Corporate Fiefdoms

A few weeks ago, I attended a talk by Bob Herbold- former COO of Microsoft. Bob is the author of “The Fiefdom Syndrome” and husband of the US Ambassador to Singapore. He also recently became a senior executive in residence at INSEAD. Nice catch J. Frank!

The book and the talk dealt with how individuals, groups or divisions - out of fear - try to protect their turf and reshape their environment to gain as much control over it as is possible. How managers and employees to become fixated on their own activities, their own careers, and their own territory or turf to the detriment of those around them.

Bob is a very engaging speaker and he gave good examples from Sony (how they missed the ipod even though they invented the Walkman), Porsche (how they became the most profitable car company in the world) and Microsoft (how they had problems even closing their financials at the end of each quarter).

He also mentioned Samsung as the example of a company that is actively working to avoid the formation of fiefdoms. Now this is where the talk became interesting-because he explained the success of Samsung to their lack of insularity but other authors such as Chan Kim/Mauborgne have attributed Samsung's success to their Value Innovation Process (VIP).

I also found that some of the thoughts were strikingly similar to those of Clayton Christensen of HBS and one of the INSEAD professors-Ron Adner when Bob talked about companies failing to innovate or missing what the customers need.

In any case, a very engaging talk and a pity that the book is not yet available in Singapore.