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If Aristotle ran Microsoft
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Last week, on CNNMoney.com, Jay Galbraith, President and Founder of the ever famous Galbraith Management, wrote an interesting article, titled, “Will Microsoft become the General Motors of software?” Mr. Galbraith astutely notes his own belief;
“ …you are not a real company until you have been through a downturn. Growth and high margins are very good at covering up a company’s bad habits and unresolved issues. When a downturn hits, all of the flaws come to the surface and the company purges itself of its bad practices. A 3% decline in sales in 2008 – Microsoft’s first ever – during the worst recession in decades will not wake up Microsoft. The bad habits will persist.”
“Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”
- Aristotle
Citing Microsoft’s pride that comes with high margins and high profits, he adds, that “over time, the desktop mafia will experience a shift from pride to hubris. Welcome to the General Motors scenario.”
Like I said, it’s an interesting story, but for me the story unerringly invoked the title of one of my favorite books by Robert Morris, “If Aristotle ran General Motors.” Mr. Morris, especially in hindsight of the 2008 bailouts, paints a compelling picture that should haunt more people than I.
Truth, Beauty, Goodness and Unity
You’ll have to read this fun and thought-provoking book to get the rest of the story, but the part I took home with me (and have been carrying around ever since), was about the secret to happiness. According to Aristotle, “Happiness depends upon ourselves.” According to Mr. Morris, the part of “ourselves” we must satisfy falls into 4 elements: Truth, Beauty, Goodness and Unity. If you want to be happy, you’ll have to have all 4 things happening in your happening. The paradigm doesn’t only apply to your home and personal pursuits…. It applies to your work, or your job, too. Or, at least it should. Let’s take a look!
Truth: “The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.” To avoid the calamity, happiness hinges on the truth! Pursue and immerse yourself in a truth-based life or truth-based pursuits; make sure your products are truthful. Don’t work for things that perpetuate or employ untruthful practices and policies. I doubt anyone can remain happy every day if they’re expected to lie or tell ½ of the story to keep their job. There is a close relationship here with advertising, marketing, accounting, and at the very least, respecting your partners and employees. Selling real, quality, goods and services, I’m sure, is also somewhere in the mix.
Beauty: “Personal beauty is a greater recommendation than any letter of reference.” We’re talking personal beauty here - not just the kind that is skin deep, but the kind that shines through from the soul past the skin!Create something that you and/or others find beautiful during these pursuits. Beauty can be found in elegance, quality, sound practices and through a host of other ways. If you’re work involves something you really adore, you’ll probably find some measure of beauty in what you’re creating or doing.
Goodness: “Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and choice, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.” Insure that your motives and your end product are ultimately for the purpose of good (not evil). Likewise, your business practices, policies and procedures should be perceived as “good,” and good for you. If you know you’re going out there to create some good every day, it’s hard to be unhappy with the world overall.
Unity: Finally, if you’re striving for things that will improve man’s sense of unity with others in the world, you’re in. “He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god. No one would choose a friendless existence on condition of having all the other things in the world.” This explains a lot about teams and groups and working together.
We could hold up a thermometer or some other litmus test on these elements at many companies. Inevitably, the thing that makes a good company is happy employees. What are the signs of unhappy employees? Folks who are motivated solely by money. They’re rarer than you think, but they accumulate in droves. Revolving doors in the HR department is another good indicator. It’s hard to detect that revolving door at Microsoft, but a whole slue of layoffs finally completed this last week will tell a lot about employee loyalty and the patterns of migrating talent.
Microsoft’s Future
So, what would happen if Aristotle was running things in Redmond? Microsoft’s future has been plotted for a long time toward SaaS and perpetuation of their internet presence through SharePoint and Office Online. They suffer the disadvantage of being the incumbent in the desktop race, and in having possibly to witness and be the knowing perpetrator in the demise of their position as king of the desktop world. Of course, Microsoft is into all of this for more than desktop computing, but desktop still makes the bread and butter happen at MS, and it still keeps the majority of the folks employed there receiving paychecks.
It will be interesting if they can maintain the delicate grow and change balance they’ll need if they want to avoid major dying product disease. Who keeps the power, Windows with integrated services or cloud/internet applications, will be keeping the folks in MBA School amused for some time to come. Aristotle also had a few things to say about that: “A friend to all is a friend to none.” “All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.” Think about it.
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