Credit to Gates for Moving On

Bill Gates recently retired from active involvement in Microsoft. Gates founded Microsoft 33 years ago, without any venture capital, and was deeply involved in and identified with the company throughout the years of meteoric growth, and well into sedate middle-aged corporate maturity. I have to give him credit for being able to let go. More significantly, he gets credit for fostering an organization that he can step away from without causing much more than a ripple of nostalgia. This is the defining characteristic of what Good to Great author Jim Collins would call a "fifth level leader".

(As an aside, I have deep doubts that Steve Jobs meets this standard, though at the moment, he seems like a helluva fourth level leader.)