Looking at founders, such as Larry Page, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zukerberg, you get the feeling they believe they are all powerful — more so than even governments.

It’s not a new attitude; Bill Gates learned they aren’t the hard way.

The Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, according to Mr. Smith, “learned that life actually does require compromise and governments actually are stronger than companies,” if only after a bruising confrontation.

Mr. Gates, who wrote the foreword in Mr. Smith’s book, recalled that for years he was proud of how little time he spent talking to people in government. “As I learned the hard way in the antitrust suit,” he wrote, “that was not a wise position to take.”

Lesson learned well enough that you don’t see Microsoft on the common list of big tech, Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple.

That lesson hasn’t hurt Microsoft, which is valued at more than a trillion dollars by investors based on profitability, not funding.

Satya Nadella, who became CEO in 2014, is credited most often for the change in Microsoft fortunes, i.e., its culture. attitude and product mix.

You don’t hear as much about Microsoft president Brad Smith, but he’s the guy who made friends with government and helps with policy.

“When your technology changes the world,” he writes, “you bear a responsibility to help address the world that you have helped create.”

Responsibility.

The thing that so many founders don’t see as being within their purview.

Unlike Microsoft, their future will be decided more in Europe than in the US.

But the revised interpretation of an old US law could change things drastically.

And that change is being driven in by a surprising source.

Join me next Tuesday to learn more about it.

Image credit: luquidat

It’s amazing to me, but looking back over nearly a decade of writing I find posts that still impress and with information that is as useful now as when it was written. Golden Oldies is a collection of what I consider some of the best posts during that time.

Compromise Means Listening (2008)

Jim Stroup at Managing Leadership wrote a fascinating post on the effects of principles and political compromise on our Constitution.

For the political slant click the link, but I think that these ideas are just as true in the business world.

“If you rule out compromising your principles, then you become an ideologue.”

Can business people be ideologues? Of course.

Managers adopt approaches and then rigidly try to implement (inflict?) them on every organization in which they work with no consideration as to their appropriateness.

Robert Nardelli did that when he tried to impose stringent metrics a la GE on Home Depot, ignoring cultural differences and the realities of running a successful consumer business.

“…maybe they see a higher, joint goal of sufficient value… This sometimes takes a kind of discipline, stamina, and focus that can be stunning, and much more productive, powerful, and enduring…”

When senior managers open themselves up to input from all levels of their organization—instead of forcing the dogmatic use a certain methodology—the results include stronger engagement, higher productivity and more innovation.

In business, this means a focus beyond today’s stock price—a focus on the long-term, which is rarely appreciated by Wall Street.

Compromise isn’t synonymous with ethical lapse, either; it’s not an excuse to lie, cheat, steal or fudge the information or the numbers.

It is about listening to others; listening to those whose ideas are revolutionary; ideas that are atypical; ideas that buck the norm and go in a new direction and that takes a lot of guts.

In business, as in politics, compromise often means being willing to put your job on the line—but refusing carries the same potential cost.

Flickr image credit: Scott Maxwell