Why Did Larry Ellison Have to Save Oracle?

David Senra quotes Larry Ellison saying he had to save Oracle to save himself. Ellison could not run away. He had managed by abdication: he was interested in the technology, and if he was not interested in sales, accounting, or legal, he simply ignored it.

Fifteen years of running the company had not stopped the mistakes. Very few people work on anything for 15 years. Keeping legal and accounting organized as separate control functions could have avoided a lot of the problems. A company cannot run without strong checks and balances. Ellison was doing only the work that interested him, the same problem he had in school, except it happened in his 40s.

He hired really smart people and assumed smart meant good at the job. One smart hire he made CFO was not a good CFO. Brilliance is not enough. He combined arrogance and recklessness to a degree that was very nearly lethal for Oracle, but he built something so inherently resilient and valuable that both he and Oracle would have a chance to reinvent themselves.