Carol Bartz was announced as the new CEO of Yahoo! yesterday. (Though not precisely true) I like to think of her as a NetApp alumnus because she is on our board, and I wanted to congratulate her.
The most interesting coverage I saw was a repost of an article from 1992 written one month after Carol became CEO of Autodesk outlining the challenges in front of her on-line in the Wall Street Journal. That article talks about the problems at Autodesk at the time, while contemporary coverage speaks to the success of Autodesk and Carol's role in driving that success.
Coming on the heels of my posting Monday talking of forces driving innovation, I felt the need to step back and consider that all my experience points to the tremendous impact people - individuals - have on the success of a company. Time and again I'm struck by this.
One book that talks about the impact people have in business, that I read long ago that I only have a general impression of now, is Tracy Kidder's Soul of a New Machine. My memory of the book was of the carefully drawn descriptions of the people deeply involved at Data General, and their impact on a project to produce the next generation super mini-computer.
I was unable to refresh my memory quickly as there was no Kindle version of the book available for download, only old media support.
Dave Hitz has penned a book on on his career and the founding and growth of NetApp entitled How to Castrate a Bull (I believe a colleague of mine may have suggested the subtitle Unexpected Lessons on Risk, Growth, and Success in Business to avoid the book being filed in the wrong section of a library). Once again, we have a book that strikes me in describing how people were so fundamentally a part of the outcome that is NetApp today.
That book is available for download to my Kindle. It's a good read.
Brian,
This might refresh the memories. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.12/soul.html
Like NetApp today - it was all about a balance between a challenging and inspiring working enviromnet
Posted by: Adriaan | February 26, 2009 at 05:52 AM