An Audience with Bill Gates

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IoD: All of us here today are trying, in tougher economic times, to harness our teams to work better together to generate more revenues. You've probably recruited more high intellect people and on a global basis than almost any other company I can think of. How do you manage to harness all that intellect and all those egos into one cohesive team?

BG:Well that's a huge challenge. Often the IQs can subtract instead of adding up the intelligence into what you'd like to see! I'd say there's an element of using technology, so that once you pick a goal everybody's seen the hard facts about how you're meeting it or falling short.

But even more important is how you pick the people in the first place and then how you organise them. What's really turned out to be important for us is that as we pick people to manage it isn't just purely about them being an expert in each of the areas, because you're never going to find someone who's business and sales and manufacturing and engineering. It's how they work with the other people [that's important]. So early in our history we had a tendency to say "Ok if you're a top engineer, this management thing, you know just go read a book. And be nice to people because that's what we're supposed to be." In a few cases that worked and in many it didn't. So really, selecting the people for their collaborative behaviour and how they appreciate the experts in the areas they're not knowledgeable in and how they draw them in and create a team around that.

Saying to people "This is what counts, this is how you're going to have more responsibility and how you will prove yourself." It's been interesting...and that's let us have a pretty cohesive team.

IoD: In a previous interview with Jack Welch he said however talented the individual if the teamwork ethic wasn't there he either didn't recruit them or got rid of them. Where you've had geniuses who couldn't be team players what did you do?

BG:Well I think there's still room for geniuses somewhere. If you get down to the [lower levels] of the organisation, where they're sitting there doing the design, working on things, then you can create a special environment for them. And sometimes that is worth doing.

But if you move up, if they want to have responsibility for broad decisions, then I get to the point that Jack was at where it just isn't enough to be very smart. People have to enjoy working for you and with you and you have to set an example, whether it's hard work, following the rules, reaching out to the customers and listening to them. And every level you move up you've just got to make it clear to them that the standard for those things gets higher and higher.

Now if you're a genius down in that [lower level] who's inventing things, we'll actually pay you very well - equivalent to a vice president - but we wont give you broad responsibility and you will be in a fairly confined environment.

IoD: Were there times when you had a dark moment and thought "This is a really big risk even for me?" and it gave you a few sleepless nights? If so, what advice have you got for all of us here today in terms of managing real stress as you try to grow a business?

BG:Well there's certainly been stressful points along the way. I'd say try not to get sued by anybody! Particularly your own government... Especially if it's unjust.

As a company grows you do go through a load change. In the early Microsoft, I wrote most of the code and any other code that was written I would look it over and make sure it was good. So I was ruthless about the quality of the code. Then as we got past about 20 people I couldn't review everybody's code so I had to trust other people to do that.

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