Career lessons from Satya Nadella
Confidence & humility, empathy, growth mindset, be bold & be right
When ChatGPT went viral, the speed at which Microsoft - an incumbent big tech company - incorporated it into Bing was very impressive. The only reason a big company can ship at that pace is because it has a strong leader in its CEO - Satya Nadella.
Let us take a look at his career philosophy - from his interview at Stanford.
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Confidence and Humility
As a child, Nadella had his parents help him develop confidence and humility. Not an easy balance to strike!
Leadership lessons from playing team sports
Leadership is about developing judgment. It is a muscle that can get better with practice.
Nadella talks about a time when he was not performing well in a game, his team captain intervened, gave him a break, and gave him another chance. His captain had to exercise judgment to make that call.
Parenting develops empathy
Innovation is developing solutions that solve unarticulated needs. Nadella feels that being a parent helped him develop empathy. And empathy is the key to identifying unarticulated needs.
Career is a long game
Nadella was at MS for 23 years, before he became the CEO. He encourages us to think about all our jobs as our most important job, and not as stepping stones to the next job.
Revitalizing Microsoft
Nadella sees 2 things that helped Microsoft revitalize.
Refocussed on the core vision - Microsfot’s initial vision was for a PC on every desk - which it achieved by the late 90s. Nadella renewed that vision to empower organizations of all sizes to be competitive and successful.
Shifted the culture to embrace a growth mindset - not know it all, but learn it all as a company.
Transitions require leaders to take on the risk
Microsoft has to cannibalize their own high-margin client server business, to build the cloud business. And they were able to do that successfully because Nadella(CEO) and CFO were ready to take on the risk of lower profit margins to win the market.
Non-transactional work requires real relationships with your colleagues
Like many other business leaders, Nadella sees working with great colleagues as a true blessing. He sees teams, not individuals, as the foundational drivers of successful products.
Be bold and be right
Steve Ballmer’s advice to Nadella, his successor, was to be bold and be right. Another non-so-easy balance to strike!