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Leadership and strategy: what decisions does the boss of Microsoft make?

Jim Riley

29th January 2012

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Steve Ballmer - one tough cookie, I suspect. Ballmer makes an interesting point about the nature and extent of his decision-making. He “makes” relatively few decisions; but he approves decisions and he also initiates things that he feels need to happen strategically.

What kind of decisions does Ballmer, as CEO, need to make? The big ones. E.g. major investment, objectives, resource allocation, big HRM/people decisions certainly interest him. But otherwise his focus is on delegation. Why? Partly because there simply isn’t time for a CEO of a complex business to get involved in the details of decision-making.

Anyway, here is the video. It’s a short-one, but I think you get a small sense of Ballmer’s leadership style.

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Jim Riley

Jim co-founded tutor2u alongside his twin brother Geoff! Jim is a well-known Business writer and presenter as well as being one of the UK's leading educational technology entrepreneurs.