Nikhil Yadav

Satya Nadella become the CEO of Microsoft when state of inertia, stagnated due internal conflicts and

he revived and transformed the original mission and spirit enshrined by Bill Gates ‘a computer on every

desk and in every home’ to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.

Before it became CEO, Microsoft was struggling with two major factors pushing against the change.

First, Microsoft’s work culture was plague by infamous “stack ranking” performance management

system were employees had to no choice but to compete against each other for their progress in the

company. All employees were categorized and even if all of them performed well, one in 10 people

were listed in poor category. Employees rather than smart work and innovation, they had to impress

their bosses up in the hierarchy. This discourages collaboration and affected long term growth as

employees had to think about their own survival rather than that of companies’ vision. Secondly,

Microsoft’s work culture was not favorable to incite employees to work for the grand vision. The

interaction between the employees were formal, it had rigid hierarchy. Though in same organization, it

was not possible to tap talent of employees belonging to other project and department without their

bosses’ permission. Such structure dampen spontaneity and creativity required to undertake innovative

projects.

After undertaking the position of CEO, following two factors push the organization for incremental

change.

1. Breakthrough the cognitive hurdle: Higher level engagement with customers to perceive their

unarticulated and unmet needs with great technology. It assisted them to learn from the outside

and assisted to keep the wheel of learning rotating for company to innovate and excel.
 Nikhil Yadav

2. Maximal use of talent and capabilities: It’s Hackathon program invited employees to

demonstrate their ideas that could solve problems, benefit people, business, society or the

environment; further winners were funded to build their projects.

Following way, Satya Nadella overcomed motivational and political hurdles.

1. Motivational factor: Choosing the right people so that value will filtrate throughout the

organization. Appointing Jill Tracie Nichols as  his chief of staff in 2014 as she treated and

shown respect her colleagues and other employees well. He listened to almost every employee to

make meaningless leadership decisions which made employees to believe they are important part

of this organization. He made sure, they are not just listening but also talking, debating so that

their voices will be heard.

2. Political factor – When he released his answer regarding women was mistake, it accepted his

mistake. It gave message that even CEO as all other employees are agent of change to bring

better future for the world. He also embraced Linux that was rival to microsoft, and had deal

with linkedln and in return it provided collaboration rather than conflicts leading to encouraging

results especially to AI operations.