MICROSOFT: THE LOST DECADE? The following case study is made out of two documents: “Microsoft's Lost Decade", Kurt Eichenwald, VanityFair Business, May 2012 Steve Ballmer’s message to Microsoft team on “Microsoft Global Reorganization” (2013/07/11) Document 2012 Foreword: parts of t ESCP Europe “They used t despised.” Bi ‘Once upon a time, Mi rosoft’s Lost Decade”, Kurt Eichenwald, VanityFair Business, May original document were removed or adapted by Aurélien Acquier, Professor oint their finger at IBM and laugh. Now they've become the thing they Hill, former Microsoft manager icrosoft dominated the tech industry; indeed, it was the wealthiest corporation in the world, But sire 2000, as Apple, Google, and Facebook whizzed by, it has fallen flat in most arenas it entered: e-books, music, search, social networking, etc., etc. Most of its innovations have been financially disa and profits from its, around $30, while Ay 2000, Microsoft ha company. As of Jun market cap of $4.8 b| market cap of $541 has higher sales tha} Windows Phone, ani ended March 31, 20: While Microsoft's co} did this role reversal of current and form: records, Monopoly Mone: In 1975, a 21-year-o| Gates, and another ‘company—MITS—to soon became Micro selling its programs t pointing. And the performance showed on Wall Street; despite booming sales, flagship products, in the last decade Microsoft's stock barely budged from ple’s stack is worth more than 20 times what it was 10 years ago. In December ‘2 market capitalization of $510 billion, making it the world’s most valuable it is No. 3, with a market cap of $249 billion. In December 2000, Apple had a lion and didn’t even make the list. As of this June it is No. 1 in the world, with a illion, One Apple product, something that didn’t exist five years ago, the iPhone, everything Microsoft has to offer. More than Windows, Office, Xbox, Bing, every other product that Microsoft has created since 1975. In the quarter 2, Phone had sales of $22.7 billion; Microsoft Corporation, $17.4 billion. inpetitive position remains enviable in ever changing technological markets, how happen? The following portrait of Microsoft is based on interviews with dozens + executives, 2s well a5 in thousands of pages of internal documents and legal \d college dropout named Paul Allen and 2 20 years old Harvard student, Bill riend wrote a program they called Altair BASIC and persuaded @ computer license it. They named their new company Microcomputer Software, which soft. Soon, the personal-computer market was exploding, Micro-soft began bigger and bigger corporate players. Within two years, the company, renamed Microsoft, was setting the industry standards for microprocessor programming. Working at the young Microsoft was, the same intense c computer-maker—ca software for their by all accounts, thrilling, but also unnerving. Gates was relentless, demanding mitment of everyone he hired. In 1980, IBM—then the world’s largest me to Gates and Allen and licensed their company to write the operating jon-to-be-released product, the IBM P.C. Gates did not offer to transfer the copyright on the operating system, because he believed that other hardware vendors would clone BM's system. They id, and the sales of MS-DOS made Microsoft a major player in the industry. It 185was Microsoft's big b} the stratosphere, The same year, Gates savy that Microsoft math-and-economics assistant product ma} which he dropped 0} eak, bringing the company the riches it needed to finance its coming blast into and Allen decided that neither of them had the management skills or business jeeded. So Gates turned to a Harvard friend, a boisterous, loud, hard-charging major—Steve Ballmer—to run the business side. Ballmer had worked as an ‘ager at Procter & Gamble before enrolling at Stanford business school, from to join Microsoft. In his 2011 book, {dea Man, Allen remembers meeting Ballmer: “I thought, This guy looks like an operative for the NKVD [the secret police of the U.S.S.R.] He had piercing blue "yes and a genuine toughness.” ‘The company started doubling and tripling in size every year, and the operating systems from Microsoft grew in so tication. MS-DOS was a text-based system, but then came Windows, which brought a graphic interface—desktops, icons, and the like—to PCs and any other computer. On August 24, 1995, selling operating syst at midnight around ¢ to celebrate, and the Gates paid $3 million) icrosoft reached the pinnacle of cool, releasing what would then be its largest- sm ever: Windows 95. Seeking to buy the first copies, computer geeks lined up 1e block outside technology stores. Jay Leno showed up at Microsoft's campus Empire State Building was lit in Microsoft's colors—red, yellow, and green. {to the Rolling Stones for rights to use their classic “Start Me Up” as the theme song for ads and “re Yes, a theme song, For software. By the end of 19 86.3 percent of the market.) Worth $6.8 magazine in 1982. At that same momen! were developing a dé y, Windows 95, along with Microsoft’s other operating systems, ran on s in the U.S. (Apple's Mac O.S,, by contrast, then had only 4.6 percent of the billion, Bill Gates had been named the richest man in the world by Forbes , at Microsoft's headquarters, in Redmand, Washington, 2 group of executives vice that, in 10 years’ time, would transform a multi-billion-dollar industry: an electronic reader {e-book} that allowed customers to download digital versions of any written material—books, may would not be the on profits would eventu: By 1998 the team wit} its success and anti promptly gave it a th “He didn’t like the ust the project recalled. agreed. The point wa: have images from Mi do nothing but under The group working on ‘major-product group besides Windows. I dreaming up and pro “Our entire plan had Product in 1999,” sai jazines, newspapers, whatever. But, despite its multi-year head start, Microsoft to introduce the game-changing innovation to the market. Instead, the big lly go to Amazon and Apple. \in Microsoft had developed a prototype of the revolutionary tool. Thrilled with ating accolades, the technology group sent the device to Bill Gates—who imbs-down. The e-book wasn't right for Microsoft, he declared r interface, because it didn’t look like Windows,” one programmer involved in jut Windows would have been completely wrong for an e-book, team members to have a book, and a book alone, appear on the full screen. Real books didn’t rosoft Windows floating around; putting them into an electronic version would inine the consumer experience. the initiative was removed from a reporting line to Gates and folded into the dedicated to software for Office, the other mammoth Microsoft moneymaker mediately, the technology unit was reclassified from one charged with jucing new ideas to one required to report profits and losses right away. 10 be moved forward three to four years from 2003-04, and we had to ship a Steve Stone, a founder of the technology group. "We couldn't be focused 136anymore on developi ta look at this and sa Rushing the product pad with touch-seree 1g technology that was effective for consumers. Instead, all of a sudden we had “How are we going to use this to make money? And it was impossible.” 10 market cost Microsoft dearly. The software had been designed to run on a technology, a feature later popularized with the iPhone. Instead, the company pushed out Microsoft Reader, to run on the Microsoft Pocket PC, a small, phone-size device, and, soon after, on Wind them to read ona b ws. The plan to give consumers something light and simple that would allow k-size screen was terminated, The death of the e-bbok effort was not simply the consequence of a desire for immediate profits, according to a forme official in the Office division. The real problem for his colleagues was that a simple touch-screen dealing with data. “ levice was seen as a laughable distraction from the tried-and-true ways of ffice is designed to inputting with a keyboard, not 2 stylus or @ finger,” the official said. "There were all kinds of personal prejudices at work.” Indeed, executives s the company’s fealty. Windows,” said Stone with a P.C. were dee to kill the effort.” This prejudice perme: from new competitor existing products,” o1 the problems you're have to go through tt But the power of the id, Microsoft failed repeatedly to jump on emerging technologies because of {to Windows and Office. “Windows was the god—everything had to work with . “ideas about mobile computing with a user experience that was cleaner than 1ed unimportant by a few powerful people in that division, and they managed ted the company, leaving it unable to move quickly when faced with challenges s. “Every little thing you want to write has to build off of Windows or other Je software engineer said, “It can be very confusing, because a lot of the time ng to solve aren’t the ones that you have with your product, but because you ‘mental exercise of how this framework works, It just slows you down.” indows and Office divisions in dictating the direction of product development was only one of the myriad problems unfolding within Microsoft that served to crush innovation. (i) The Bubble Bursts In the early 1990s, an image on their si ‘cemed as if every Microsoft employee's computer ran an application that left ‘reens at all times: a cartoon depiction of a face whose expression changed depending on the direction of the company’s stock price. When shares increased in value, the face smiled; when they fell, it frowned. ‘And no wonder. Almost every employee received a stake in the company through stock options. ‘When the share price went up, everyone got richer, When it went down, everyone was—well,a little less rich, The mythol it packaged software ranging from $1 mill Pushing up the stock "People were eager said Ed MeCahil, wt there were clear goall the quicker the stock Résumés poured into} riches, and the comp: gy was true: in the early days Microsoft minted millionaires almost as quickly as | the original 11 staff members besides Gates and Allen came away with sums nto $100 million—and the result was that everyone ran full speed in hopes of rice a little bit more, ind in a big hurry to capitalize on every opportunity to gather new revenue,” worked at Microsoft as a marketing manager for 16 years. “In every meeting, and clear outcomes, because everybody knew that the faster they could move rice would go up and the sooner they would be wealthy.” Microsoft from business-school and engineering students lured by tales of vast sny went on 2 hiring binge. Many of the longtime executives let new employees. 187handle the work whil could exercise more ‘Then everything chai Microsoft stock had fall, Even Microsoft, i they themselves lolled around, waiting for the next vesting period when they !ptions—a behavior known derisively by the younger hires as “rest and vest.” sed. On December 30, 1999, the face from the computer application frowned, it its pre-split all-time high of $119.94 a share the day before, then started to turned out, was not immune to the dot-com crash. Sotcen days later, Gl Gates handed off the CEO. reins to Ballmer. “I was stunned when Bill announced that he fas stepping aside to become ‘chief software architect’ in January 2000, with Steve Ballmer succeelding him as C.E.0.,” recalled Paul Allen. A businessman with 2 background in deal-making, finance “While Steve had lon wasn't necessarily be smart executive with ‘product guy.” Within a year [and aft never to return to its wealth—were unden alongside the Micro: do with a Dodge Ne over. A financial fiss blood. “People realized they into people trying to firm.” And so, the bureau ascension of Ballmer, force. More employ more meetings, mort Everything, one exec “There was this insti Prasanna Sankaranar many meetings.” Just as with e-books, operating system dis! digital assistants, wo} power Microsoft's fi competitors with Wir “You look at the Win lead they had with th ahead. And they com Phe Dodge Neon is gi ‘and product marketing had replaced a software-and-technological genius. served as Bill's top lieutenant, you got the sense through the nineties that he ing groomed for Microsoft's top spot. I'd say that Bill viewed him as a very less affinity for technology than for the business side—that Steve just wasn’t a fer the burst of the dotcom bubble], Microsoft had lost more than half its value, soaring heights of the past. The stock options—once the golden key to untold ater. The music had stopped. The Microsoft Millionaires were now working, sft Minions, One came to work bragging about his new Bentley; the other made nn”, The days of shoulder-to-shoulder teams fighting to beat the world were ire tore at already strained relationships between the Old Guard and the new weren't going to get wealthy,” one former senior executive said. "They turned move up the ladder, rather than people trying to make a big contribution to the ratization of Microsoft began, Some executives traced the change to the but in truth Microsoft's era of fast cash was almost certainly the actual driving es seeking management slots led to more managers, more managers led to meetings led to more memos, and more red tape led to less innovation. tive said, advanced at a snail's pace. tutionalized system, and it was like designing software by committee,” said yyanan, a former Microsoft engineer. “Things moved too slowly. There were too ‘opportunities for major product developments slipped away. Windows CE, an inct from Windows that was originally used for pocket devices like personal Id ultimately be the foundation of the mobile operating system that would smartphones. But despite the fact that Microsoft had the jump on its jows CE, it still lost the race for the wildly successful smartphones. jows Phone and you can’t help but wonder, How did Microsoft squander the Windows CE devices?" said McCahill. "They had a great lead, they were years letely blew it. And they completely blew it because of the bureaucracy.” fen as an example of a midrange (vs. high-end) car 188,The achingly slow pro me about an initiative esses at times bordered on the comical. Marc Turkel, a product manager, told he oversaw around 2010 that involved multiple groups. At the same time the new project began, workers were breaking ground for construction of a 12-story building that would occupy a square block negotiating with the di ; Turkel’s office window looked out on the construction site. Turkel began ifferent managers, then their supervisors, and then their supervisors as he tried to get the project finished. “It was something, without all that time we wasted, that should have taken six weeks at m he looked out the win: and said, ‘When we st: st." Finally, one day, Turkel was running another interminable meeting when jow. The building was finished. The project was not. “I pointed to the building srted this, that building didn’t exist" Turkel told me. “It was unbelievable.” ‘Sometimes, though, the problems from bureaucracy came down to a simple reality: The young, hotshots from the 19! middle-aged manager: bosses just didn’t un hhadn’t even been bor ‘out emerging trends aj For example, in 2003, messaging system ant status message, whic doing, even when th my exams” became having somewhere to who worked in the messaging system). 0s, techies who had joined the company in their 20s and 30s, had become in their 40s and 50s. And, some younger engineers said, 2 good number of the lerstand the burgeoning class of computer users who had been children—or —when Microsoft opened its doors, When younger employees tried to point nang their friends, supervisors sometimes just waved them away. a young developer noticed that friends in college signed up for AOL instant left it running most of the time without chatting, just using the program’s allowed them to type a short note telling their online bucidies what they were weren’t at the computer. Messages like “gone shopping” and “studying for mmmonplace. “That was the beginning of the trend toward Facebook, people put their thoughts, a continuous stream of consciousness,” said the developer, ISN Messenger unit (developed two years after AOL introduced its first When he argued that| MSN should develop such a short-message feature, the supervisor dismissed the developer's concerns as silly. “He didn’t get it,” the developer said. “And because he didn’t know or didn’t believe how (ii) "The Bell “if you don’t pl manager. /oung people were using messenger programs, we didn’t do anything.” urve” y the politics, it’s management by character assassination,” Turkel, product Another source of problems was a management system called “stack ranking.” Every current and former Microsoft em process inside of Mic also referred to as “tl loyee | interviewed—every one—cited stack ranking as the most destructive ‘osoft, something that drove out untold numbers of employees. The system— 1e performance model,” “the bell curve,” or just “the employee review”—has, with certain variations over the years, worked like this: every unit was forced (o declare a certain percentage of empl average, then poor. “If you were on a tea everyone was, {wo reviews, and one wa: employees focusing o} Supposing Microsoft made their names el Google, Larry Ellison fees as top performers, then good performers, then average, then below mm of 10 people, you walked in the first day knowing that, no matter how good Jeople were going to get a great review, seven were going to get mediocre going to get a terrible review,” said a former software developer. "it leads to ‘competing with each other rather than competing with ottier companies.” ‘ad managed to hire technology's top players into a single unit before they fewhere—Steve Jobs of Apple, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Larry Page of f Oracle, and Jeff Bezos of Amazon—regardless of performance, under one of 189the iterations of sta deemed disastrous. For that reason, exe k ranking, two of them would have to be rated as below average, with one tives said, a lot of Microsoft superstars did everything they could to avoid ‘working alongside other top-notch developers, out of fear that they would be hurt in the rankings. And the reviews had those at the bottom Outcomes from the were known as MBO for what they woul real-world consequences: those at the top received bonuses and promotions; sually received no cash or were shown the door. ‘ocess were never predictable. Employees in certain divisions were given what management business objectives—which were essentially the expectations accomplish in a particular year. But even achieving every MBO. was no guarantee of receiving 2 high ranking, since some other employee could exceed the assigned performance. As a re to make sure their col “People responsible valuable things | leai ‘enough information Microsoft engineer sa) Worse, because the also ranked—focused ult, Microsoft employees not only tried to do a good job but also worked hard Jeagues did not. for features will openly sabotage other people's efforts. One of the most ined was to give the appearance of being courteous while withholding just ‘om colleagues to ensure they didn’t get ahead of me on the rankings,” one id jeviews came every six months, employees and their supervisors—who were ‘on their short-term performance, rather than on longer efforts to innovate. “The six-month reviews forced a lot of bad decision-making,” one software designer said. “People planned their days ani focus on the sixmontl And as promotions 1 best way to guarant behind-the-scenes de! their years around the review, rather than around products. You really had to performance, rather than on doing what was right for the company.” ulted from a company-wide negotiation process among top managers, the fe © higher ranking, executives said, is to keep in mind the realities of those ates—every employee has to impress not only his or her boss but bosses from other teams as well. And that means schmoozing and brown-nosing as many supervisors 25 possible. “1 was told in almost development,” said 8} every review that the political game was always important for my career Cody, a former Microsoft engineer. “It was always much more on ‘Let’s work on the polis ame! than on improving my actual performance.” | asked Cody whether his review was ever bas much less about how my visibility among ot iPod VS. Zune “Because we are goin forever it seems like, “People won't want t The result, Gates wro} system: “I don’t see e' (@ rich group, | admi billionaire investment Gates said. “Warren Bi Less than two weeks independent hardware on the quality of his work, He paused for a very long time. “It was always {could become a better engineer and much more about my need to improve }er managers.” to be so late with a music service, we are going to be behind others almost " Bill Gates wrote in a November 2, 2003, e-mail to 2 group of managers. give up their hardware.” fe, was that they wouldn't be able to persuade customers to use a Microsoft jough that we are doing that will help us be viewed as a leader People | know ) are getting iPods with thousands of songs on them.” Herb Allen Jr., the lbanker with Allen & Company, had purchased dozens of iPods for his friends, ifett just loves the thing,” he wrote. later, Allchin tried out a music device being developed for Micrasoft by an vendor. He reviewed the experience in 3 November 13 e-mail to a group of 190executives. “Ihave wrote, “Apple is just Years passed. Finall to tell you, my experience with our software and this device is really terrible,” he 1 sq far ahead.” ly; a Novernber 14, 2006, Microsoft introduced its own music player, called Zune, Fifty four days later, Steve Jobs unvelled the iPhone, which combined a mobile phone, @ mus player, Internet capablity, a camera, and other features not available on Zune, But the IPod was stl vround for customers who didn’t want a phone. In fact, Apple had already introduced Its fifth: generation IPod, Its less expensive IPod Mini, and was about 2 year away from marketing the least costly of its music players, the iPod Nano. Zune was blown away| By 2009, iPod maintained an astonishing 71 percent of the market, the kind of numbers rarely seen anywhere outside of a North Korean election. Meanwhile, Zune limped along ith lese than 4 percent. Last October, Microsoft discontinued it, in hopes that customers would instead purchase a (iii) Google By the fall of 2004, ‘Windows Phone that, like the iPhone, has a music player. VS Bing jcrosoft faced a huge challenge from Google, because the smaller enterprise was snagging so maqy talented young software designers. Google was emerging as the new “i” Company, with lots of cachet, The search-engine titan had gone public in August and, just Iiee the Microsoft of old, was minting millionaires from stock options dished out to employees. And, it seemed, day after upstart competitor. day, a few more Microsoft executives announced their plans to jump ship to the ne toptlight engineer, Mark Lucovsky, met with Ballmer on November 12, 2004, as a courtesy to let him know that he hhgd accepted an offer from Google, which at the time was led by Eric Schmidt, ‘And, according to 4 sworn statement submitted by Lucovsky in an unrelsted lawsuit, Ballmer exploded. He threw a chair aga|nst the wall. “Fucking Eric Schmidt is a fucking pussy!” Ballmer yelled, according to the court document. “I'm going to fucking bury that guy! | have done it before and | will do it ‘again. I'm going to fucking kill Google.” Internet search emetged as Microsoft’s newest top priority. At that point, the company already had a mediocre search engine, called MSN Search, but it didn’t hold a candle to Google. So, Microsoft developed Windos features discontin 2009, Ballmer unve Live Search, which also proved inferior. Following more revisions, with a few udd, Microsoft announced its new platform, called Live Search. Finally, in May jlled Bing, But by then the unit working on online search had become encrusted with Microsoft bureaucracy and the usual destructiveness that came along with it ‘1, was a bloated m|shmash of folks,” said Johann Garcia, a former Microsoft product manager who worked on the Bing project. “They had two or three times the number of people they needed. There were just so many Working in the on| of the homegrow Google and telling layers of people.” line division evolved into a miserable experience, members of that unit said. Most mn| innovations were shoved aside. Instead, managers spent their days studying the employees working on Bing to match whatever that competitor brought out. “there was this never-ending demand to keep up with Google, and after a while we saw no more innovation for Bing people became so 1." Garcia sald. “Google was so far ahead and we had so much infighting. A lot of inhappy and just lost all momentum.” 191To date, Bing has lost about $6 billion for Microsoft; add in the earlier search products and the amount of money poured into the effort rises to almost $10 billion. Microsoft did have some success making deals for Bing, in particular with Yahoo!, In 2009 the two reached an agreement controversial among investors—under which the Bing search engine would power the Yahoo! Web site and the two woul share revenues. Meanwhile, Google continues to pop out feature after feature and is now shooting directly at Microsoft's main busi Google Chrome OS is a free operating system targeted at {ess lines: Google Docs i a free Web program competing with Microsoft Office. dows, Balimer’s key business philosophy for Microsoft was so antiquated as to be irrelevant. The Microsoft CEO used to proclaim that it would not be first to be cool, but would be first to profit—in other words, it would be th first to make money by selling its own ver n of new technologies. But that depended on one fact: Microsoft could buy its way into the lead, because it always had so much more cash on hand ths in any of its competitors. No more. The advantage that Ballmer relied on for so long is now nonexistent, Google has almost the same amount of cash n its books as Microsoft—$50 billion to Microsoft’s $58 billion. Apple, on the ‘other hand, started the year with about $100 billion, Using superior financial muscle to take over @ market won't work for Microsoft or Ballmer anymore. 192Document 2: Steve Ballmer’s message to Microsoft team on Microsoft Global Reorganization {excerpts from origi reorganization-memi From: Steve Ballmer To: Microsoft - All Emy Date: July 11, 2013, 6 Subject: One Microsoft | message: www.theverge.com/2013/7/11/4514160/steve-ballmers- ) loyees n, Today, we are announsing a far-reaching realignment of the company that will enable us to innovate with greater speed, efficiency and capability in a fast changing world, (..) This company has always had a big vision — to PC on every desk and ‘we have collectively say they chose Micr \elp people realize their full potential. In the earliest days, it was by putting a in every home. We've come farther than we could have imagined. The impact ‘ade on the world is undeniable, and ! am inspired when talented new hires ‘oft because they want to change the world — that’s what we do today, and that’s what we'll do tomorrow. Sharpening Our Sti (..) our strategy will businesses that emp: ategy focus on creating a family of devices and services for individuals and pwer people around the globe at home, at work and on the go, for the activities they value most. (.. This memo shows you how far we have developed our thinking on our strategy for high- valu: activities based on devices and services delivery. One Strategy, One Microsoft We are rallying behin} (4) We will see our a single strategy as one company —not a collection of divisional strategies. ‘oduct line holistically, not as a set of islands. We will allocate resources and build devices and services that provide compelling, integrated experiences across the many screens in our lives, with maxi to the success of core offer, Bing, Skype, D activating high-value yum return to shareholders. All parts of the company will share and contribute offerings, like Windows, Windows Phone, Xbox, Surface, Office 365 and our EA namics, Azure and our servers. All parts of the company wll contribute to ixperiences for our customers. (..) We will organize the company by function: Engineering (including supply chain and datacenters), Marketing, Business Legal, and COO (inch evelopment and Evangelism, Advanced Strategy and Research, Finance, HR, ding field, support, commercial operations and IT). Each discipline will help drive our overall stratpey, Each discipline will also be charged with improving our core capabilities in its area, We must improve in all aspects of the business. There will be four en neering areas: OS, Apps, Cloud, and Devices. We will keep Dynamics separate as it continues to need special focus and represents significant opportunity. We will consolidate our technologies coheren ly into these groups pulling together some things that have been spread out in ‘our current organizatlonal structure like cloud infrastructure, operating systems, mail, and identity, to name a few. Som repartitioning the wo! bo) How We Work The final piece of the must embody. There i of these changes will involve putting things together and others will involve +, but in all instances we will be mare coherent for our users and developers. uzzle is how we work together and what characteristics this new Microsoft ‘a process element and a culture element to discuss. 193Process wise, each major initiative of the company (product or high-value scenario) will have a team that spans groups to ensure we succeed against our goals, Our strategy will drive what initiatives we agree and commit to delivers key technoloy it my staff meetings. Most disciplines and product groups will nave a core that ty or services and then a piece that lines up with the initiatives. Each major initiative will have a champion who will be a direct report to me or one of my direct reports. The ‘champion will organize Culturally, our core val we work together to to drive a cross-company team for success. lues don’t change, but how we express them and act day to day must evolve so in, The keys are the following: - Nimble: As 2 company, we need to make the right decisions, and make them more quickly, balancing all the problems more a: - Communicative: i ‘customer and business imperatives. Each employee must be able to solve jckly and with more real-time data than in the past. the new, rapid-turn world, we need to communicate in ways that don’t just exchange information but drive agility, action, ownership and accountability. + Collaborative: Col ability to coordins borative doesn’t just mean “easy to get along with.” Collaboration means the ite effectively, within and among teams, to get results, build better products faster, and drive customer and shareholder value. Decisive: As a gl business environ bal company with literally billions of diverse customers in an accelerating rent, we must have a clear strategic direction but also empower employees closest to the customer to make decisions in service of the larger mission. This is tricky in a big company, but itis ~ Motivated: tn out day before. But fundamental way excited to make Our leadership team meetings, we are mé back. One strategy, u the only way to fly. Sei 1g Our Unig} the key to higher levels of productivity, growth and customer satisfaction. industry, every day brings more challenges and more opportunities than the we have @ unique chance to make the lives of billions of people better in This should inspire all of us. We want people who get up each morning ierosoft better (..). has discussed these cultural aspects a lot and is committed. In my own staff \deling these new characteristics yet also find ourselves occasionally slipping ited together, with great communication, decisiveness and positive energy is Opportunity Together, we have created great products and great success, but we all want more, That means @ strategy to deliver a value most and the structure to bring the and effective. Priorit ‘together. In other w and engineering cohe! Lots of change. But it our commitment, our to make the world a It’s why | come to wi now. Because we're Let's go, Steve family of devices and services that best enable people for the activities they interprise extensions and services that are most valuable to business. A new ise to market faster. Stronger centralized services so we can be more efficient focus areas, short and long term. New characteristics of how we work 145, better execution and innovation through strategy and goal and discipline fence. One Microsoft all the time, all of this, many key things remains the same. Our incredible people, our spirit, belief in the transformative power of technology —our Microsoft technology— etter place for billions of people and millions of businesses around the world. rk inspired every day. It’s why we've evolved before, and why we're evolving jot done. 194