7 ms·

I have had the pleasure of seeing Alan Mulally give a couple of talks on leadership, and I can say that he is one of the most inspiring leaders I have ever seen

by kosei 13y ago

I have had the pleasure of seeing Alan Mulally give a couple of talks on leadership, and I can say that he is one of the most inspiring leaders I have ever seen (good video below of a talk he gave). Not because he drives people, but because he empowers them. Microsoft is a company with over 100,000 FTEs and honestly I don't think you need a great tech visionary leading as much as you need someone at the top to empower the tech visionaries running their products, and get out of their way. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIwz1KlKXP4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIwz1KlKXP4

digikata 13y ago
He does seem to be quite the leader, but there are very strong correlations between aircraft development and production (where Mulally came from) and car development and production. For Ford, Mulally is a person with deep background in design and physical manufacturing in addition to having great leadership qualities. Is it enough to just have leadership capabilities and weak roots in the core skills of the company? Even if you say that Microsoft wants a strong future presence in hardware manufacture - building phones and tablets is a very different game than building planes and cars.
- kosei 13y ago
  I still don't think one has to be the subject matter expert in everything a business does. Mulally should be an expert in building teams to make complex manufactured devices, and he should be hiring (or empowering) experts who understand services or tech functionality better than him. We can't hope that every leader can be a Steve Jobs or an Elon Musk :)
- hackula1 13y ago
  Perhaps hardware design is exactly what MS needs. They have certainly been fumbling in the area, despite a strong push.
- CamperBob2 13y ago
  Mulally is at least as qualified to lead Microsoft as Lou Gerstner was to lead IBM. He can't possibly be worse-qualified than Ballmer.
jczhang 13y ago
This is great, but I can't hear the student's. Any transcript of this?
- kosei 13y ago
  Sorry, don't have one :(

by kosei 13y ago

digikata 13y ago

He does seem to be quite the leader, but there are very strong correlations between aircraft development and production (where Mulally came from) and car development and production. For Ford, Mulally is a person with deep background in design and physical manufacturing in addition to having great leadership qualities. Is it enough to just have leadership capabilities and weak roots in the core skills of the company? Even if you say that Microsoft wants a strong future presence in hardware manufacture - building phones and tablets is a very different game than building planes and cars.

kosei 13y ago
I still don't think one has to be the subject matter expert in everything a business does. Mulally should be an expert in building teams to make complex manufactured devices, and he should be hiring (or empowering) experts who understand services or tech functionality better than him. We can't hope that every leader can be a Steve Jobs or an Elon Musk :)
hackula1 13y ago
Perhaps hardware design is exactly what MS needs. They have certainly been fumbling in the area, despite a strong push.
CamperBob2 13y ago
Mulally is at least as qualified to lead Microsoft as Lou Gerstner was to lead IBM. He can't possibly be worse-qualified than Ballmer.

jczhang 13y ago

This is great, but I can't hear the student's. Any transcript of this?

kosei 13y ago
Sorry, don't have one :(