Here is an excerpt from an article by Rajat Taneja for LinkedIn. To read the complete article and check out others, please click here.

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Steve Ballmer recently announced his retirement setting off a firestorm of analysis of his career at Microsoft. I don’t want to get into the pluses and minuses of someone’s career — that’s for history to decide — but we should acknowledge a very simple fact: Very few people have contributed as much to society as Steve Ballmer.

Along with Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer democratized computing for the world. The two of them had a vision to put a computer on every desk and in every home, and in 20 years flat they achieved a level of unprecedented scale in that mission. No one can really debate the impact of MSDOS and Windows in bringing affordable computing to the mass market. Think about that. It’s really an astounding achievement that wholly changed global society. There are very few people you can say that about. And with today’s news that Microsoft will acquire the handset and services business of Nokia to strengthen their mobile offerings, Steve’s influence will continue to have a lasting impact well after his career at Microsoft is over.

As someone who worked with Steve very closely for a number of years I wanted to share a few things I learned from him, which have helped me tremendously during my own career. Working alongside Steve I learned some of the most valuable lessons of my career, many of which I’ve chronicled here on LinkedIn. But as I reflect on my many interactions with Steve spanning over 15 years, I have been most impacted by 5 lessons.

[Here’s the first.]

Courage and Convictions

The hallmark of the best leaders is to think big and to stay the course despite short term adversity. Steve was exceptional at thinking big and with a long time horizon. That led to the creation of a brand-new Xbox and Xbox LIVE business which now underpins a revolutionary connected entertainment strategy. That led to the formation of a huge server and enterprise business and now underpins Azure cloud services. That led to the formation of a new communications business which includes Lync and Skype and underpins a whole new way to think about productivity and collaboration. Very few companies have gone from being a successful one-trick pony to being successful multi-trick pony. It requires deep belief and courage to follow the true north with conviction. Steve taught a whole generation of leaders how to handle short term adversity for the right long term innovation.

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To read the complete article, please click here.

Rajat Taneja is Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at Electronic Arts