People forgive benevolent dictators a lot. A lot they would not forgive anyone else under most circumstances. Every leader has to balance their style in order to get stuff done, but absolute despots have to worry less about balance.
And this is one of the reasons Scott Forstall is out at Apple. He had a Steve Jobs style in an environment where he was not top dog (sorry dude, the uber alpha is Tim Cook). People were unforgiving. After many many hits which included iOS itself which is directly responsible for the resurgence of Apple, it’s unreasonable that a leader like that would be fired over a minor snafu like iOS 6 Maps. That unreasonability leads to a logical search for other reasons for his exit, of which one possibility is something to do with style and team dynamics. Honestly I don’t know, but there is at least circumstantial evidence that the man was pushed out because he behaved like a king when he really was not.
And then there is the strange case of Steven Sinofsky (full disclosure, I used to work in the Windows and Windows Live division at Microsoft and worked for Steven). A man successfully runs the two lynch pin businesses at Microsoft (Office and Windows), pulls off the transformation of Windows into a true mobile and touch first OS and is rewarded by being shown the wrong side of the corner office door. It’s inexplicable. And of course the rumor mill runs straight to his famous unwillingness to play nice with other Microsoft divisions (this is true, I worked with Windows from the outside in 2011 and 2012 and it was quite the ordeal for many reasons that traced their raison d’etre to Steven) when it came to delivering on his main mission to make Windows a stronger business. Intellectually I understood Steven’s motivations but it was still practically painful. And from what I learned at Columbia Business School, it was an easy stylistic fix of leadership style (talk more conciliatorily, forge more personal relationships, occasionally make people think they came up with your bright ideas). At least Steven can console himself that he may be theoretically worth $7 billion (the amount of value that was lost from Microsoft’s market value in the next full trading day after his exit was announced).
There is no question that if any of these men actually ran their respective companies that they would have long productive careers. But they made the mistake of acting like they were already crowned when the shiny round knick knack was sitting on someone else’s head.
Awkward.
