鲍尔默留给微软的烙印

    1980年，微软的共同创始人和之后的总裁比尔•盖茨从宝洁（Procter & Gamble）把鲍尔默挖来时，鲍尔默说：“无论怎么说，我是一个生意人”。自那天起，他的口号就一直是：“你要怎样赚到钱？你要怎样赚到钱？你要怎样赚到钱？”（大家不妨回想一下他在2000年的著名公司峰会上以“开发商，开发商，开发商！”的语气喊出这句话时的样子。再想像一下他现在坐在雷德蒙德公司总部34号楼的办公室的安乐椅上，平静地讲出这句话的样子。）

    鲍尔默说：“并不是说别人从来没想过这个问题。不过‘你要则样赚到钱？’就是我被挖来这里要做的事情。我一直从这个角度进行思考。”

    身为首席执行官，鲍尔默将微软的严谨作风带到了一个新的高度。他不会因为产品听起来似乎挺有趣或符合潮流，就允许它们百花齐放。相反，他要求大家给出商业理由，而且往往要极其详细。只有这样，他才会批准开展新的业务。

    鲍尔默说：“我要说，自从我来到这里，这里就打上了我的印记。我在一线销售和伙伴合作上一直有着独到而富有价值的眼光。因为从某种程度来说，一个人对于如何赚钱的理解力，很大程度上取决于他认为人们会为了什么掏腰包，解决问题又需要付出什么代价。”

    2005年，他挖来了沃尔玛超市（Wal-Mart Stores）的执行副总裁凯文•特纳，聘用他为微软的首席运营官。特纳采用“记分卡”一类的工具来测试顾客的满意度和其他重要的销量指标，公司的要求因此变得更加严格。

    微软云服务的副总裁萨提亚•纳德拉说：“鲍尔默的名言是‘跟我打交道，你得注意细节。’如果你没准备好提案的细节，就不要给他过目。”  

    When Microsoft co-founder and then-chief executive Bill Gates hired Ballmer from Procter & Gamble in 1980, it was to be "the business guy, whatever that meant," Ballmer says. Since that day, his rallying cry has always been "How do you make money? How do you make money? How do you make money?" (Imagine him chanting this in the same way he hollered "Developers, developers, developers!" at a now-famous company summit in 2000. Now picture him doing so, calmly, as he kicks back in an upholstered chair in his office in Building 34 on the company's Redmond campus.)

    "That doesn't mean nobody else ever thought about it, but 'How do you make money?' was what I got hired to do," Ballmer says. "I've always thought that way."

    As CEO, Ballmer brought a new level of business rigor to Microsoft. Instead of allowing hundreds of products to bloom because they sounded potentially interesting or trendy, Ballmer required of business justification, often in excruciating detail. Only then would he give new businesses his stamp of approval.

    "I would say that it has been a hallmark of mine since arrival," Ballmer says. "I've always had the unique, valuable perspective of being on the front line selling, working with our partners, because in some senses your ability to understand how to make money is heavily shaped by what you think people will pay for, in addition to what it costs to get things done."

    In 2005, he hired Kevin Turner from Wal-Mart Stores, where he was executive vice president, to become Microsoft's chief operating officer. Turner upped the rigor even further with tools like "scorecards" for measuring customer satisfaction and other key sales metrics.

    "Ballmer's famous statement is, 'If you deal with me, you deal in detail,'" says Satya Nadella, executive vice president of Microsoft's Cloud and Server business. "If you don't have the details, don't give him the stuff."