Leadership Gaps and Opportunities

Two topics are on my mind this week, both leadership gaps at different levels – how can our country rebuild leadership in manufacturing, and how do great people lead great product teams? Leadership at either level starts with clear goals, and dogged attention to those goals.

US Industrial Policy

I grew up in Marion, Ohio.  Marion was a midwestern manufacturing powerhouse, home to large factories operated by firms such as Eaton, Tecumseh, Whirlpool, and Huber, as well as steel plants, mills, and engineering firms.  Marion Power Shovel, where I worked for three summers, where my grandfather worked, produced (among other things) the NASA crawler-transporters.  

The economy was diverse, with a major advertising agency headquartered in Marion, large agricultural product firms and restaurant chains, a thriving local newspaper and radio stations, great highway and train access, along with a university branch. The downtown was thriving with department stores, restaurants, hotels, and theaters.

But nothing is forever.  Marion is a different place now – still a nice town, but very little of the heavy manufacturing base remains.    The industrial Midwest seemed unassailable when I was a kid.  But years of inattentive and bad policy undermined it.  Michael Dunne’s latest newsletter on magnets and rare earths tells a story of how globalization and short-term thinking have led to a significant competitive gap and job losses.  And how that has resulted in substantial strategic uncertainty for the US.

I left Marion after high school, and I spent my career in the tech industry, fueled by PC, Internet, mobile, and cloud growth.  It was a heady time, with the rise of Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon, and many more.   Seattle and the West Coast have experienced significant growth and benefited substantially from the advancement of technology.  The tech industry benefited from decades of government investment, startup-friendly tax policy, supportive financial markets, and strong academic institutions.

But as with our manufacturing base, the same story of gradual decline could play out in the tech industry.  There is no guarantee of continued US leadership.  There are smart, driven people all over the world.  If we want to be leaders in the key industries of the future, we need to have thoughtful and intentional policies and leadership.  We must take smart action across government, industry, and academia to maintain and regain leadership in critical sectors — for jobs, economic growth, and national security.  

A shared understanding is a precursor to any policy action.  My colleague, Michael Dunne, mentioned above, is launching a forum to bring together leaders from industry and government to discuss openly and confidentially the issues at hand.  I’m excited about the opportunity to have meaningful conversations and create meaningful connections.  The flyer is below. Please feel free to reach out if you’d like any info.  

Laser focus

During my tech career, the best product teams I worked on at Microsoft were those for Windows 95 and Internet Explorer.  Brad Silverberg led both of these efforts, and I learned a great deal from Brad about being laser-focused on a product.

Brad was a busy guy — managing a large team and significant business responsibilities.  But he was laser-focused on the products his team built.  He installed the latest builds daily, used them as his primary tools, and explored every nook and cranny of the products.   He made time to use competitive products and understand exactly where our products would stand in the market.  You knew that if your team added an ill-considered feature to the product, Brad would notice it and call you out on it.   

And he instilled this attitude throughout the entire team.  We all immersed ourselves in our products, using and abusing them, turning over every rock, spending time with competitive products, and trying every day to see the products and the market through the customer's eyes.  

This took a considerable amount of time.  I spent a stupid number of hours installing and reinstalling Windows 95 across my 2-3 machines daily; for many years after that, I refused to install beta OS releases.   However, this intense investment of time across the entire team ensured that the products were polished when they left the door.  Win95 and IE3 were great, great products in their categories — customers loved them, and they had a material impact on Microsoft’s business.

Much of this was due to Brad’s leadership, and we were also supported by a company that was highly product-focused.  Every executive installed Windows 95 betas — I recall being the first line of support to Mike Maples, Jon Lazarus, and others during the Windows 95 beta process, ensuring that they had a good experience and that we received all their feedback.  

I suspect that every great product has a leader with this kind of laser focus, this “all in” mentality, and a supportive corporate environment.  Great products don’t just happen.  

And this brings me to the current day and Microsoft Copilot.  I wonder what is going on with Copilot at Microsoft.   I don’t know if this is representative of the market at large, but for at least one segment of buyers, Cursor is killing Copilot.   And I’ve observed that ChatGPT is beating Copilot.

Someone needs to be laser-focused on winning with Copilot, for both developers and end users.  They are probably two different products requiring two distinct leaders.  Leaders who are responsible for building the Copilot-based experiences for developers and end users, who are using the products every moment of every day, who understand the competitive products inside and out, and who have the organizational pull to rally the company to win in these segments.  

Shorts

Intel will shut down its automotive business, lay off most of the department’s employees.  The money line in this article is “Last week, Intel told marketing employees that it will outsource its marketing to the consulting firm Accenture.”  OK, marketing is not Intel’s most significant problem.  But wow.  One, if you work in a marketing group and your internal marketing is so weak that people say “hey, maybe we could replace you with Accenture”, well, you are probably going to get fired.  Two, maybe I need to upgrade my opinion of Accenture marketing, because this is a fantastic job of marketing, convincing an F500 company that you can do their marketing for them.

Social media creators to overtake traditional media in ad revenue this year.   Maybe Accenture/Intel need to hire more influencers.

$4,785.  That's How Much It Costs to Be a Sports Fan Now.  To stream all the games you want to watch across all the major sports, you need to subscribe to a ridiculous number of options.  The league owners have decided to milk us of every penny, and the experience of watching live sports has gotten a lot worse; the water cooler discussions are being destroyed.  

The College Sports Gold Rush Is About to Run Into a Brick Wall.  What a bizarre headline and conclusion.  Media money is gushing into college sports like never before.  Courts have been breaking down the patriarchal illegal NCAA controls.  The athletes will be paid.