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| Historic Microsoft photo of Paul Allen (left) and Bill Gates (respectively) on October 19, 1981 surrounded by PCs after signing a major contract with IBM to develop software for its upcoming PC line. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Large companies can only find real Visionaries by looking for people who have been right more than once, and never right because they rode somebody else’s wave. Having found one of these rare unicorns, Visionaries are often completely at odds with the skillset needed to survive in large organizations. They are not politically savvy (or don’t care). They do not do well in meetings. They do not crave gigantic staffs to manage. They will not suck up at the expense of doing something they know is wrong, or even a little bit less right. They are prickly and uncompromising. Yet, you must not only find them, you must prop them up and make them successful despite all the antibodies the entrenched burocracies at Microsoft and Yahoo will generate to try to expel them. It’s not going to be fun, but the alternative is a continuing slide into irrelevance at the hands of the Visionaries in other companies. That’s even less fun and you’ve had a taste of what that’s all about.Source: SmoothSpan
