Microsoft’s Nadella: ‘Now It’s About Discovering the New Formula’
New Microsoft (MSFT) chief executive Satya Nadella said the company for years has tinkered with but not overhauled its blueprint for success and now is challenged to figure out how to take the “intellectual capital of 130,000 people and innovate where none of the category definitions of the past will matter.”
New Microsoft (MSFT) chief executive Satya Nadella said the company for years has tinkered with but not overhauled its blueprint for success and now is challenged to figure out how to take the “intellectual capital of 130,000 people and innovate where none of the category definitions of the past will matter.”
In a concise New York Times Q&A, Nadella said Microsoft “had the formula figured out, and it was all about optimizing, in its various constituent parts, the formula. Now it is about discovering the new formula.” It's not much of a leap to conclude Nadella is referencing Microsoft's competitive position with cloud, mobile and the future of its traditional bell ringers Windows and productivity software.
Nadella's comments touched on a number of topics, including lessons learned from Ballmer, Gates’ return to the company, and his views on leadership, management and Microsoft’s changing internal culture. The interview is part of a series the newspaper has run twice a week since mid-March 2009 in which top business executives from a variety of industries comment on leadership and management.
Here are some highlights of Nadella’s comments:
On Ballmer:
“I remember asking him: What do you think? How am I doing? Then he said: Look, you will know it, I will know it, and it will be in the air. So you don’t have to ask me, How am I doing? At your level, it’s going to be fairly implicit.”
On Gates:
“In the beginning, I used to say, ‘I’m really intimidated by him.’ But he’s actually quite grounded. You can push back on him…Both Bill and Steve share this. They pressure-test you. They test your conviction.”
“We’ve worked closely for about nine years now. So I’m very comfortable with this, and I asked for a real allocation of his time.”
On his management style:
“The framing for me is all about getting people to commit and engage in an authentic way, and for us to feel that energy as a team…I’m not evaluating them on what they say individually…I’m only evaluating us collectively as a team.”
On Microsoft’s future:
“Longevity in this business is about being able to reinvent yourself or invent the future…We’ve had great successes, but our future is not about our past success. It’s going to be about whether we will invent things that are really going to drive our future.”
