Bill Gates
Bill Gates
William Henry "Bill" Gates IIIis an American business magnate, entrepreneur, philanthropist, investor, and programmer. In 1975, Gates and Paul Allen co-founded Microsoft, which became the world's largest PC software company. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions of chairman, CEO and chief software architect, and was the largest individual shareholder until May 2014. Gates has authored and co-authored several books...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEntrepreneur
Date of Birth28 October 1955
CitySeattle, WA
CountryUnited States of America
Strategically, a major function of the CEO is to look for bad news and encourage the organization to respond to it. Employees must be encouraged to share bad news as much as good news.
The flatter the corporate hierarchy, the more likely it is that employees will communicate bad news and act upon it.
Newspaper readership is still growing in India.
I set a rule that people weren't allowed to send good news unless they sent around an equal amount of bad news. We had to get a balanced picture. In fact, I kind of favored just hearing about the accounts we were losing because ... bad news is generally more actionable than good news.
The willingness to hear hard truth is vital not only for CEOs of big corporations but also for anyone who loves the truth. Sometimes the truth sounds like bad news, but it is just what we need.
Convert bad news to good news.
Headlines, in a way, are what mislead you because bad news is a headline, and gradual improvement is not.
Paper is no longer a big part of my day. I get 90% of my news online, and when I go to a meeting and want to jot things down, I bring my Tablet PC. It's fully synchronized with my office machine so I have all the files I need.
Whenever we come out with a new version, and particularly with this version, you'll see an increase in revenue because you get that installed base coming in and you get people who have been reluctant thinking about whether they should buy the product saying, 'That is the hot new thing,'
Whether it's real-time communications, the speed or the consumer scenarios like photos and music, we're creating a platform that not only has what we're calling new experiences built in, but creates overall opportunity for third parties,
We're going to gain a lot of share here. We're going to make a lot of consumers happy.
We bet the company on Windows and we deserve to benefit. It was a risk that's paid off immensely. In retrospect, committing to the graphics interface seems so obvious that now it's hard to keep a straight face.
With the launch of Energy City, we have the opportunity to work together to create new tools and solutions that will enable oil and gas companies to achieve new levels of performance in every phase of their business.
Three years from now everyone will have a wireless PC device with them at this conference,