A Look Back On Bill Gates' New Rules

March 15, 2025

This is article captures my notes and excerpts from Bill Gates’ 1999 article, New Rules, about how businesses should transform themselves in the new millennium.

I find these particularly enlightening in 2025 as AI takes centre stage for businesses – just like the internet did in in the late 90s.

Knowledge is Not Power – Shared Knowledge Is

The old saying “knowledge is power” sometimes makes people hoard knowledge. It is wrong to believe that knowledge hoarding makes one indispensable. Power comes not from knowledge kept but from knowledge shared. A collaborative culture, reinforced by information flow, makes it possible for smart people all over a company to be in touch with each other. Our aim should be to enhance the way people work together, share ideas, sometimes wrangle and build on one another’s ideas–and then act in concert for a common purpose.

Bad News is A Feedback Mechanism

We have to be consistently receptive to bad news, and then you have to act on it – without murdering the messenger of the bad news. The most important job as CEO is to listen for bad news. If the leader doesn’t act on it, people will eventually stop bringing bad news to their attention. And that’s the beginning of the end.

Unhappy Customers are Our Greatest Opportunity

Listening to customers means hearing their complaints about current product shortcomings without feeling bad. Unhappy customers are always a concern. They’re also our greatest opportunity.

Understanding the Scale of Numbers is Important

Knowing our numbers is a fundamental precept of business. We need to gather data at every step of the way. Crucially, we also need to understand what the data means: 5K and 50K should evoke a different reaction inside without having to think about it.

Empower Others: Expect Ownership and Belonging

In the new organisation, the worker is no longer a cog in the machine but is an intelligent part of the overall process. If we give people more sophisticated jobs and better tools, people will become more responsible and bring more intelligence to their work. In the digital age, we need to make knowledge workers out of every employee possible.

Motivation Needs to be Rewarded

Allowing motivated people to take on responsibility is not a question of organisational structure so much as organisational attitude. If the right people can be working on the issues within hours instead of days, a business obtains a huge advantage.

Flexibility Succeeds

We need to be flexible in the face of evolving requirements. We should have a crisp decision process to evaluate change, including a provision for re-evaluating our original project goals.

The Internet Did Not Replace People

The Internet helped create Adam Smith’s ideal marketplace, in which buyers and sellers can easily find one another without taking much time or spending much money. Business today is characterised as different combinations of interactions between people: face-to-face, ear-to-ear and keyboard-to-keyboard. The Internet did not replace people. It made them more efficient.

Don’t be Lulled into Inaction

We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next 10. Prepare for change – don’t let yourself be lulled into inaction.

Business at the Speed of Thought

You know you have built an excellent digital nervous system when information flows through the organisation as quickly and naturally as thought in a human being – when you can use technology to marshal and coordinate teams of people as quickly as you can focus an individual on an issue. It’s business at the speed of thought.

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