21st Century Leadership of the IT leader-Bill Gates
A Leader is a person that steers an organization towards its cherished goal successfully, resolving all problems and hindrances that come in the way. A leader inspires his followers to achieve, guides them and supports them so that they are able to realize his vision. He makes the decisions for his team, assigns responsibility, monitors progress and takes corrective action if necessary. A leader enjoys the faith of his followers implicitly and they are willing to obey him unconditionally. He is the one who has the responsibility of visualizing the future and guiding an organization towards it.
The Leadership style described here is of Bill Gates; the founder, Ex CEO and the present Technological advisor of Microsoft Inc., who has in the last years enhanced the position of the company to one of the most leading brands in the IT industry. As a 21st century leader, he has understood the areas in which the organization should have an edge above others to be a leading brand in the industry and planned towards achieving it. Bill Gates has visualized years ago that his venture would lead the IT industry and has realized his vision.
Leadership Style
Throughout the progress of his career he has displayed a combination of leadership styles that culminated in his personal as well as organizational excellence. He is a democratic type of leader; he encourages others in the team to express their views issues freely and even takes them into account while making plans, yet when it comes to implementing decisions he is authoritative. He decides what is to be done, explains it to the team and then delegates the responsibilities, so that everyone knows their assigned part. He has also presented a progressive side of his style by incorporating new technology in the processes to ensure better quality, thus maintaining the competitive edge over his rivals and is looked upon as a pace setter. He demonstrates an easy going yet firm attitude and clearly knows his mind. He has proved again and again that his predictions are accurate and so his peers can rely on him. His farsightedness about computers becoming an indispensible part of daily life and working towards fulfilling the requirement for software to operate them has been able to influence his stakeholders to win their trust. There are many authors who have reflected on Bill Gates style as being coercive to the point of being harsh but have argued that this style is very effective in challenging employees to surpass their own performance (Goleman. D, Et al, 2001, 45). Apart from the leadership traits, he has a keen intellect and a thorough knowledge about programming which is the core competence of Microsoft, giving strength to his leadership qualities. To summarize the leadership style of Bill Gates we can say that he is a visionary who exhibits a democratic style of leadership combined with authoritative and progressive bent of mind.
Organizational Structure and culture
Microsoft is a public limited company and is run by a board of directors mainly consisting of outsiders and Bill Gates is one of the board members. The Board of Directors is headed by a Chairman and runs the organization through a CEO. Bill Gates who was the youngest CEO of his company at the age of 24 has relinquished the position to Satya Nadella and remains in the company as a technological advisor. The division heads report to the CEO and each division has its own hierarchical structure. Thus the structure of Microsoft represents a centralized system with autonomy to the divisions. It can be inferred from the organizational structure that Bill Gates believes in delegating key responsibilities to people who he believes have the talents necessary in specific areas. This lets him concentrate on his strategy of global expansion through developing and acquiring technological expertise and his philanthropic pursuits.
The organizational culture in Microsoft is informal, encourages transparency and employee participation in decision making. Microsoft has one of the best computational work forces and management of its human capital to get the best performance is one of the objectives of the company. Bill Gates takes an innovative approach to motivate his key employees. This is evident from his policy of letting the executives decide their own methods of unwinding after a hectic schedule. This shows a participative approach of leadership, which motivates an employee to perform better because he feels that he is in charge of his own activities. Another way of showing his appreciation for employees is the CEO’s personal involvement in the disbursement of rewards, a factor that motivates his staff to deliver their best. Of course all this is in addition to monetary rewards, in accordance with performance standards specified before. He encourages the executives to apply their own discretion in making decisions and has empowered them to act as per the demand of the situation. In spite of urging its employees to excel in their performance Microsoft encourages its employees to maintain a work – life harmony and promotes flexibility in policies to accommodate the limitations of its employees (Cava, M.D. 2015). Cava also observes that the organizational culture in Microsoft is changing with the changing times; the emphasis is more on employee welfare as compared to the previous coercive pressure to perform. But the organizational vision of being the leader in the software industry hasn’t changed; only it aims to achieve it through voluntary participation of its employees.
Ethical Conduct and Effective Communication
Bill Gates commitment to ethical conduct can be understood from the contribution of Bill and Melinda Gates foundation in the field of education, health and community development. Gates proposed the concept of ‘Creative Capitalism’ as a system which will enable the needy to reap some benefits from the profits of the capitalists. It is Bill Gates opinion that wealth accumulated from capital ventures should be disbursed towards espousing a social cause (Kinsley, 2008). There are many beneficiaries of the Gates foundation in developing nations that are involved in implementing his philanthropic plans (Lewinski, 2009).
Practicing what we preach is perhaps the best way of communicating to others the commitment towards an objective. Bill Gates as an influential leader has used this principle for communicating effectively to his stakeholders the organizational objectives. From Microsoft’s inception days Bill Gates has adhered to its core competence- technological expertise, and taken steps to strengthen it from time to time. In all his addresses to the stakeholders he has emphasized upon the organization’s need to build upon this aspect to gain superiority in the global IT sector. Gates could effectively communicate to the stakeholders that the need of 21st century was the digital system and the software to run it. The degree of influence he has exerted on the employees of Microsoft can be derived from the present CEO’s address where he too echoed Gates’ prophecy. The employees have been made aware of this mission and they too strive to achieve this objective. Microsoft’s policy of testing all new software on their own system before perfecting and launching it in the market shows quite effectively how important technological competence is to the company. Also his efforts towards community development have helped to communicate to the employees the importance of ethical behavior and his resolution to practice it in all internal and external interactions. Even when he is not the CEO, the values incorporated in the culture are still promoted by the new CEO. Both the principles initiated by the founder has impressed Microsoft’s customers extensively because technological excellence guarantees a good quality product and an ethical culture convinces the consumers that they can depend on the claims made by the company. Microsoft offers an excellent customer support system for assisting its customers to install and run the software sold by it. Both these factors have won customer loyalty for Microsoft and have ranked as the best in IT industry.
Three best practices of Bill Gates worth Emulating
Bill Gates has been branded as one of the most influential leaders of the 21st century in the software industry. He has inspired the new generation CEOs with his dedication to technological up gradation and his farsightedness. The three best practices in his leadership that can be emulated by other CEOs are described below
EXPERTISE IN YOUR ORGANIZATION’S CORE COMPETENCY
Microsoft’s core competency is its ability to produce technologically modern software that has become indispensible for computer operation throughout the world. Although Bill Gates employs the best software engineers, he himself is a programming genius and is quite capable of using their expertise to get a product as specified by him. He is quite conversant with the programming languages and algorithms and is capable of advising improvement in software development. This knowledge has accorded him respect from his engineers who know that in order to get his appreciation they have to develop the best program. Moreover his knowledge in the field of software development and the newest methods of computation gives him an edge over his competitors and wins him the trust of all concerned. In order to be an inspiring leader in the 21st century organization heads must incorporate this quality in their personality; they should themselves have high quality knowledge about the processes and products of their units.
THE ABILITY TO DELEGATE
Bill Gates was quite aware that there were people in his organization who were more competent in certain areas of business. He delegated the responsibility of CEO to Steve Balmer in 2000 because he knew that Balmer had a keen sense of marketing and at that point Microsoft needed to expand its operations. He remained as the chief software architect and as an advisor on key projects. He was of the view that keeping all powers concentrated unto him would restrict his ability to plan the strategies needed to expand his business. Appointment of Satya Nadella as the present CEO is seen as his attempt to bring about a stress free organizational environment and improve relations with other firms in the industry as Nadella is credited with a more humanitarian approach towards work. Bill Gates is not of a diplomatic disposition and he thought Nadella would deliver better results in forging relations both externally and internally. This is an important aspect of Leadership, to assign responsibility and empower the right person to get results and should be practiced by leaders to progress as a team.
SOCIAL CONSCIENCE
A leader should display his commitment towards contributing towards social and communal welfare. Gates Foundation was formed with the aim to offer better health, education and standard of living in countries affected by poverty. Bill Gates’ view that a part of organization’s profit should be used for executing social responsibility has earned him accolades from his staunchest critics and endeared him to millions of people who have benefitted from the activities of the foundation. This attribute of his personality is certainly appreciated in a leader who is not just a business minded tycoon or a technological wizard but also has human values like empathy and compassion. Bill Gates has demonstrated a social conscience through the activities of the foundation. If other Business owners would follow his example there would be a considerable change in the society’s outlook towards conglomerates who are often accused of using resources indiscriminately causing damage to the environment.
Bill Gates is unquestionably a 21st century leader who knew the revolution computers will bring in the world and used this knowledge to create a top ranking organization. He is aware of the role social media has in the modern times and is all poised to enter the android market through his acquisitions. Yet he has not neglected his responsibility towards the society and is actively engaged in inspiring other business heads to contribute towards social causes. These are the attributes that make people admire and follow him as a leader of the 21st century.
References
Cava, M.D (2015, September), Microsoft CEO Nadella – Culture is everything, USA Today Retrieved from <http://www. usatoday.com.html>
Goleman, D., Boyatzis, R., & McKee, A (2001) Primal leadership: The hidden driver of great performance. Harvard business review, 79(11), 42-53
Kinsley, M. (2008) Creative Capitalism: A Conversation with Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Other Economic Leaders, Simon and Schuster paperbacks, NY (pp.20-22)
Lesinski, J. M. (2009). Bill Gates: Entrepreneur and Philanthropist. Twenty-First Century Books
