Big fan of Satya Nadella
Current CEO of Microsoft. Take a look at this 2 min video. I showed this to 200+ business school students recently. Completely worth your time. Energy and Clarity. Boom.
Nadella argues that empathy is core to innovation
How can you meet unmet, unarticulated needs without really thinking, living, being in your customers’ shoes? How did he come to this level 5 (hat tip: Jim Collins) leadership? He attributes a lot of this to his parents, as well as, his wife’s primordial (my words) love for their children; note, this oldest son was born with cerebral palsy and his youngest has severe learning disabilities.
Great interview of Satya Nadella with David Rubenstein here.
With success, Culture becomes even more important
Another solid interview with Nadella at Harvard Business Review here. Some of this quotes in blue color:
So, that’s why I think culture becomes even more important after your first success. Whereas, of course, first success doesn’t happen if you don’t have a novel idea.
culture beats strategy
With 124,000 employees all you can do is set a direction, guidelines, and inspire people to do good work. In the video, Nadella says he runs meetings by 1) listening more, 2) talking less 3) being decisive when it is time. Boom. Love this guy already.
Having achieved your first or two or three successes, how do you go after the fourth big success? That systems challenge of understanding that what got you here is not going to take you to the next place is, I think, one of the most important things that leaders have to do and to recognize.
Difficult to do well
Okay, this is completely (intellectually) true, and (emotionally) difficult. We all like to be winners. We all like to do what we DID WELL and DO IT AGAIN. AG Lafley, ex-CEO of P&G, famously says that most CEOs are just in the game, but not willing to take risks and play to win. This feels like an Andy Grove, inflection point thing to say.
The second thing that I’ve also, perhaps, recognized is this notion of curating culture, because if the CEO doesn’t care about the initial conditions of everybody doing their best work, then who can and who should?
Curating culture
But the third piece that the CEO also still needs to get right is their ability to pass judgment in an uncertain future about the right things to do, the right things to pick. Because if you get that wrong, the entire organization could go down the wrong path.
What can I learn
Right, just because the CEO is a great cheerleader (curating culture) does not absolve him from the hard-cold-truth that making bad decisions can ruin a company.
But what at least drove those choices for me was more about, Hey, what can I learn? Where can I have impact? Where can I uniquely contribute? And that is, I think, in some sense, defined who I am, and more importantly, the career I’ve had.
Microsoft needed a change
The previous CEO, Steve Ballmer, personified the 1990s Microsoft that was busy defending the Wintel desktop monopoly, seeing everything as a red ocean of competition. This is what the Ballmer cliche’ looked like. Youtube: Ballmer monkey dance.
Nadella = $2 Trillion
Nadella has made an impact. Look at this chart of MSFT stock. Nadella was announced as the CEO in 2014 and the stock has gone up 7x in 10 years. You can call him the $2 trillion man. Amazing.
Yes, he smart enough to run Microsoft, but more importantly to me, he is a human. Smart, humble, funny, smiling, and someone who would pass any airport test.
