After three decades in Bill Gates' shadow, the former Microsoft CEO has a seven-point plan to reinvent himself on a scale worthy of America's 18th richest person
I love great views, Steve Ballmer says with a grin as he takes me on a quick tour of the 40th-floor apartment he just rented in Bellevue, Washington. One set of picture windows faces the Downtown Seattle skyline. Another provides a gorgeous view of Mount Rainier to the south. I realise one outlook is missing: To the northeast. The apartment’s interior walls prevent us from looking inland toward Microsoft’s giant campus, where Ballmer worked for most of his adult life.
The past is vanishing. From this new perch, Microsoft is literally behind Ballmer and out of sight. The long-time chief executive still commands the room with the same booming voice and wild gesticulations that made his public appearances at Microsoft legendary spectacles. But it’s not his job anymore to cheer-lead for Windows, Bing or a host of other Microsoft efforts. Control has passed to a new chief executive, Satya Nadella. When I ask Ballmer how often he hears from his successor, the wry answer is: “Once a month—maybe.”
Instead of waiting for calls that won’t come or, even worse, butting in, Ballmer is on to the next thing and trying to pull off the biggest relaunch of his career: Himself.
“I’ve got a seven-part plan,” says Ballmer. Playfully, he starts talking about the little stuff: Getting himself into better physical shape, improving his golf game and keeping tabs on his 333 million shares of Microsoft. He’s getting tutored in areas that intrigue him, such as Hebrew: “I never had a bar mitzvah when I was a child.” Eager to rectify that gap, he wants strong enough Hebrew skills to be able to recite his Torah portion. But then the banter stops. Ballmer knows that at 58, with a $22.5 billion net worth that puts him at No 18 on The Forbes 400, he is too young, too rich and too full of unrealised goals to while away his next decades with the small hobbies of an ordinary corporate retiree.
So now we get to the big items on Ballmer’s list. Atop the priorities: Maximising his recent, eye-popping $2 billion purchase of the Los An- geles Clippers basketball team. Re- gardless of how many people think he overpaid—pretty much every- body—Ballmer sees value. Mean- while, he and his wife Connie are feeling the first stirrings of wanting to do something sizeable in the civic/philanthropic areas. Analytical to a fault, Ballmer has been hanging out with everyone from bloggers to the head of the Congressional Budget Office, trying to figure out if there’s some gap in government redistribution programmes where he— and his money—could make everything work better. Finally, Ballmer is wrestling with the tangled legacy of his 34 years at Microsoft. He is closely associated with the company’s biggest successes (Windows and Office) and its most awkward missteps (Bing search, the Windows phone, the Zune MP3 player). Ballmer says his record speaks for itself, particularly his success in tripling Microsoft’s profits during his 14 years as CEO. “Only two companies in America— put the oil companies aside—make the kind of money we make,” he says.
Linking everything is Ballmer’s long-simmering need to establish himself as his own man after having lived in the shadow of Bill Gates and Microsoft for decades. When the two men were Harvard classmates in the mid-1970s, Gates was the Pied Piper, encouraging the highly conscientious Ballmer to join him in skipping classes, on the (correct) belief that both could muster an A on the final anyway. During Microsoft’s early years, Ballmer constantly was put to work, fixing the company’s toughest problems, yet was never given the title of president until at least three other executives had cycled through that job. Even more recently, when Ballmer was CEO and Gates had semi-retired, the leadership baton never fully passed. People feared Ballmer, but they revered Gates.
Several friends note that Ballmer is spending a lot more time in Los Angeles these days, not just because he bought the Clippers but also because it lets him break free of Seattle. He’s revisiting his legacy this autumn by teaching at Stanford and USC business schools. Eager to talk about both his stumbles and successes, Ballmer’s main goal is to show that his playbook remains relevant to a new generation of leaders. Most tellingly, Ballmer is starting to sketch out a philanthropic vision that doesn’t involve being a small planet orbiting the giant sun of the $40 billion Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The Ballmers have yet to set up their own foundation, but he waives off the notion of following Warren Buffett’s example and passively submitting his wealth to the Gates team to manage. “It’s great what Bill and Melinda are doing,” he says. But adds that he wants to find his own path this time.
Sports have been a profound part of Ballmer’s life since high school, when he was a 260-pound lineman for Detroit Country Day School. Ballmer still remembers the thrill, as a senior, of getting to wear jersey 71—the same number as his hero, Detroit Lions defensive tackle Alex Karras. Glory turned out to be fleeting. By game five of the season, Ballmer was benched in favour of a lighter teammate with greater agility. He took the lesson to heart in college, heading to the sidelines at Harvard and becoming the varsity football team’s student manager. “Ballmer had hit his athletic ceiling by college, but he loved sports,” recalls James Kubacki, who was Harvard’s quarterback at the time. “Being the manager was his way to stay connected. He got the footballs in place for our drills. He set up trips and ran the business side. He ran ev- erything. He loved being part of the team, and he appreciated athletes’ ability to play at a high level.”
Ballmer and Connie have been quietly active philanthropists in the Seattle area for years, inspired mostly by Connie’s empathy for children and teens caught in a web of foster-care programmes and fragmented social services. But there’s room—perhaps even an obligation—for the Ballmers to share their wealth in a much more substantial, systematic way.
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(This story appears in the 31 October, 2014 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)