Carol Bartz got fired last week — the Yahoo Board handled it badly, and she went ugly. Steve Ballmer is also seen as a failure both inside and outside Microsoft, and it is widely held that the only reason he hasn’t been fired is that he and his best friend, Bill Gates, own the Microsoft Board. President Obama’s approval ratings indicate that if the U.S. could “Bartz” (yes her name is now a verb meaning “to fire over the phone”) him, we would. On the other hand, Steve Jobs left Apple voluntarily, and Apple’s investors, employees and customers would do almost anything to get him to come back.
Bravo, Rob... you're dead on when you say boards don't know how to hire CEOs. They hire off resumes and credentials; they really don't know how to ask questions about the candidate's strategic approach. And they do get scared by passion. Good thing Jobs & Gates founded the companies they ran.
However, passion alone (or vision, to put it in another context) will not get the job done. Someone -- if not the CEO -- still has to be able to execute, to realize the vision. The highway is littered with the carcasses of people who had great visions but did not know how to make them happen, or to identify, hire and nurture the people who could.
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Passion Is the Thin Line Between Success and Failure
Posted by: Rob Enderle September 12, 2011 05:00 AMCarol Bartz got fired last week — the Yahoo Board handled it badly, and she went ugly. Steve Ballmer is also seen as a failure both inside and outside Microsoft, and it is widely held that the only reason he hasn’t been fired is that he and his best friend, Bill Gates, own the Microsoft Board. President Obama’s approval ratings indicate that if the U.S. could “Bartz” (yes her name is now a verb meaning “to fire over the phone”) him, we would. On the other hand, Steve Jobs left Apple voluntarily, and Apple’s investors, employees and customers would do almost anything to get him to come back.
However, passion alone (or vision, to put it in another context) will not get the job done. Someone -- if not the CEO -- still has to be able to execute, to realize the vision. The highway is littered with the carcasses of people who had great visions but did not know how to make them happen, or to identify, hire and nurture the people who could.