Bits of advice from Steven Ballmer, the chief executive of Microsoft:<\/p>\n
On work ethic:<\/p>\n
Something that my dad always told me growing up, which is a simple piece of advice that really shaped my approach to life and to business.<\/p>\n
My dad worked for Ford for 30 years. When I was a kid, he\u2019d say: “If you\u2019re going to do a job, do a job. If you\u2019re not going to do a job, don\u2019t do a job.” What he meant was, if you really want to accomplish anything, you have to be committed, motivated, tenacious and smart about what you do.<\/strong> That\u2019s really just the essence of the American work ethic, but it\u2019s one of the most important things I ever learned. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Lessons on leadership from growing from 30 employees to 90,000:<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve come to believe that to be a great leader, you have to combine thought leadership, business leadership and great people management. I think most people tend to focus more on one of those three. I used to think it was all about thought leadership. Some people think it\u2019s all about your ability to manage people. But the truth is, great leaders have to have a mix of those things.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The most challenging part of his job:<\/p>\n
Finding the right balance between optimism and realism. I\u2019m an optimist by nature, and I start from the belief that you can always succeed if you have the right amount of focus combined with the right amount of hard work. So I can get frustrated when progress runs up against issues that should have been anticipated or that simply couldn’t have been foreseen. A realist knows that a certain amount of that is inevitable, but the optimist in me always struggles when progress doesn\u2019t match my expectations.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n