Gary Hamel: You talk about two very different views of what a manager does and you I think quoted Harold Geneen, the ITT executive many years ago. He said, “The skill of management is achieving your objectives through other people where in a sense, people are kind of the instruments and you make things happen.” And then you also quoted Edwin Schlossberg who wrote an article that had a big influence on you. And he said, “The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think.”

Well those are really two different models of leadership, right? How do I get people to serve the organization’s goals? How do I create a context and a space where people can create and contribute? And I wonder how that thinking has influenced your role as a leader at O’Reilly Media? And number two, do you think these are complementary perspectives or does one really have to succeed at the expense of the other?

Tim O’Reilly: You know, I guess the first thing I’d say is there are many, many different ways to get people to do what you want. And one of them is to inspire them. In fact, it’s one of the best ways to get them to do what you want. So in that sense, the narrow mechanistic interpretation which was probably what Geneen meant is really not the only interpretation.

That being said, most organizations do have people of both types. Those who are very, very much focused on building a big story and big vision, which allows employees to go figure out how to carry that out on their own. And then someone else is really focused on follow-up and implementation.

At O’Reilly, I have a great COO who does the latter and that frees me up to do a lot of storytelling. I like to joke that my actual management style is describe by the con man Harold Hill in the old musical, The Music Man. He has this system he calls the Think System where he teaches kids to play band instruments by humming a tune and asking them to figure out how to play it on their instruments. And that’s what I've spent most of my career doing.

Gary Hamel: So that sounds like you know, a pretty loose management style but you have you know, the backup of somebody who I guess kind of cracks the whip. I mean as you look at how the way we create value in our economy is evolving-- having gone from an industrial economy to a knowledge economy, now a creative economy -- coupling that with the fact that we know that in most organizations, a vast majority of people will tell you they’re really not very engaged in what they’re doing. I mean do we need to be rebalancing here? You’re saying that they’re complementary but I get the sense that a lot of organizations are still too much on the kind of crack the whip and not enough on how do you create a client which people are going to bring their very best work every day.

Tim O’Reilly: Oh absolutely. And it’s no question in my mind that most organizations get it wrong. Now that’s true in every field. There’s this famous statement attributed to science fiction writer, Theodore Sturgeon, when somebody braced him with the fact that 90% of science fiction is crap, he replied, “90% of everything is crap.” In some sense, 90% of organizations are very badly managed and the ones that aren’t stand out. And part of what makes them stand out is they do have aspirations to greatness. And they inspire their employees. And those employees respond by bringing themselves to the job. And when people love their job, and when they have that freedom of action, you get way better work.

Gary Hamel: So if you think about your role in growing O’Reilly Media as a leader Tim, what are a few of the things that you've learned over those years that are kind of the most helpful or have the highest leverage in getting the very best out of people in releasing that latent talent, getting people engaged, getting them excited about giving their very best?

Tim O’Reilly: A lot of what I have always done and I wouldn’t say that I consider myself a management guru of any kind. I’ve followed my nose and I found people who are kind of interested in the same things I’m interested in and we’ve sort of formed kind of a common vision. And that’s what gotten people excited.

For example when I would hire employees early in the company history, a lot of us, I talked about what I wanted to accomplish and saw how they responded. And if they got excited about it then they join the band. And I think it was in Built to Last you know was that comparison made between great companies and cults. And I think great companies do have a cult-like quality where the leadership inspires people who want to achieve the mission of the company, and who believe in it. And I think that that is underrated in our economy.

You know you look at a company like Apple which has outperformed so well under Steve Jobs. Steve is a visionary and he gets people to buy into his vision. And he gets his customers to buy into his vision. And it has absolutely a cult-like quality. And at the same time, he is also an incredibly detail-oriented manager by all accounts. So here, on one person you have both those qualities.