For context, this excerpt:
After acquiring Sprint, I delivered a speech urging all employees and managers at the company to join forces with our Japanese unit and work as a single entity.For the de-Macaulayization, this:
I made the speech because I did not want to repeat the mistakes I had made running previously acquired companies in the U.S. When I took over the company that runs Comdex (Computer Dealer's Exhibition) and U.S. publisher Ziff Davis, I allowed American executives to run them at their discretion. This decision was based on my belief that Japanese owners should not interfere too much with the U.S. executives' business management. That belief was wrong.
By leaving American executives to their own devices, I was acting as an investor and not as a business leader. This hands-off approach would never enable me to reform management of companies I acquire overseas. It doesn't matter how well a company is run, there is always room for improvement. A hands-on approach allows me to make profitable businesses more profitable.
A Japanese SoftBank executive recently made a presentation in English in Silicon Valley. His spoken English was terrible, but who cares? He was able to make himself understood. In the past, I would probably have told Japanese executives at SoftBank to focus on Japanese operations if their English was not at a high level. Not anymore.
PS: there is an old desi joke (that sounds better in Hindi), Banta Singh from an Indian village visits England and comes back very enthused - England is a really advanced country, even the children speak English! Crudely speaking, de-Macaulayization is the shedding of that attitude.
CIP · 585 weeks ago
Guys who can plunk down a billion bucks can speak any language they like - but lots of others need
to worry about how, and what, they speak.
macgupta 81p · 585 weeks ago
2. Not just Birla, but his Rajasthani accountant from his home town, can speak any language they like.
CIP · 585 weeks ago
I think you had better say impossible. What's done is done, and cannot be undone. The world will change, and might even speak
Chinese of Hindi sometime in the future, but it will bear the indelible stamp of the past in one fashion or another.
I think what you really mean is that Birla can speak what he likes, and his accountant can speak whatever Birla approves of.
macgupta 81p · 585 weeks ago
The Gardener · 585 weeks ago
Good joke: even the children in England speak English!
macgupta 81p · 585 weeks ago