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Bill Gates and the Browser Wars: A Case Study in Determination and Competitive Ferocity

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Competition Drives so much of our World Today

We live in a hypercompetitive age where winning is the outcome, often necessary for survival—in classrooms, sports, trade and commerce or at work. The archetypical successful person is determined, aggressive, and obsessed with winning at everything, sometimes at any cost. Of course, competition is healthy; but, winning may come at a hefty price—always striving to win or being overzealous can be both unnecessary and unproductive. Besides, collaborative or naturally uncompetitive individuals tend to find competitive people somewhat unpleasant.

History provides but a few vivid portraits of intense competition that compare to the mid-90s’ “browser wars,” a narrative characterized by the dogged determination and intense competitive spirit of some of the world’s greatest entrepreneurs.

Bill Gates and Microsoft are legendary for using brute power: whenever a new competitor emerged, Microsoft would muster its financial resources and its smarts to storm into those markets with alternative products that would eventually dominate. Up until the dot-com bust, Microsoft not only out-competed Borland, Lotus Development, Corel, and other rivals that were previously in the lead, but also crushed upstarts such as Netscape.

“The Browser Wars”: Rise and Fall of Netscape

At the start of 1995, a new software called Netscape Navigator took the computing world by storm. Unlike primitive browsers, Netscape could display text and graphics on websites. Early web buffs eager to discover the marvel of the nascent internet were no longer restricted to downloading text alone. In addition, Netscape could render web pages on the fly while they were still being downloaded. Users did not need to stare at a blank screen until their dial-up connections loaded text and graphics.

Even more astounding was the fact that the upstart Netscape Communications, Netscape Navigator’s creator, had been co-founded by a 23-year-old programmer just a few months previously and seemed well-positioned to take advantage of the imminent consumer internet revolution. Netscape was on its way to an extraordinary 90% market share amongst internet browsers. What’s more: the company’s spectacular IPO was drawing near and was to start the dot-com boom.

Netscape’s meteoric rise could not escape the attention of the world’s dominant software company. Early in 1995, Microsoft was particularly occupied with finalizing Windows 95. Its launch, scheduled for August 1995, would prove to be the largest, most expensive consumer marketing endeavor in history. Moreover, the U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) had embarked on an intrusive investigation into claims of unfair business practices as alleged by Microsoft’s competitors.

While Netscape was capturing the Web browser market, Microsoft and Bill Gates had seemingly missed the paradigm shift created by the consumer internet. Financial and technology analysts wondered if Microsoft was destined to lose its supremacy over software. Microsoft could not wait on the sidelines and cede business opportunities in the upcoming consumer internet revolution.

Browser Wars: The Rise and Fall of Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer

Bill Gates and Microsoft Jumped on the “Internet Tidal Wave”

Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, and the Microsoft team were not to be trifled with. Microsoft simply could not afford to be the underdog. Its strategy was transformed entirely when, on 26-May-1995, Bill Gates wrote the groundbreaking internal memo, “The Internet Tidal Wave.”

Bill Gates deployed an extraordinary amount of capital and talent to battle for control over consumer internet. Just after the August-1995-release of Windows 95, Microsoft released an inferior Internet Explorer 1.0. In 1996, Version 3.0, matched the features of Netscape Navigator. Finally, in 1997, after bundling Internet Explorer 4.0 into Windows 95, Microsoft started to take a significant market share from Netscape.

In 1998, the DOJ and twenty US states alleged that Microsoft had illegally thwarted competition by abusing its monopoly in personal computers to bundle its Internet Explorer and Windows operating system.

By 1999, Netscape was an inferior web browser and quickly lost its dominance. The software’s market share dropped from 90% in 1996 to a meager 4% by 2002.

In subsequent installments of the browser wars, Netscape Navigator’s open-source successor, Firefox, regained market share from Internet Explorer. More recently, Firefox and Internet Explorer have had to contend with Google’s Chrome, which has grown to be the dominant web browser.

Microsoft Set Out to Destroy Competitor after Competitor

Historically, Microsoft has never been a substantial innovator. Instead, the company’s most famous strategy was to be a “fast follower.” The variety of rivals’ projects made no difference—competitors could pioneer anything from graphical user interfaces (GUI,) pointing devices, spreadsheets, word processors, browsers or gaming consoles and Microsoft would catch up in due course.

Consequently, the most important Microsoft products started essentially as copies of existing products made by competitors or upstarts that Microsoft was able to purchase early. MS-DOS evolved from QDOS, which itself derived from CP/M. Microsoft Windows was inspired by Apple’s Macintosh, which, in turn, had been inspired by a prototype mouse-driven graphical user interface that Steve Jobs had seen at Xerox PARC. Microsoft Excel borrowed from VisiCalc and Lotus 1-2-3. In addition to riding the coattails of bona fide innovators, Microsoft excelled in smart integration—it combined nifty functions and features into a single product or into a suite of easy-to-use tools such as its Office productivity software.

Microsoft’s Once-Invincible Strategy of Being a “Fast Follower” Wasn’t Sustainable

Alas, in the last 15 years, Microsoft’s “fast follower” competitive strategy has proven unsustainable. As its dominance in the enterprise world grew, Microsoft’s impressive financial performance relied mostly on its “old faithful” franchises. In fiscal 2014, the Windows operating system, Office productivity suite, and servers/cloud businesses contributed 78% of Microsoft’s revenue and almost all of the gross profit.

Despite the competitive ferocity of Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, and others at the company’s helm, Microsoft has been unable to return to its domineering ways in the internet’s recent mobile- and social-computing trends. In fact, Microsoft stumbled in category after category of consumer computing and technology, including search, social networking, phones, music players, and tablets. Google, Facebook, Apple—lead by entrepreneurs just as intensely competitive as Bill Gates—have soared ahead, altering the social-media-tech consumer experience.

Recommended Reading: If you like business history and entrepreneurial success stories, read ‘Forbes Greatest Business Stories of All Time’, Daniel Gross’s engaging profiles of twenty great American entrepreneurs: Revolutionary War financier Robert Morris, McDonald’s ‘founder’ Roy Kroc, Walt Disney, Microsoft’s Bill Gates, et al. For more stories of Bill Gates’s fierce competitive instincts, read Stephen Manes’s “Gates”.

Three Great Commencement Speeches by Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and J.K. Rowling

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The commencement season is upon us. On these momentous occasions, students celebrate their academic achievements and prepare to transit from one pivotal life experience to another.

In graduation speeches, students hear reflections of personal stories and timeless advice from accomplished individuals. While commencement speeches are brimming with plenty of patently obvious advice such as “pursue whatever you do with passion,” speeches such as the ones featured below are truly motivating.

I have coached many students graduating this year and I have recognized that, despite a gloomy job market and other challenges ahead, this year’s graduating classes seem to be more optimistic than previous classes with which I have interacted. My very best to them.

Steve Jobs: “Don’t waste your time living someone else’s life”

Steve Jobs cofounded Apple Computer Inc. at age 21 in 1976, got fired in 1985, and returned in 1997 to lead one of the most remarkable corporate turnarounds in business history. The product and marketing visions he has since executed have elevated him to the status of a business and media superstar. Steve Jobs had a cancerous pancreatic tumor removed in 2004 and underwent a liver transplant in 2009.

In his 2005 commencement address (transcript, video) at Stanford University, Steve Jobs urged graduates to pursue their dreams and fulfill the opportunities in life’s setbacks:

  • Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. … Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.
  • Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

Bill Gates: “Address the world’s deepest inequities”

Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft and Corbis, is currently the world’s most influential philanthropist. His Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has donated billions of dollars to world health causes, particularly toward the eradication of infectious diseases.

In his 2007 commencement address (transcript, video) at Harvard University, Bill Gates urged graduates to discover and help solve the health and social inequalities that the world faces:

  • I left Harvard with no real awareness of the awful inequities in the world—the appalling disparities of health, and wealth, and opportunity that condemn millions of people to lives of despair. … Humanity’s greatest advances are not in its discoveries—but in how those discoveries are applied to reduce inequity. Whether through democracy, strong public education, quality health care, or broad economic opportunity—reducing inequity is the highest human achievement.
  • If you believe that every life has equal value, it’s revolting to learn that some lives are seen as worth saving and others are not. … I hope you will come back here to Harvard 30 years from now and reflect on what you have done with your talent and your energy. I hope you will judge yourselves not on your professional accomplishments alone, but also on how well you have addressed the world’s deepest inequities … on how well you treated people a world away who have nothing in common with you but their humanity.

J.K. Rowling: “The benefits of failure”

J.K. Rowling, the celebrated author of the Harry Potter series of fantasy novels, is a classic “rags to riches” life success story. At the age of 28, as a depressed, unemployed single mother who lived on welfare, J.K. Rowling started writing the first Harry Potter book at a café. Within five years, thanks to the success of Harry Potter, she rose from obscurity to literary prominence and became a billionaire.

In her 2008 commencement address (transcript, video) at Harvard University, J.K. Rowling urges graduates to persist through failures and despondency:

  • Failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. … Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.
  • Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above the price of rubies.
  • The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity.

Inspirational Quotations #967

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The spirit is smothered, as it were, by ignorance, but so soon as ignorance is destroyed, spirit shine forth, like the sun when released from clouds.
—Adi Shankaracharya (Indian Hindu Philosopher)

Those who are going to be in business tomorrow are those who understand that the future, as always, belongs to the brave.
—William Bernbach (American Advertising Executive)

The future of architecture does not lie so much in continuing to fill up the landscape as in bringing back life and order to our cities and towns.
—Gottfried Bohm (German Architect)

Stealing to eat ain’t criminal-stealing to be rich is.
—Andrew Vachss (American Attorney, Author)

Life is given to use, we earn it by giving it.
—Rabindranath Tagore (Bengali Poet, Polymath)

Among the instrumentalities of love and peace, surely there can be no sweeter, softer, more effective voice than that of gentle peace-breathing music.
—Elihu Burritt (American Pacifist)

The more you practice what you know, the more shall you know what to practice.
—William Jenkyn (English Clergyman)

How helpless we are, like netted birds, when we are caught by desire!
—Belva Plain (American Novelist)

Ninety percent of politics is deciding whom to blame.
—Meg Greenfield (American Journalist, Socialite)

Patriotism is a kind of religion; it is the egg from which wars are hatched.
—Guy de Maupassant (French Short-story Writer)

Ever notice that people never say “It’s only a game” when they’re winning?
—Ivern Ball (American Writer, Aphorist)

Smart is an elusive concept. There’s a certain sharpness, an ability to absorb new facts. To ask an insightful question. To relate to domains that may not seem connected at first. A certain creativity that allows people to be effective.
—Bill Gates (American Businessperson)

In every question and every remark tossed back and forth between lovers who have not played out the last fugue, there is one question and it is this: “Is there someone new?”
—Edna O’Brien (Irish Author)

No war is inevitable until it breaks out.
—A. J. P. Taylor (English Historian)

Life is to be lived, not controlled, and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.
—Ralph Ellison (American Novelist)

Book Summary of Verne Harnish’s ‘The Greatest Business Decisions of All Time’

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'The Greatest Business Decisions' by Verne Harnish (ISBN 1603209786) The Greatest Business Decisions of All Time (2012) is a flatfooted anthology of 18 engaging—and oversimplified—business stories that influenced the course of business. Edited by management consultant Verne Harnish, this tome contains long articles by nine Fortune magazine journalists.

  1. Apple and the Return of Steve Jobs. The 1996 decision by Apple’s board of directors to bring back Jobs revived the company, transformed the consumer electronics industry, and made Apple one of the most valuable companies in the world.
  2. Zappos and Free Shipping. Zappos’s decision to offer free shipping and 365-day free returns lured more mainstream buyers onto the internet. Other retailers had no choice but to provide free shipping (albeit with some restrictions) and absorb the costs.
  3. Samsung and Global Immersion. In the early 1990s, Chairman Lee Kun-Hee instituted a policy to send his brightest young employees on international sabbaticals that exposed them to the local cultures and build business networks. This program later fuelled Samsung’s global ambitions.
  4. Johnson & Johnson and the Tylenol Comeback. Consistent with the company’s “patients come before profit” credo, CEO James E. Burke set the benchmark for crisis management when he decided to pull Tylenol off the shelves nationwide and create a tamper-proof bottle at the cost of $100 million. Johnson & Johnson cemented its reputation for responsible management.
  5. 3M’s 15% Free Time Rule and Innovation. 3M Company CEO William McKnight’s extraordinary idea of giving employees free time for “experimental doodling” yielded such innovative products as Post-It notes. 3M quickly diversified its portfolio and entered many consumer- and industrial-businesses. 3M inspired Google’s 20% rule.
  6. The “Intel Inside” Marketing Campaign. To forestall the commoditization of the computer chip, CEO Andy Grove shifted Intel’s image from that of a microprocessor company to that of a producer of a coveted, brand-name product that stood for performance. Intel became a household name that consumers sought when they purchased a computer.
  7. General Electric’s Jack Welch and Crotonville. Welch transformed GE’s sprawling management-training institute in Crotonville, New York, into a focal point of learning for the company.
  8. Bill Gates and His “Think Weeks.” The Microsoft founder’s twice-yearly retreat in rural isolation allowed him to read, reflect, and map out ideas—away from the distractions and the noise of business life.
  9. Softsoap and Impeding Competition. A small Minnesota company called Minnetonka Corp. developed liquid hand soap in the early 1980s. When Softsoap started flying off the shelves, deep-pocked behemoths like Procter & Gamble began to prototype their own variants. Minnetonka’s CEO Robert Taylor developed a smart strategy to block his giant competitors and keep his company’s market share. He purchased the entire U.S. supply of plastic pumps used in the liquid soap bottles for one year—that’s 100 million units from the only supplier. By the time his competitors had access to the plastic pumps, Taylor’s Softsoap’s brand was well established.
  10. Toyota and the Quality Revolution. Toyota’s institutional obsession with waste-reduction, zero defects, and process improvement has transformed manufacturing and inspired excellence in every service industry—including hospitals.
  11. Nordstrom and Customer Service Excellence. Nordstrom built its brand on “above-and-beyond” customer service and problem-solving. The entirety of the Nordstrom Employee Handbook fits on a 5×8 card and contains precisely one rule, “Use the best judgment in all situations. There will be no additional rules.”
  12. Tata Steel and Labor Relations. During a turbulent period of India’s leading steelmaker, Managing Director Jamshed J Irani confronted a bloated cost structure by reducing his 78,000-strong workforce to 40,000 by 2005. In keeping with the Tata Group’s rich philanthropic legacy, Irani offered decent pension plans and invested in labor welfare.
  13. Boeing 707 and the Jet Age. Boeing’s decision to develop the Boeing 707 at the cost of $185 million (more than the company’s market capitalization) “remade a company, an industry, and the very culture of its time.” The 707 was the first transatlantic commercial jetliner in an era of prop planes. It kicked off the Jet Age, revolutionized air travel, and established Boeing as a dominant airliner manufacturer.
  14. IBM and the Customer-Centric Makeover. In 1993, Lou Gerstner became CEO and embarked on an “Operation Bear Hug” to launch new communication pipelines between top executives and IBM’s customers. This helped transform IBM from an inwardly focused bureaucracy to a customer-centric market-driven innovator.
  15. Sam Walton and Walmart’s Saturday Morning Meeting. Walton’s energetic 6:00 A.M. meeting was a pep rally, merchandising workshop, and financial update—all rolled into one. He brainstormed with his store managers on how to improve things week after week and helped metamorphose Walmart from a single, small-town variety store in 1962 into the world’s largest retailer.
  16. Eli Whitney and the Dawn of American Technology. Whitney’s invention of the “saw gin” that worked well with short-staple cotton helped transform Southern agriculture (and sustain the institution of African slavery!) Whitney then popularized the use of interchangeable parts in making firearms.
  17. Bill Hewlett and David Packard and the “HP Way.” The essence of Hewlett-Packard’s management philosophy was an openness and respect for the employees. With a framework of principles and the simplicity of their management methods, they established many progressive management practices that prevail even today.
  18. Henry Ford and the Factory- and Wage-Revolution. When Ford introduced the moving assembly line, his fledging factory was confronting a dispirited workforce, declining workmanship and quality, absenteeism, and annual labor turnover of 370 percent. Then Ford decided to raise wages from $2.50 to $5 a day. The following week, Ford Motors had more than 26,000 job applicants. Ford increased production rates and slashed the per-unit cost of the Model T. Annual labor turnover fell to 16 percent, and Ford’s profits doubled within two years. Every time Ford increased the productivity of car production, he continued to raise wages. His well-paid workers had more to spend—and could afford the very cars they built.

Recommended: Quick read. The Greatest Business Decisions of All Time is a concise and entertaining read, especially if you like getting into heads, the thoughts, and the motivations of well-known business luminaries. The 18 case studies lack rigor and are beset with recency biases, narrative fallacies, and a misplaced sense of causes and effects. Some stories, e.g., the Softsoap one, aren’t well known.

Daniel Gross’s Forbes Greatest Business Stories of All Time (1997) is significantly more engrossing and instructional.

The Power of Asking Open-Ended Questions

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When Bill Gates first met Warren Buffett, Gates was dazzled particularly by how Buffett asked open-ended “big questions”:

I have to admit, when I first met Warren, the fact that he had this framework was a real surprise to me. I met him at a dinner my mother had put together. On my way there, I thought, “Why would I want to meet this guy who picks stocks?” I thought he just used various market-related things—like volume, or how the price had changed over time—to make his decisions. But when we started talking that day, he didn’t ask me about any of those things. Instead he started asking big questions about the fundamentals of our business. “Why can’t IBM do what Microsoft does? Why has Microsoft been so profitable?” That’s when I realized he thought about business in a much more profound way than I’d given him credit for.

“What are My Questions?”

Asking great questions is a skill, but doesn’t come as you would expect. One contributing factor is that, with age, education, and experience, we become conditioned to cogitate in very rigid terms. Heuristics and mental shortcuts become deep-seated and instinctual to allow for faster problem-solving and programmed decision-making.

Idea for Impact: Don’t ask the same questions most people ask. The smartest people I know don’t begin with answers; they start by asking, “what are our questions?”

Make inquiries using open-ended questions that can’t be answered with a ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ Effective questions will help you think deeper, generate meaningful explorations, and yield far more interesting insights.

The Truth About Work-Life Balance

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Bill Gates still doesn’t believe in taking breaks

This recent Bill Gates interview got a great deal of attention for what he considers his biggest regret—not working harder, and taking his eyes off the ball and allowing Google to develop Android, now the dominant phone operating system, which, according to Gates, “was a natural thing for Microsoft to win.”

Asked about work-life balance and if Gates’s opinions had changed from a past statement that he did not believe in holidays, Gates replied with a no. He reiterated that working without a vacation is one of the sacrifices a company has to make in its early years.

The vacation-free approach in Microsoft’s early years is legendary. In the memoir Idea Man (2011,) co-founder Paul Allen recalled,

Microsoft was a high-stress environment because Bill drove others as hard as he drove himself.

Bob Greenberg, a Harvard classmate of Bill’s whom we’d hired, once put in 81 hours in four days, Monday through Thursday. … When Bill touched base toward the end of Bob’s marathon, he asked him, “What are you working on tomorrow?”

Bob said, “I was planning to take the day off.”

And Bill said, “Why would you want to do that?” He genuinely couldn’t understand it; he never seemed to need to recharge.

In a 2016 interview for BBC’s The Desert Island Discs program, Gates revealed that he was so obsessed during the early years of Microsoft that he couldn’t help but keep tabs on which Microsoft troopers stayed vigilant along the frontlines and which ones had retired home for the night. “I knew everyone’s license plate so I could look out in the parking lot and see when did people come in, when were they leaving.”

For most overworked and overwhelmed people, life’s great tipping point is the moment they realize something’s got to give

Hear any successful executive talk about work-life balance and you’ll recognize a pattern—they had an epiphany about the need for work-life balance. They were totally driven and single-minded for a long time, had difficulties in their personal life, and ultimately realized that they needed to have more balance in their life.

While this always makes for a stimulating narrative, the one aspect that is less emphasized is how much of their success was a direct outcome of single-minded focus. The truth is, most workaholics are successful.

Balance is Bunk: You can’t have everything—even if you work really, really hard

Some things are tough hard, and require an absolute commitment and high-level performance for sustained periods. Achieving distinction in any field requires extreme dedication, drive, and commitment to success—this is true of scholarship, business, art, music, sport, or parenting.

While it’s nice to extol the virtues of work-life balance, it must be acknowledged that balancing personal life with a career will inevitably lead to forgoing some advancement in the latter. Balance is sometimes about choosing between the two and setting priorities—it’s not just a matter of juggling on the way to “having it all.” This “balance” is something that each person has to decide for himself/herself.

Inspirational Quotations #709

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Learn a little here and a little there, and you will increase in knowledge.
—The Talmud (Sacred Text of the Jewish Faith)

Thought and theory must precede all salutary action; yet action is nobler in itself than either thought or theory.
—William Wordsworth (English Poet)

People with clear, written goals, accomplish far more in a shorter period of time than people without them could ever imagine.
—Brian Tracy (American Author)

Our systems, perhaps, are nothing more than an unconscious apology for our faults—a gigantic scaffolding whose object is to hide from us our favorite sin.
—Henri Frederic Amiel (Swiss Philosopher)

Education is the transmission of civilization.
—William C. Durant (American Entrepreneur)

Great minds are to make others great. Their superiority is to be used, not to break the multitude to intellectual vassalage, not to establish over them a spiritual tyranny, but to rouse them from lethargy, and to aid them to judge for themselves.
—William Ellery Channing

There are but two roads that lead to an important goal and to the doing of great things: strength and perseverance. Strength is the lot of but a few privileged men; but austere perseverance, harsh and continuous, may be employed by the smallest of us and rarely fails of its purpose, for its silent power grows irresistibly greater with time.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German Poet)

Each one has to find his peace from within. And peace to be real must be unaffected by outside circumstances.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

The wisdom of nations lies in their proverbs, which are brief and pithy. Collect and learn them; they are notable measures of directions for human life; you have much in little; they save time in speaking; and upon occasion may be the fullest and safest answers.
—William Penn (American Entrepreneur)

If you give people tools, [and they use] their natural ability and their curiosity, they will develop things in ways that will surprise you very much beyond what you might have expected.
—Bill Gates (American Businessperson)

Knowledge is the eye of desire and can become the pilot of the soul.
—William C. Durant (American Entrepreneur)

The winner persistently programs his pluses; the loser mournfully magnifies his minuses.
—William Arthur Ward (American Author)

When you see a rattlesnake poised to strike you, do not wait until he has struck before you crush him.
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (American Head of State)

How to Manage Smart, Powerful Leaders // Book Summary of Jeswald Salacuse’s ‘Leading Leaders’

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The Most Valuable People are Often the Most Difficult to Manage

As you climb the career ladder, you will find yourself working increasingly with many other powerful leaders—both inside and outside your organization—who hold the key to your success. Often, you may share responsibility and control with a variety of leaders over whom you may lack authority and influence. Compared to others you’ve worked with in the past, many of these leaders will be more talented, ambitious, competitive, accomplished, assertive, controlling, and ego-centric.

According to by Jeswald W. Salacuse’s Leading Leaders (2005), driving change when you lack influence over other leaders requires you to tread carefully. You must employ all the diplomatic and tactical skills at your command. “Your ability to lead other leaders arises not just from your position, resources or charisma, but from your will and skill.”

The Only Way to Lead Leaders is to Do What is in Their Interests

'Leading Leaders' by Jeswald Salacuse (ISBN 0814434568) Salacuse’s central idea in Leading Leaders: How to Manage Smart, Talented, Rich, and Powerful People is that your success depends exclusively on your personal ability to negotiate shared and conflicting objectives, and subordinate your interests to theirs. “Move your followers to take action by characterizing a problem or challenge in such a way that it is in their interests to do something about it.”

To do this, you must determine the interests of those you wish to lead and then make it loud and clear to them that you are indeed serving their interests. This requires meticulous listening, reframing of your objectives in terms of their interests, and respecting their authority and autonomy.

Salacuse breaks the challenge down into “seven daily tasks,” each of which takes a chapter in Leading Leaders.

  1. How to Direct and Negotiate the Vision: To negotiate a compelling vision for your organization that other leaders will buy into, decide on your direction for them and then have a strategic conversation on that subject. Lead an open discussion that allows for their enthusiastic participation. Do not impose your new vision from the top. Through a series of premeditated questions, pilot them to your conclusions. Such collaboration ensures that the leaders will own and support the decisions you select for them. Learn to identify those internally influential people relevant to your objectives and appeal to them. “Beware of becoming so intoxicated by your own vision that you fail to see clearly the reservations that members of your organization may have about pursuing that vision enthusiastically.”
  2. How to Integrate and Make Stars a Team: Your job as the leader is to make sure that all the members of your organization understand that they have common values, shared history, and collective interests. Focus on communication. Demonstrate both by word and by deed that you put the interests of the organization above your own. Understand the nature of the cultural differences that may divide your organization’s leaders and then seek to find ways to bridge any gaps. “Deal directly with other leaders who are spoilers by converting them or isolating them.”
  3. How to Mediate and Settle Leadership Conflicts: The more autonomous the other leaders are, the greater the odds of conflict over turf, power, style, and goals. A leader must intervene and mediate when other leaders come to disagreement. When conflicts arise, read between the lines. Observe the adversaries’ interactions, and find ways to improve communication. Look beyond the conflicting parties’ stated positions; probe for deeper interests. Work as a bridge, and find areas of agreement that can resolve the conflict. Consider how you could apply the six mediation power tools (incentives, coercion, expertise, legitimacy, reference, and coalition) most effectively to resolve conflicts. “A mediator, unlike an arbitrator or judge, has no power to impose a solution.”
  4. How to Educate People Who Think They are Already Educated: Approach your teaching role tactfully. Leaders tend to be proud and sensitive—they may begrudge being treated as unqualified, unskilled, or inexperienced. Before you instruct them, make sure you understand their frame of reference. To the maximum extent possible, do your educating one-on-one, rather than in groups. Actively involve and invite their contributions. The command and control method of instructing them will be ineffective. Instead, use the Socratic Method—ask questions that encourage people to discover the truth for themselves. “In leading leaders, the most effective instrument is not an order but the right question.”
  5. How to Motivate and Persuade Other Leaders: Learn as much as you can about other leaders—their backgrounds, interests, and their goals. Design the specific, personalized incentives that will accord with their interests—only individualized incentives persuade people to act in desired ways. Agree on future goals for the short term, medium term, and long term, and show how those goals relate to those of your organization. Be open and transparent with information so everyone knows where they are and where they are going. “Motivate your followers by envisioning a future that will benefit them and communicating that future to them in a convincing way.”
  6. How to Represent Your Organization to the Outside World: As a leader, you are always on the stage. Everything you do will be subject to scrutiny. Your every action and statement, whether in public or in private, can affect your organization’s relationships with the outside world—customers, competitors, regulators, media, investors, and the public in general. Actively manage their perceptions and expectations. If those interests are dysfunctional or unworkable, seek to change or transform them through one-on-one diplomacy. “One of the most important functions that leadership representation serves is the acquisition of needed resources.”
  7. How to Create Trust to Get the Most out of Your Leadership: People will trust you not because of your appeal, charm, or foresight, but because they’ve decided that aligning with your leadership will move their interests forward. Understand the people you lead and know their interests. Manage their expectations and deliver what you’ve promised. Reinforce your communications during problems and crises. Be consistent and predictable in your actions. “Openness is not just an easy smile or a charming manner; it refers to the process by which you make decisions that have implications for your followers’ interests.”

Tact and Diplomacy Matter More When Leading Other Powerful Leaders

Recommendation: Read Jeswald W. Salacuse’s Leading Leaders. This excellent book’s insights make a great template for the basics of executive leadership. You can especially learn how to gain persuasive skills in situations where you may not have much influence.

Beyond the academic pedantry (the author is a professor of law, diplomacy, and negotiation,) the abundant examples from political leadership are far more multifaceted than the narratives in Leading Leaders tend to imply, but they serve as good cases in point.

Leading Leaders offers a matchless resource in documenting what constitutes effective emotional leadership, which is, in spite of everything, all about persuasive power and influence to get things done through people. The key learning point is, “In developing your leadership strategies and tactics, you need to take account of the interests of the persons you would lead. Leading leaders is above all interest-based leadership. Leaders will follow you not because of your position or charisma but because they consider it in their interest. Your job as a leader is to convince them that their interests lie with you.”

Inspirational Quotations #698

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New ideas are one of the most overrated concepts of our time. Most of the important ideas that we live with aren’t new at all.
—Andy Rooney (American Writer)

Winning isn’t everything, but wanting to win is.
—Vince Lombardi (American Sportsperson)

The fool knows after he’s suffered.
—Hesiod (Greek Poet)

All you have shall some day be given; therefore give now, that the season of giving may be yours and not your inheritors.
—Khalil Gibran (Lebanese-born American Philosopher)

Wisdom too often never comes, and so one ought not to reject it merely because it comes late.
—Felix Frankfurter (American Judge)

Often you just have to rely on your intuition.
—Bill Gates (American Businessperson)

No one person can possibly combine all the elements supposed to make up what everyone means by friendship.
—Francis Marion Crawford (Italian-born American Novelist)

Conscience serves us especially to judge of the actions of others.
—Jean Antoine Petit-Senn (Swiss Poet)

Humans seek happiness as an end in itself, not as a means to something else.
—Aristotle (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

Occasionally, a man must rise above principles.
—Warren Buffett (American Investor)

A man who waits to believe in action before acting is anything you like, but he’s not a man of action. It is as if a tennis player before returning a ball stopped to think about his views of the physical and mental advantages of tennis. You must act as you breathe.
—Georges Clemenceau (French Head of State)

Children should be led into the right paths, not by severity, but by persuasion.
—Terence (Ancient Roman Playwright)

The essence of life is finding something you really love and then making the daily experience worthwhile.
—Denis Waitley (American Motivational Speaker)

Inspirational Quotations #694

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If you have a strong mind,|and plant in it a firm resolve,|you can change your destiny.
—Unknown

The exception proves the rule.
—Common Proverb

When playing Russian roulette the fact that the first shot got off safely is little comfort for the next.
—Richard Feynman (American Physicist)

Intelligent people have a remarkable ability to rationalize irrational actions, to re-tell history to fit their preferred, comfortable narrative.
—Ben Casnocha (American Entrepreneur, Investor)

Marriage is a coming together for better or for worse, hopefully enduring, and intimate to the degree of being sacred.
—William O. Douglas (American Judge)

You are successful and creative only when you see an opportunity in every difficulty.
—Swami Chinmayananda (Indian Hindu Teacher)

Unless I accept my faults, I will most certainly doubt my virtues.
—Hugh Prather (American Christian Author)

If you make listening and observation your occupation you will gain much more than you can by talk.
—Robert Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell (British Military Leader)

Fear must be entirely banished. The purified soul will fear nothing.
—Plotinus (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

Brood less, smile more and serve all.
—Swami Chinmayananda (Indian Hindu Teacher)

To give love is true freedom; to demand love is pure slavery.
—Swami Chinmayananda (Indian Hindu Teacher)

The more of wisdom we know, the more we may earn. That man who seeks to learn more of his craft shall be richly rewarded.
—George Samuel Clason (American Businessperson)

Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries.
—James A. Michener (American Novelist)

Humanity’s greatest advances are not in its discoveries—but in how those discoveries are applied to reduce inequity.
—Bill Gates (American Businessperson)

Providence conceals itself in the details of human affairs, but becomes unveiled in the generalities of history.
—Alphonse de Lamartine (French Writer)

If you yourself are at peace, then there is at least some peace in the world.
—Thomas Merton (French-born American Clergyman)

Everybody exists. It is only the few who live.|To live, you should have an ideal.
—Swami Chinmayananda (Indian Hindu Teacher)