I don't think that even if Microsoft layed off 60% of its staff it would become competitive as Apple or Google. The more I read into their problems the more I think that this is not a management issue. No they have rigid management controls to ensure that stuff doesn't go wrong like the other giants, but due to the lack of a vision.
If you ask an Apple, Google, old HP, or any employee of an innovative company they will be able to tell you what their company is about. They will be able to define what they are contributing towards at in work. They know what their company's mission is and what that company stands for in respect to their product line and their positioning in the market. This has stopped happening in Microsoft.
An interesting question is whether all failing companies have similar blind spots of vision.
As someone once put it; management is knowing how to cut down trees efficiently, vision is about knowing if you're in the right jungle in the first place.
I think a lot of Microsoft's problem is that they succeeded in their mission statement. "A computer on every desk, all running Microsoft software" was incredible hubris in 1974. It's reality now. What can Microsoft do to top that?
It makes me wonder about what the world will look like in 15 years. Google's mission statement is "Organize the world's information, and make it universally accessible and useful." Right now, I'd tend to think that Google is safe from many of Microsoft's woes, because I couldn't imagine how they could possibly finish their mission statement. But I would've thought the same thing about Microsoft in the 1970s.
I agree with what you say, but a part of having a vision also means looking beyond your own accomplishments. I have noticed something in how I think/do things everything feeds to the next thing. Unrelated things become connected somehow and just continue some undefinable chain. 'What's next?' is really the question they can't seem to answer.
Maybe, the problem over here is that the dreamers have stopped dreaming and they're now concentrating on spreadsheets?
Look at Elon Musk after he exited PayPal he could have coasted in that paradigm. Done incrementally better things, or just continued looking after it. He didn't do that. Instead, he asked himself what's next for me, and put his money where his mind was. In a lot of ways to me that defines a vision.
Or, we could take the perennial example, Steve Jobs, Apple could have coasted after the iPod, or the iPhone but they somehow keep on pushing on and they've started creating an ecosystem where all the other products feed into one another. It is true that his dictatorial style helps him, but someone had to see this possibility to work towards it, and that's where the challenge lies in my opinion.
> I couldn't imagine how they could possibly finish their mission statement.
Aren't they almost there already? Documents, email, maps, news, phone/voice, search, videos online, and soon television.
> "Organize the world's information, and make it universally accessible and useful."
... and to sell ads based on that information. Google is still primarily an ad company that just happens to also do technology that helps them sell more ads.
> Aren't they almost there already? Documents, email, maps, news, phone/voice, search, videos online, and soon television.
I think that there's still a long, long way to go. I run into information problems that I can't solve with Google all the time, mostly relating to obscure niche interests. Are there really no people talking about my favorite books on the Internet? Because unless I want to talk about Harry Potter or Twilight, I can't find any. Has nobody run across this error message that I just found in my Haskell/LLVM program and solved it? Of the dozen or two restaurants within a mile of my apartment, only about half of them show up on a Google Local search.
Google does really well for popular stuff, basically anything with a Wikipedia entry. It's still remarkably immature for things that are very niche, when there's just a handful of people around the world interested in that topic.
Udi Manber, Google's search VP, had an interesting interview about that:
> ... and to sell ads based on that information. Google is still primarily an ad company that just happens to also do technology that helps them sell more ads.
Honestly, working in search, I don't see that. I'm explicitly told not to worry about revenue or ads. There are other departments that handle that.
I think that the way the founders view it, Google is a technology company where ads give them the wherewithal to build interesting technology. It's the old Drucker view of a corporation: profit is the cost of staying in business. A business exists to fulfill a social function; the profit motive exists to keep the business honest, so that it doesn't consume more resources in pursuit of that fulfillment than it generates.
Microsoft's vision was a computer on every desk and in every home. They accomplished their vision, and they're a mature company collecting massive amounts of rent on the software that runs on most of those computers. They don't lack vision so much as they gain illusions--illusions that they can still be a young, growing concern with one foot firmly planted in a mature business.
That's not how business ecology works, though. Microsoft's shareholders are not well served with stock in a company that's half mature, dividend-paying, high-market-share titan and half scrappy innovator. They're probably better off having stock in a Microsoft comfortable with its maturity as well as a separate, younger, scrappier company. The entire economy would be better off with that.
If you ask an Apple, Google, old HP, or any employee of an innovative company they will be able to tell you what their company is about. They will be able to define what they are contributing towards at in work. They know what their company's mission is and what that company stands for in respect to their product line and their positioning in the market. This has stopped happening in Microsoft.
An interesting question is whether all failing companies have similar blind spots of vision.
As someone once put it; management is knowing how to cut down trees efficiently, vision is about knowing if you're in the right jungle in the first place.