Nadella: ‘Microsoft’s future is not about our past successes’

Microsoft’s new CEO says his company needs to return to thinking like a nimble startup to thrive.

Satya Nadella’s big challenge is rewriting the “Microsoft formula” to get the company out of an innovation trap, according to an interview published Thursday in the New York Times .

“Culturally, I think we have operated as if we had the formula figured out, and it was all about optimizing, in its various constituent parts, the formula,” he said during the interview with the Times. “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.”

With a company as large as Microsoft, Nadella admitted, sometimes finding innovation and growth is tough. Mature and established companies don’t grow as much as their young counterparts.

“When you have a $70 billion business, something that’s $1 million can feel irrelevant. But that $1 million business might be the most relevant thing we are doing,” he said. “To me, that is perhaps the big culture change – recognizing innovation and fostering its growth.”

In Nadella’s new role he will be working extensively with Bill Gates, who moved from chairman of the board to technology advisor after the appointment of Nadella. During the interview he said touched on his relationship and his observations on the leadership style of Gates and Ballmer.

“Bill is the most analytically rigorous person. He’s always very well prepared, and in the first five seconds of a meeting he’ll find some logical flaw in something I’ve shown him,” he said. “He’ll argue with you vigorously for a couple of minutes, and then he’ll be the first person to say, ‘Oh, you’re right.’ Both Bill and Steve share this. They pressure-test you. They test your conviction.”

With Ballmer, Nadella noted that his predecessor was concerned less with tradition and more with finding out how someone could best tackle the problem before them with the resources they had at their disposal.

“The only thing that matters to me is what you do with the cards you’ve been dealt now. I want you to stay focused on that, versus trying to do this comparative benchmark,” is how Nadella recalls Ballmer assessing his performance in a performance review years ago.

The interview can be read in its entirety on the New York Times ’ website (paywall).

Source: New York Times





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