Tech companies are like the kingdoms from the ancient era
For King, you have the CEO but what about the minsters, generals and Soldiers?
For King, you have the CEO
The Council of Ministers is the advisory board.
Generals are the CFOs, CMOs, CTOs, COOs, etc.
And the Royal servants are the Royal Engineers.
But the similarities don’t end here, there’s more:
The kings of before used to rule over a region — a piece of land.
And whoever lived in that region would have to abide by the rules established by the King.
But the Kings of now rule over their users by conquering their ATTENTION.
Unlike before when the competition between kingdoms was for land and money, the competition between companies now is for attention and money.
A key metric that decides how big your kingdom is depends upon how many no of active users you have.
In Chess, the King is the most important thing. But it’s the most vulnerable one too.
And it’s true for the kings of the ancient era and tech companies as well.
A king has to play along with his ministers tactically, he can’t come across as too aggressive or appear weak.
Otherwise, the ministers will take away their influence and support or maybe start a coup behind the king’s back and overthrow the king.
Julius Caesar was one of the most powerful kings in the history of the Roman Empire. The members of his senate that were appointed by him started resenting him for his popularity and arrogance.
A King is supposed to rely on the advice of his senate.
But he got assassinated by the same people he was supposed to trust.
Steve Jobs was fired from Apple by the board.
Evan Williams, Jack Dorsey, & Dick Costolo were fired from Twitter by the board. (Well, they have a long and complicated history of their own)
Sam Altman was fired from OpenAI by the board.
Even though it lasted for only 2.5 days.
Some Kings manage to come back to their throne but it generally takes them years to do so. Sam Altman is an anomaly to this kingship.
The ministers who are appointed by the king have their own fair share of assets like land, money, agriculture and dairy that they let the king utilize in exchange for being on his advisory board and having a certain influence in the critical decision making of the kingdom.
Likewise, Board members of tech companies buy their seat by offering their investment or their experience.
A King is the figurehead of the kingdom.
He can’t appear weak or emotionally unstable as his reputation precedes everything.
You might have heard stories where the king is forced to make a decision, just to protect his reputation.
It’s similar to how when any CEO gets involved in a controversy, the company suffers.
Whenever Elon Musk gets involved in a controversy, he gets ultimatums from advertisers, lawsuits and a lot of headaches.
A kingdom has multiple aspects to it.
It needs to be prepared for war.
Its finances should be sorted.
It should be well stocked with food.
Its architecture needs to be unique.
And these aspects are taken care by the generals of the Kingdom.
In tech companies, the CXOs take care of their individual departments just like the generals do for war, food, finance and architecture.
The generals played a crucial role in the success or failure of their kingdom.
They were always first in line to aid the king & if the situation arises, they become the king themselves.
A king has to be wary of his ministers & generals as well.
Because one crooked minster or general can create a coup just with some whisperings near the right ears and those whispers would spread like wildfire and turn into shouts somewhere else.
Kings also used to have spiritual advisors, someone who can guide them on:
- making the right decision
- making things better in the kingdom
- making changes to the existing methods and processes.
Someone who makes them see the problem and nudges them in the right direction to solve it.
In tech companies that role is played by consultants and coaches.
Acharya Chanakya not only served as the chief advisor in the Mauryan Empire but he also became the guiding hand for the Kings.
We talked about the King, his ministers, the general and even the spiritual advisors but we are missing a key factor in a kingdom — The Soldiers
The Royal soldiers are an integral part of any kingdom. They are the helping hands that make up the kingdom and do the majority of execution.
Now it’s up to the king and the generals, the kind of culture and environment they create in their palace.
Is it too cut throat that the kingdom is always restless and on high alert and, or is too soft that the soldiers can’t even pick up a sword to save their life.
In the tech companies, the royal soldiers are the royal engineers, scientists, architects and designers.
And it’s up to the CXOs and the early employees for what kind of culture they foster in the company.
Is it a culture where the exchange of ideas happens so swiftly and efficiently like in Apple that the innovation never goes stagnant.
Or is it a culture where everyone looks like they are working super hard but there is negligible output to show for.
The kind of relationship the soldiers have with their generals & king sets the tone of how they perform in the battlefield or the kind of work they produce.
A King can be changed in two situations:
- He willingly steps down
- He is strong armed by the general and coerced into leaving by the minsters
The only scenario that doesn’t exist in this case is a battle to death.
But metaphorically that happens as well.
Think of Facebook as the Dark Lord.
When Facebook decides that they want to acquire a certain company but the company says no, Facebook gives them a threat with a kiss:
‘You join us and we live happily ever after or you say no and we do everything in our power to destroy you.’
Which involves creating an exact similar product and targeting that company’s audience, which is equivalent to turning the other kingdom to dust.
There are a lot of similarities between ancient kingdoms & modern day tech companies.
But there’s one critical difference,
Anyone could become a KING.
Unlike ancient kingdoms where you need to have a certain affluence to take over the throne, either by being the King’s heir or having an army to seize the throne, or having an immense amount of wealth and influence to overthrow the king.
In the tech world, anyone (literally ANYONE) with potential and certain right moves on the chessboard of life can build and become the King, with or without affluence.
Power has a way of messing up with your head. Once someone comes to power, their decisions making skills rarely ever stay the same as once they were in the beginning.
If they hadn’t changed their ways, they wouldn’t have come into the power.
History has shown us that when it comes to power, companies won’t hesitate to rule over a city, region or country.
Remember East India Company?
It was the biggest and most dominant company in the history. Long before tech companies came into the picture.
They not only had structural similarity with kingdoms, but they also ruled over a vast country like India like a King.
I will be covering ‘How East India Company became the world’s most powerful company’ in one of my next reads.
So stay tuned!
And, thanks for reading:)
