Consumers buy products, not a management structure

Not that a management structure is not important, steering a big ship needs some structure. But the structure is just one thing you need to keep a large group alive. Management structures tends to deal with themself, and managers tend to deal with themselves. The benefits of structual changes are overestimated.

 

It's the content, not the form that really counts.

Microsoft is a perfect example. It has had huge successes in the past. It still has strong market positions. It has billions of dollars. It seemed to be too big to fail. But in fact we can study a downward spiral in real time.

In germany we learned, that if our chancelor Angela Merkel says: "I stand fully behind my minister," it's time for him to go. In economics we learned that changing the management structure is the last thing the CEO does, before he has to go. 

So when we read about Ballmers desperate attempts after having missed to be a driver in  the last 3 big IT innovations (mobile, internet, cloud), we understand to well the unnamed Microsoft insider: "If this is all about an org chart and not how to build great products, it does not matter what org chart Ballmer presents. Consumers buy products, not a management structure."

It is as simple as it is true: Bye Steve!