Steve vs Steve
John Gruber made some interesting points in his recent Memoranda blog post about the contrasting differences in leadership between Steve Jobs and Steve Ballmer. The leaked email memos from each CEO do show quite a few differences (and a few similarities). However, there is one aspect that Guber only touched on. The main difference I see between the two CEO’s is that one of them seems to focus almost exclusively on the bottom-line whereas the other focuses on the product.
If you look at Ballmer’s email, one thing you’ll notice is that he never really focuses on the product itself nor does he mention what the company has done right with their products. Granted, this is just one email but I’ve read and heard a multitude of other things from Ballmer and he always seems to just glaze over the particulars about a specific product line with just broad brush stroke. He rarely if ever goes into detailed specifics as to why this product was successful and what makes it so great. Rather, Ballmer focuses more on the expansion of the company, it’s profitability, and stomping the competition. It just always seems like he talks more about how Microsoft is going to be doing this and that to get an upper-hand on the competition and much less about how great certain products really are. Maybe that’s just the kind of guy Ballmer is. Maybe he just doesn’t really care as long as Microsoft is profitable and is able to expand into different markets. Maybe he’s just a bottom-line kind of guy. Personally I think that sort of leadership isn’t doing the customer any good.
Jobs’ email about MobileMe, as Gruber mentioned, is very focused. He always focuses his attention on the product itself, what makes it good and what makes it bad. In the case of MobileMe, he focuses on the bad but ends on a note that implies a hopeful future for MobileMe, as if to say that he’s not giving up on it just yet. In the past, Jobs has talked about the bottom-line but usually when he does he attributes it to a specific product line. If Apple has a good third quarter he might say that it was because of the successful launch of the iPhone 3G and that customers were excited about getting their hands on them. Jobs tends to focus more on the user experience than just numbers. In his mind, if the quality of your products and the customer experience is good then the numbers will reflect that. Jobs is very much focusing his attention on the customer to create a unique user experience and I think the success that Apple is having reflects that.
One thing you’ll rarely ever see is a customer who switches from an Apple product to a Microsoft product due to some dissatisfaction. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone use a Mac running OS X Leopard for a good length of time who wanted to switch to a computer running Windows Vista. That’s the user experience for you and it’s something that I don’t think Ballmer will ever get.
