Claim: In any field—business, politics, education, government—those in power should step down after five years.Reason: The surest path to success for any enterprise is revitalization through new leadership.

In the statement given by the author it is has been claimed that the head of a business, country, organization .etc. in any field should step down after five years and the reason given is that success of the enterprise is definite by revitalization through new leadership. In my opinion the statement is too strong in its assumption that if the person in power steps down after five years then success will prevail. There are many examples few of which I will state that will differ with the statement.

First I would like to give the example of Steve Jobs the late CEO of Apple. He was fired from his position as CEO in 1985 by the board members blaming him for the financial loss for the Macintosh computer. After he was fired, Apple hardly launched any innovating products and most of them were failures. Eventually they hired Steve Jobs back so that he could provide a vision to innovate new products and save the company on the verge of bankruptcy. For more than ten years he served as CEO to make Apple the world’s most valuable technology company. Clearly this example contradicts the reason given by the author. Bill Gates has been serving in key positions like CEO, chairman, chief software architect at Microsoft for more than twenty years. Microsoft is the world’s largest software development company.

Second, I would like to point out some facts about politics. The political leaders for .e.g. the President, or the Prime Minister .etc. need a lot of time to conceive and implement policies. The reason for this is that these policies have huge implications on the nation, or the province .etc. they are serving. Moreover in politics it often happens that if a candidate performs well in a five year term he or she is reelected so that he or she can implement certain policies that were envisioned and put into motion in the first term and continue to envision new policies. For example Barack Obama is currently serving his second term as the President of the US, Manmohan Singh served as the Prime Minister of India for ten years .etc. Hence it is incorrect to say that that the surest path to success is revitalization through new leadership.

Third, if after every five years new people are replaced as heads of organizations it can lead to instability. This is because every new leader has his own ideas, opinions and vision which he or she would like to put into motion. For example one leader might insist on better design of products even if it might shoot up the overall costs whereas another one would want a more economical product with a mediocre design. Therefore changing leaders after every five years might not be as beneficial but the polar opposite. Furthermore I would like to state that the leaders themselves can bring revitalization through new ideas.

Lastly, I would like to point out that sometimes a change in leadership is necessary. For example a sports team is not doing so well under their manager then the manager is replaced. If the policies of a president are not effective then he or she will not be reelected for the next term. One example is of Satya Nadela who replaced Steve Balmer as CEO of Microsoft. But to state that change of leadership brings revitalization which is the surest way to success is definitely wrong.