Microsoft in the hands of Bill Gates was a great company. But when he left the company to pursue philanthropy, Microsoft struggled to deliver in the hands of its next CEO Steve Ballmer till Satya Nadella took over. Bill Gates being such a great leader still struggled to handover the company to the right person after he left the company.
Steve Jobs is the genius who made Apple an extra ordinary company. After he died Apple hardly does any thing innovative or great stuff, atleast I have not seen or heard any thing interesting from the company. It is still able to make lot of money just from the products created by Jobs
The great software companies of the likes of Amazon, Google, Facebook are dancing to the tunes of one or two man shows. Question is whether these companies will still be great in the absence of the so called great leaders? Only time will tell. If these companies still remain great in the absence of the founders that is when we can say the founders are the real great leaders
If we look in India even Infosys had similar crisis. Company was doing really good job in the hands of Narayana Murthy and Nandan Nilekani. But after that it lost its glow or spark or whatever you call it and went through many leadership crisis for some time and that is the reason why they have to come back
This problem is not specific to businesses alone it is there everywhere be it political, personal, Software, etc
Late Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, India Y S Rajasekhar Reddy was a great leader. He was able to keep telangana movement irrelevant and gave many seats to Congress Party at the Center which helped Congress to stay in power twice during Manmohan Singh Regime. But things changed drastically when he died in a helicopter crash. It led to splitting of Andhra Pradesh into two states and almost extinction of Congress Party in Andhra Pradesh and kept the state in deep financial crisis. Had he thought of Plan B it would have been a completely different story!!!
Tamil Nadu is a state which delivers high quality output, be it business or movies. People are aggressive by nature and to be a Chief Minister for such a state for a long time is a challenge. Jayalalitha was the CM of Tamil Nadu for long time. Her sudden ill health and later her death put the Tamil Nadu state in a deep political crisis and making AIADMK irrelevant
Our country has a strong government with a very strong prime minister Narendra Modi. But does Narendra Modi have a plan B.
Softwares are known to fail. Best Practice in the software world is to be prepared for failure and plan accordingly. High availability, Active-Active, Active-Passive, Distributed Systems, Multi Master, Multiple Regions, Multiple Zones, Replica Set, Load Balancer, Write Ahead Log, Disaster Recovery, Backup and Recovery, etc are concepts revolving around Plan B.
Plan B is something every one needs to have even in their personal lives as well. It is really important to think of how their family can fare in their absence
Do you have a Plan B?
