Peace is hard. According to the UN, “of the past 3,400 years, humans have been entirely at peace for 268 of them, or just 8 percent of recorded history.”
When we talk about peace, it does not need to involve humans killing each other in battles for scarce resources. Peace (and its absence) also describes the bonds between people and organizations.
The opposite of peace is violence—whether physical or emotional. Violence can start with simple miscommunication that snowballs into escalating tensions and, ultimately, all-out warfare. Each side feels wronged. Each side feels justified in its actions. No one is willing to back down.
After enough resentment has built up and wrongs have been committed, is it possible for two parties to get back to a blank slate? Can they let go and start over?
My example for making peace (and the unlikely inspiration for this post) is the Microsoft antitrust saga, which was recently covered by the Acquired podcast.
The story begins with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in 1990 when it investigated Microsoft for antitrust. The FTC focused on Microsoft use of per-processor licensing terms and reached a 2:2 deadlock in its verdict, meaning no action would be taken. But this victory for Microsoft was short-lived—just a month after the ruling, the Department of Justice (DoJ) decided to open its own case.
For an organization to be tried for the same crime twice by two different arms of the U.S. government was unprecedented. Microsoft eventually settled with the DoJ in 1994 by agreeing not to bundle application sales with its operating system. However, in 1997, the DoJ sued Microsoft again—this time for bundling Internet Explorer with Windows. This lawsuit dramatically expanded in scope, going beyond product bundling to examine whether Microsoft was anticompetitive across its entire business.
From Microsoft's perspective, it was being unfairly prosecuted by its own government. A decade spent fighting antitrust cases had caused significant damage to both the company's business and culture, and there were no signs of it ending.
It wasn't until Bill Gates stepped down as CEO and Steve Ballmer took the lead that things began to change. One of Ballmer's first moves was to appoint Brad Smith as general counsel, with the mission of settling the antitrust cases. In Smith's final interview with the Microsoft board, he had one slide: “It’s time to make peace.”
Smith delivered on this mission. Over the course of the next decade, Microsoft settled all outstanding antitrust cases and, in a complete turnaround, became a trusted partner of the U.S. government.
With Ballmer and Smith, the strategy shifted from confrontation to making peace. This meant letting go of past grievances. This didn’t (and probably couldn’t) happen under Gates—the fight had become too bitter, the wounds too deep. Change required a changing of the guard.
There is no shortage of bitter conflicts in the world today. Some have escalated into all-out wars. It’s hard to see how peace can be made. Sometimes it is not possible to change the guard because the conflict consumes the subsequent generation. Sometimes it is not possible to change the guard because the fight is between individuals. When the guard cannot change, people themselves need to instead.
Making peace requires someone to make the first move—to put aside ego and past hurts in favor of a different future. To say that this is hard is to say that the universe is big. But there is freedom on the other side for those who make the leap.
Created 2024-10-28T01:28:54.202000, updated 2024-10-28T01:30:17.820000 · History · Edit