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Satya Nadella
The tech leader who wants to make other's cool
The Indian-born CEO says he doesn’t want to be cool, but to make other people cool, inspiring Microsoft to become the world’s most valuable business, again.
Technology’s impact on our lives is still in its infancy. From mobile phones to social networks that bring new connections and instant gratification, to the reinvention of every industry. This is where Microsoft sees its future.
After 15 years of Bill Gates’s visionary leadership in the emergent technological world, “putting a computer on every desk”, Microsoft declined under the heavy-handed control of Steve Ballmer. Until in 2014 when Satya Nadella took over, and in his words, “hit refresh”.
His first speech as CEO did not even mention the word “Windows”, the company’s proprietary operating system, and cash cow. Instead he said “the world is about cloud first, mobile first” setting out his new priorities for growth.
Within five years he had more than quadrupled the company’s value, and with a focus on how a new generation of technologies, most significantly AI, can enable other companies to transform themselves, with the help of Microsoft.
“We don’t want to be the cool company in the tech sector,” Nadella says, “We want to be the company that makes other people cool.” By which he means that his mission is to build Microsoft as the enabling force behind today’s business world. Whilst his predecessors burnt their fingers trying to create branded hardware, most notably acquiring Nokia’s mobile business, Nadella is happier to create the smart insides of other people’s solutions.
To be the partner, the enabler, to empower others to be great.
At Microsoft’s huge Redmond campus, just outside Seattle, there is a revolution in attitude and practice. Gone is the ego-driven, insular thinking of old. Boardroom strategies are replaced by hackathons where anyone can shine. Elitist developers are usurped by ideas that can come from anywhere. Collaboration with partners, even Apple and Amazon, is the new normal. And big human and ethical dilemmas are top of the company’s agenda, how to control intelligent machines, how to address global healthcare and inequality.
But this is not a cult of leadership, or a hierarchy of command. Nadella is a very modern leader, recognising that his role is not to be the expert, or the hero, or the decision-maker – but to be the facilitator, the connector, the enabler. Behind that behaviour is his belief in the idea of a “growth mindset. Nowhere will you find this approach to leadership more clear, applied and powerful than in today’s Microsoft.
“Growth mindset” is a simple but powerful concept that I use constantly in my work with business leaders. One of the biggest problems companies run into, and the successful ones even more so, is that they keep trying to perfect their existing world. Instead, it’s probably time to let go. As the world changes, ever more dramatically, leaders need to change too – looking forwards not back, experimenting with new ideas, rather than seek to optimise the old. Efficiency savings won’t create your future, but ideas and imagination just might. Move from diminishing returns to exponential opportunities.
“Don’t be a know-it-all, be a learn-it-all” Nadella loves to say. “In 2014, we cancelled our company meeting where our leaders would tell employees what was important, in favour of having a hackathon that lets our employees tell our leaders what’s important,” recalls Jeff Ramos, head of the Microsoft Garage, where employees with a bright idea can come and experiment, build, hack, and see if there ideas have potential.
I recently watched Nadella take to the stage at Microsoft Envision, a huge event where the company brings together many of the world’s leading CEOs to explore the future, there was a real energy in the room. From him – a great beaming smile, an uplifting speech, an entirely positive demeanour – but also from his team too. He believes in a new business world – one where teams beat hierarchy, where collaboration beats competition, where humanity is always superior to technology, and where dreams outperform numbers.
In November 2018, Microsoft became the world’s most valuable company again, after a gap of 16 years. 7 months later the business soared through the trillion dollar market cap mark. At the end of 2019, Nadella was named Financial Times’ Person of the Year, saying that “Microsoft was at risk of technological irrelevance but Nadella has presided over an era of stunning wealth creation.” In 2020, Satya Nadella led Microsoft to a $2 trillion market cap.