartly inked a three-year, $152 million extension in January , George has a $48.8 million player option for next season and Harden is set to be an unrestricted free agent this summer. The Clippers must decide whether they want to re-sign George and Harden — knowing they can’t realistically deliver a championship at this stage of their careers — or attempt to retool with a younger and less expensive roster.

Of course, George and Harden will have their own say in the matter. Given this summer’s weak free agent crop, George will enjoy healthy interest from outside suitors. Harden, however, will have fewer options after repeatedly burning bridges during recent stints with the Houston Rockets, Brooklyn Nets and Philadelphia 76ers.

George was noncommittal when asked about his future with the Clippers, although he said he could envision himself continuing to play with Leonard and Harden.

“Yeah, if it works that way, absolutely,” he said. “I haven’t even got to that yet. I look forward to going back and just letting everything decompress. Talk to my family. Be around family support and then address the next step.”

Ballmer’s history as owner suggests he would rather vastly overpay for the privilege of playoff embarrassment than save some money and risk falling back into the lottery. If that philosophy holds, George and Harden are likely to be major offseason winners.

The same goes for Lue, who said he hopes to sign a contract extension with the Clippers after he surfaced as a possible candidate to replace Darvin Ham, who was fired as coach of the Lakers on Friday .

“I didn’t come here to bounce around and go all over the place,” Lue said. “This is where I want to be. Hopefully, [the Clippers] feel the same way. ... [Ballmer] is a real fan. He treats us like family. He genuinely cares about each individual. When you have an owner who really respects who you are as a person, that means a lot. He cares about the wins. He’s fired up and passionate about it.”