Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Hit Refresh
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 8/19/1967
WEBSITE:
CITY: Bellevue
STATE: WA
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: Indian
married and has three children; https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/author/satyanadella/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born August 19, 1967, in Hyderabad, Telangana, India; married Anupama Priya Nadella, 1992; children: two daughters and one son.
EDUCATION:Manipal Institute of Technology, B.E.; University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, M.S., 1990; University of Chicago, M.B.A.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Business executive and author. Microsoft Online Services, Research and Development senior vice-president; Microsoft Business, vice-president; Microsoft Server and Tools, president; Microsoft Corporation, CEO, 2014–.
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, board member; Starbucks, board member.
AVOCATIONS:Cricket, Indian and American poetry, business literature.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Satya Nadella is most well known for his contributions to the technological industry—or, more specifically, his endeavors as Microsoft’s president. Prior to his time with Microsoft, Nadella relocated to America from India so he could study computer science. He chose to attend University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, where he was able to earn a Master of Science. He became a part of Microsoft’s team two years later. It was there that he helped Microsoft to develop their cloud platform, before moving on to co-lead the company’s Business Division as well as their Online Services Division, specifically under their Research and Development department. Nadella was officially sworn in as Microsoft’s president in the year 2014.
In addition to his technological and business pursuits, Nadella is also a published author. Hit Refresh: The Quest to Rediscover Microsoft’s Soul and Imagine a Better Future for Everyone is partly a memoir, and partly a reflection on the state of technology and its potential for growth. Hit Refresh starts at the beginning of Nadella’s life, discussing his parents’ philosophies on life and how they came to shape him as a person. Nadella came to learn the significance of intellectual growth from his father and equilibrium from his mother. It was these principles that came to guide the direction of his career, as well as his vision for Microsoft’s growth. The book moves from Nadella’s early years to his time at university, all the way up to his decades of work with Microsoft. Along the way, Nadella also expounds upon the more private details of his life, and how events that affected him personally also began to change his professional approach. In the process, Nadella illustrates that his personal and professional views became intertwined. One of the most impactful moments of Nadella’s life came in the form of welcoming his son, who received a cerebral palsy diagnosis at a young age. Nadella’s efforts with caring for his son taught Nadella to take others’ feelings more deeply into account—a principle that has deeply shaped his approach to leading Microsoft. One Kirkus Reviews contributor called the book “[a] valuable blueprint for techies and others in a culture-change state of mind.” On the Hindu website, Varghese K. George remarked: “If you are excited about the future, read this.” He added: “If you are scared of it, even more so.” Abhijit Bhaduri, a writer on the Times of India website, commented: “The book is a hit.” He also said: “But more than that, it is a refreshing read.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, August 1, 2017, review of Hit Refresh: The Quest to Rediscover Microsoft’s Soul and Imagine a Better Future for Everyone.
ONLINE
CNBC, https://www.cnbc.com/ (February 26, 2018), Zameena Mejia, “Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella attributes his success to this one trait.”
Financial Times Online, https://www.ft.com/ (October 23, 2017), Richard Waters, review of Hit Refresh.
Hindu, http://www.thehindu.com/ (October 21, 2017), Varghese K. George, review of Hit Refresh.
Microsoft, https://news.microsoft.com/ (June 10, 2018), author profile.
PBS, https://www.pbs.org/ (November 17, 2017), Judy Woodruff, “How Microsoft’s CEO has ‘hit refresh’ in business and in life,” author interview.
Quartz, https://qz.com/ (September 25, 2017), Lila MacLellan, “With his new book, Satya Nadella takes control of the Microsoft narrative,” review of Hit Refresh.
Time, http://time.com/ (June 10, 2018), Walter Isaacson, “Satya Nadella,” author profile.
Times of India Online, https://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/ (November 5, 2017), Abhijit Bhaduri, review of Hit Refresh.
Satya Nadella
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Satya Nadella
Satya Nadella in 2017
Born
Nadella Satyanarayana
19 August 1967 (age 50)[1]
Hyderabad, Telangana, India
Citizenship
United States[2]
Alma mater
Manipal Institute of Technology (B.E. - Electrical Engineering)
University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee (M.S.)
University of Chicago (MBA)
Occupation
CEO of Microsoft Corp (2014–present)
Employer
Microsoft (1992–present)
Salary
$84.3 million (2018)
Net worth
$1.34 billion (January 2018) [3]
Board member of
Starbucks[4]
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center[5]
Spouse(s)
Anupama Priya Nadella (m. 1992)
Children
3
Website
Satya Nadella - Microsoft.com
Satya Narayana Nadella (born 19 August 1967) is an Indian American business executive. He is the current Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Microsoft, succeeding Steve Ballmer in 2014.[6][7] Before becoming CEO, he was Executive Vice President of Microsoft's cloud and enterprise group, responsible for building and running the company's computing platforms, developer tools and cloud computing services.
Contents [hide]
1
Early life
2
Career
2.1
Sun Microsystems
2.2
Microsoft
3
Personal life
4
Publications
5
References
6
External links
Early life[edit]
Nadella was born in Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India , to a family that is originally from Bukkapuram village in Rayalaseema.[8] His father, Bukkapuram Nadella Yugandher, was a civil servant who worked at the prestigious Indian Administrative Service within the Government of India.[9][10][11]
Nadella attended the Hyderabad Public School, Begumpet[12] before receiving a bachelor's in electrical engineering[13] from the Manipal Institute of Technology (then part of Mangalore University) in 1988.[14][15] Nadella subsequently traveled to the U.S. to study for a M.S. in computer science at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee,[16][17] receiving his degree in 1990.[18] Later, he received an MBA from the University of Chicago.[19]
Nadella said he "always wanted to build things"[20] and that electrical engineering "was a great way for [him] to go discover what turned out to become a passion," computer science.[21]
Career[edit]
Sun Microsystems[edit]
Nadella worked at Sun Microsystems as a member of its technology staff prior to joining Microsoft in 1992.[22]
Microsoft[edit]
At Microsoft, Nadella has led major projects that included the company's move to cloud computing and the development of one of the largest cloud infrastructures in the world.[23]
Nadella worked as the senior vice-president of Research and Development (R&D) for the Online Services Division and vice-president of the Microsoft Business Division. Later, he was made the president of Microsoft's $19 billion Server and Tools Business and led a transformation of the company's business and technology culture from client services to cloud infrastructure and services. He has been credited for helping bring Microsoft's database, Windows Server and developer tools to its Azure cloud.[19] The revenue from Cloud Services grew to $20.3 billion in June 2013 from $16.6 billion when he took over in 2011.[24] He received $18 million in 2016 pay.[25]
Nadella's 2013 base salary was nearly $700,000, for a total compensation, with stock bonuses, of $7.6 million.[26]
Previous positions held by Nadella include:[27]
President of the Server & Tools Division (9 February 2011 – February 2014)
Senior Vice-President of Research and Development for the Online Services Division (March 2007 – February 2011)[28]
Vice-President of the Business Division
Corporate Vice-President of Business Solutions and Search & Advertising Platform Group
Executive Vice-President of Cloud and Enterprise group[14]
On 4 February 2014, Nadella was announced as the new CEO of Microsoft,[6][7] the third chief executive in the company's history, following Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer.[29]
In October 2014, Nadella courted controversy when he made a statement that women should not ask for a raise and should trust the system.[30] The statement was made while he was attending an event on Women in Computing in Phoenix, AZ. Nadella was roundly criticised for the statement and he apologised later on Twitter.[31] He later sent an email to Microsoft employees admitting he was "Completely wrong".[32]
Nadella changed the company’s direction after becoming CEO. His tenure has emphasized openness to working with companies and technologies with which Microsoft also competes, including Apple Inc.,[33] Salesforce,[34] IBM,[35] and Dropbox.[36] In contrast to previous Microsoft campaigns against the Linux operating system, Nadella proclaimed that "Microsoft ♥ Linux",[37] and in 2016, Microsoft joined the Linux Foundation as a Platinum member.[38]
Under Nadella Microsoft revised its mission statement to "empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more".[39] In comparison to founder Bill Gates's "a PC on every desk and in every home, running Microsoft software", Nadella says that it is an enduring mission, rather than a temporal goal.[40] His key goal has been transforming Microsoft’s corporate culture into one that values continual learning and growth.[41] He has cited the book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck as inspiration for this philosophy around a "growth mindset".[42]
Nadella's leadership of Microsoft included a series of high-profile acquisitions of other companies, to redirect Microsoft's focus. His first major acquisition was of Mojang, a Swedish game company best known for the popular freeform computer building game Minecraft, in late 2014, for $2.5 billion. Minecraft was notably a cross-platform game, with versions running on Apple's iOS mobile devices, and the Sony PlayStation dedicated gaming console, as well as Microsoft's Xbox.[43] He followed that in 2016 by purchasing Xamarin[44] and LinkedIn.[45]
In the years since becoming CEO, Nadella is viewed as having done well,[46] with Microsoft stock having risen more than 130% since he took over and achieving an all-time high.[47][48] During his leadership, stock in the company has grown at an annualized rate of 23%.
Personal life[edit]
In 1992, Nadella married Anupama, daughter of his father's Indian Administrative Service (IAS) batchmate, K.R. Venugopal.[49] The couple has three children, a son and two daughters, and lives in Bellevue, Washington.[50]
Nadella is an avid reader of business literature[51] and of American and Indian poetry. He also nurses a passion for cricket, having played on his school team.[52]
Nadella has authored a book titled Hit Refresh that explores his life, his career in Microsoft and how he believes technology will shape the future. It was announced that the profits from the book would go to Microsoft Philanthropies and through that to nonprofit organizations.[53]
Publications[edit]
Hit Refresh: The quest to rediscover Microsoft's soul and imagine a better future for everyone, 2017.[54][55]ISBN 9780062652508 (audiobook ISBN 9780062694805)
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella attributes his success to this one trait
Zameena Mejia 2:11 PM ET Mon, 26 Feb 2018
The top 5 personality traits of Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella
When Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was 25 years old and interviewing for a job, he failed to show his interviewer the trait he now says has been crucial to his success: empathy.
"Empathy is only developed through your life's experience. It's not something that's really endowed on you," Nadella said on a recent episode of WNYC "Freakonomics Radio" podcast. "[With] every passing mistake you make, you develop more of a sense of being able to see life through other people's eyes."
Empathy, he argued, can "make you a more effective parent, more effective colleague and a more effective partner."
Before starting his now 22-year-long tenure at Microsoft, Nadella was interviewing for a job and was asked, "What will you do if you see a baby on the street crying after having fallen down?"
In his mid-twenties at the time, Nadella tried to approach the question as an engineer.
"I answered thinking this is some trick question," Nadella said. "Maybe there is some algorithm that I'm missing and said, 'I'll call 911' only to have that manager get up and walk me out of the room saying, 'That's [an] absolute bullsh-t answer.'"
The manager then told Nadella, "if you see a baby falling down, you pick them up and hug them."
"And I was devastated because I remember thinking about it and I said, 'How could I not get that?'" Nadella said.
This former FBI negotiator's strategy can make you look fearless in any negotiation
Just a few years later, at 29 years old, Nadella would receive yet another lesson on empathy: his first child Zain was born with severe brain damage and developed cerebral palsy.
Though Nadella focused on the questions "Why did this happen to us? What happened to me?" after Zain was born, he eventually realized that nothing had actually happened to him.
"Really something has happened to my son," Nadella said he told himself. "It's time for me to step up and see life through his eyes and do what I should do as a parent and as a father."
Empathy is crucial not only to personal success but also in business, says the Microsoft CEO.
"Most people think empathy is just something that you reserve for your life and your family and your friends, but the reality is that it's an existential priority of a business," Nadella told Bloomberg in 2017. "I think empathy is core to innovation and life's experience."
Growing up in India, Satya Nadella fell in love with cricket, a sport whose grace comes from melding stars into a cohesive and harmonic team. “One brilliant character who does not put team first can destroy the entire team,” he wrote in his recent book, Hit Refresh.
Since becoming CEO of Microsoft in 2014, Nadella has used those principles to restore the company’s spirit of innovation. Consider its new product strategy, which emphasizes cloud computing and allowing people to collaborate across platforms. Nadella also preaches the importance of empathy and making products that work reliably, traits that deepened in him when his first child was born with brain damage and his son’s life depended on linked machines running Microsoft systems.
The result is that in the four years since he inherited a sticky wicket, Microsoft’s market value has increased 130%. More important, the company is now making products that feel more user-friendly, empathetic and collaborative.
Satya Nadella is a husband, father and the chief executive officer of Microsoft – the third in the company’s 40-year history.
On his 21st birthday, Nadella emigrated from Hyderabad, India to the United States to pursue a master’s degree in computer science. After stops in America’s Rust Belt and Silicon Valley, he joined Microsoft in 1992 where he would lead a variety of products and innovations across the company’s consumer and enterprise businesses. Nadella is widely known as an inspiring, mission-oriented leader who pushes the bounds of technology while crafting creative and sometimes surprising deals with customers and partners globally.
Nadella’s life is a journey of learning deep empathy for other people, which he brings into all he does personally and professionally. As much a humanist as an engineer and executive, Nadella defines his mission and that of the company he leads as empowering every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. In addition to his role at Microsoft, Nadella serves on the Board of Directors for Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and Starbucks. Satya and his wife, Anu, personally support Seattle Children’s Hospital as well as other organizations in the Seattle area that serve the unique needs of people with disabilities.
Satya Nadella is a husband, father and the chief executive officer of Microsoft – the third in the company’s 40-year history.
On his 21st birthday, Nadella emigrated from Hyderabad, India to the United States to pursue a master’s degree in computer science. After stops in America’s Rust Belt and Silicon Valley, he joined Microsoft in 1992 where he would lead a variety of products and innovations across the company’s consumer and enterprise businesses. Nadella is widely known as an inspiring, mission-oriented leader who pushes the bounds of technology while crafting creative and sometimes surprising deals with customers and partners globally.
Nadella’s life is a journey of learning deep empathy for other people, which he brings into all he does personally and professionally. As much a humanist as an engineer and executive, Nadella defines his mission and that of the company he leads as empowering every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. In addition to his role at Microsoft, Nadella serves on the Board of Directors for Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and Starbucks. Satya and his wife, Anu, personally support Seattle Children’s Hospital as well as other organizations in the Seattle area that serve the unique needs of people with disabilities.
Read more at https://news.microsoft.com/hitrefresh/#IqMJgXGf3dVeF9Dt.99
Hari Sreenivasan:
Finally tonight, we hear from a leading CEO about changing the culture of a successful company and how his own personal experiences helped inform his approach.
Judy recorded this conversation for the NewsHour Bookshelf.
Judy Woodruff:
Most CEOs who write memoirs and leadership books do so after they finish their career, but the chief executive of Microsoft, Satya Nadella, is out with one now about his ongoing efforts to reinvent Microsoft and make sure the tech giant stays relevant in a fast-changing industry. It’s titled “Hit Refresh.”
The company has had its share of critics over the years, and has sometimes adapted slowly, but it has long been hugely profitable. In the last quarter alone, it earned more than $24 billion, and its market value has jumped by $250 billion since Nadella took over more than three years ago.
Among other things, Nadella is trying to make sure Microsoft is adapting to the era of cloud computing.
The book is also a part memoir of his own experiences, including his early years in India and coming to the United States.
Satya Nadella joins me now.
And welcome to the NewsHour.
So, as we were just saying, most people don’t write a book while they’re still in the middle of work. But you did. Why?
Satya Nadella:
It’s — right.
I mean, most business books in some sense are either — are mostly look-backs, either at grand successes or grand failures. And I mostly wanted to reflect on, as a sitting CEO, the hard questions and the answers to that while you’re going through the process of — or the difficult process of transformation.
So, it is not — it is not meant to be actually something that is a look-back after having reached some destination or declared some victory.
Judy Woodruff:
You said at one point in the book that, originally, you conceived as a collection of meditations from a CEO in the middle of transformation.
If it’s not that, then what it is?
Satya Nadella:
It is that. It is that sitting CEO’s…
Judy Woodruff:
Aha.
Satya Nadella:
… meditations of the transformation that we’re going through then, vs. having reached any destination.
The thing that I realized is, this process of change is not something that is a one-time process. It’s this continuous journey of pushing yourself to renew, and the difficulties of doing it, because the one thing with change is, it’s easy to talk and hard to do.
And so that’s the metaphor. Even this “Hit Refresh,” the trick is not to say, let’s change everything, because the browser, when it hits refresh, it knows what to change and what to keep. And that’s what successful companies have to learn to do continuously.
Judy Woodruff:
And you also write about your own personal story, about how you and your wife, your first son was born with pretty serious cerebral palsy. He’s now 21 years old.
And you write about how that has changed you, what it — how it took you longer than it took your wife to sort of come to grips with that. Talk about that.
Satya Nadella:
Both my wife and I were the only children in our family, and we were very excited. The entire family was very excited. I was 29 years old before Zain was born.
Even a few hours before, perhaps, if you had asked me, you know, what are the thoughts that are going through my mind, they were mostly concerning things like, hey, will the nursery be ready, will Anu, my wife, go back to work?
And, of course, everything changed that night. There was in utero asphyxiation, as a result of which, Zain was born with some severe damage to his brain. And that resulted in cerebral palsy.
And maybe even for two years, maybe even longer, I went through this phase where I was mostly reflecting on all the things that happened to me, which is, wow, all the plans we had and I had are no longer valid. Why did this happen to us? Why did this happen to me?
And it was only by observing my wife and what came naturally to her — in fact, I remember, as she recovered from the C-section, she would, in fact, drive Zain from therapy to therapy, trying to give him the best chance he could get.
And without schooling me directly, though, by me observing her, I realized that nothing had happened to me. Something really had happened to Zain, and it was time for me to get over ruing the fact of what happened to me, and really start seeing the world through his eyes.
And that realization, which I used the word empathy for it, is not sort of an innate capability I had. It’s life experiences like this one that helped shape that in me. And that, of course, is something that goes — carries forward in who I am at work.
Judy Woodruff:
You are candid, Satya Nadella, in talking about early mistakes you made. I mean, one was the comment you made in 2014 about women shouldn’t be pushy in thinking about asking for a pay raise.
You learned from that. You have talked about how it made you think differently about women in the work force.
How so?
Satya Nadella:
Yes.
For example, at this Grace Hopper conference a couple of years ago, when I went there, I went there to learn. And I did learn for sure, because the question that was asked was around women and pay. And I gave an answer which was sort of nonsense based on sort of my own personal experience.
And Maria Klawe, who was interviewing me on stage, was kind enough to correct me right there. But, even subsequently, when I went back even to Microsoft, met with some of the senior women who work with me is when I really understood in a deep way all that is wrong with our system.
So, for me to go to a women’s conference and say, trust the system, is to disjoint from the realities. That’s when, again, very similar to sort of Zain’s birth, it was a moment where I was able to see it through their eyes, but, more importantly, understand my responsibility.
As a CEO, my job is to make sure that I’m pushing to create a system that not only has representation, but, more importantly, it helps everyone have the opportunity to contribute and get the reward for it.
Judy Woodruff:
There’s a public policy issue you have also been outspoken about that I want to ask you about, and that is immigration.
You have talked about the virtues of immigration. You have been outspoken in advocating for those young people who came to the United States without documentation, but with their parents, the so-called DACA program, the dreamers.
And you have expressed that you hope the Trump administration and the Congress sees fit to do something about that. Why is that a concern, a worry for you?
Satya Nadella:
When I look back, I’m a product of two amazingly unique American things.
One is American technology reaching me where I was growing up, allowing me to dream, and then American immigration policy letting me live that dream out. And when I think about both of these, I think that that’s where our competitive advantage comes from.
So, I don’t think immigration is something that we do that is somehow disjoint from the broader advantage it brings to our society, to our economy.
And, quite frankly, it’s not just about skilled immigration, because one of the other things that gives us a tremendous amount of soft power in the world is, America is a beacon of hope for everybody who needs it the most. And that is an invaluable position to have in any global order.
So, I do hope that we see immigration, without, by the way, ignoring the fact that equitable growth for people who are already here in the United States is a super important agenda. But if you don’t pit these two things against each other, but recognize America’s own interest in having an immigration policy and also tackling the equitable growth inside the country, I think, are things that we should really step up, both in the legislative, as well as in the private sector.
Judy Woodruff:
Satya Nadella, who came to the United States, what, at the age of 20?
Satya Nadella:
At 21.
Judy Woodruff:
Twenty-one.
Satya Nadella:
My 21st birthday.
Judy Woodruff:
Now CEO of Microsoft.
And the book is “Hit Refresh.”
Thank you very much.
Satya Nadella:
Thank you so much.
Nadella , Satya: HIT REFRESH
Kirkus Reviews. (Aug. 1, 2017):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Nadella , Satya HIT REFRESH Harper Business (Adult Nonfiction) $29.99 9, 26 ISBN: 978-0-06-265250-8
Microsoft CEO Nadella describes the empathetic leadership he hopes will spark a renaissance at the software giant in "the coming era of ubiquitous computing and ambient intelligence."Three years ago, when he succeeded Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, the author found the once-dominant software company was "sick" and its employees "disheartened" after a period of stalled growth. The world, once PC-centric, had given rise to mobile and cloud technologies, and Microsoft lagged behind others. In this thoughtful debut, the Indian-born Nadella tells the story of his personal life and his work as a change-making leader, and he explains the coming importance of machine intelligence. The author emerges as a modest, likable individual from an accomplished family; his mother, a Sanskrit scholar, taught him the importance of balance, and his economist father the value of intellect. Arriving in the United States just before the 1990s tech boom, he earned a computer science degree at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and a master's degree at the University of Chicago; he joined Microsoft in 1992. He writes with candor about his challenges as CEO: "hierarchy and pecking order" reigned at the fiefdom-ridden company, stifling spontaneity and creativity. His response has been to listen with empathy to employee concerns and to help build and curate a new, open culture that empowers staffers to act on their passions and "make a real difference" in a "mobile-first, cloud-first world" in which 3 billion people will soon be connected to the internet, sensors, and the internet of things. To achieve that culture, the company "must exercise a growth mindset by being customer-obsessed, diverse, and inclusive and act as One Microsoft." His book includes descriptions of experimental retreats, "hacks" meant to fire passions, and leadership principles and other tips. A valuable blueprint for techies and others in a culture-change state of mind.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Nadella , Satya: HIT REFRESH." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Aug. 2017. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A499572690/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=1e7361f0. Accessed 14 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A499572690
Books Reviews
Reviews
Review of Satya Nadella's 'Hit Refresh': Windows to many worlds
Varghese K. George
October 21, 2017 19:40 IST
Updated: October 21, 2017 20:26 IST
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Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella | Photo Credit: AP
Of cloud and computing technologies, leadership and transformations, IIT failures and H-1B queues, the Microsoft CEO pulls no punches
The founding fathers of the digital world, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos, the great among them, made fashionable a leadership style that tolerated no dissent and took no prisoners. Bezos, according to his biographer, “abhors…what he calls ‘social cohesion,’ the natural impulse to seek consensus,” epitomising a leadership style that celebrates conflict, disruption and domination as virtues and signs of limitless creativity and advancement.
In his debut book Hit Refresh, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella blends autobiography, biography of the company and techno futurism, but ethos, empathy, empowerment and democratisation are its keywords. Nadella sounds passionate about two topics — leadership and transformation, and he makes a strong case for a new social contract that must guide the values of the evolving, nay exploding, digital era.
Nadella is protagonist and observer of three transformations that the book is about. The first is his personal journey, starting as a privileged kid who played cricket and loved coding, but loses out in the IIT entrance test. Turnarounds can be dramatic — cricket had taught him. He goes on to lead Microsoft but in his modest telling, the route is too mundane, including bouts of green card angst and H-1B visa queues at the U.S. Consulate.
Hit Refresh Satya Nadella HarperCollins India ₹599
The second transformation that he leads is of Microsoft, from being a desktop-era entity to aiming for the cloud, the new mode of computing that the company appeared to have lost out on. Microsoft is now on its way to its own cloud business that will exceed $20 billion.
The third transformation is of computing technology, which will overcome the existing limits of physics and chemistry that is plateauing out the growth of transistor-based computing. Transistors have already reached subatomic sizes, and further squeezing of them may get impossible — early day super computers had 13,000 transistors, but Microsoft X Box One has five billion of them, he notes — but that is no end to the growth of computational power. “The search for a quantum computer has become something of an arms race,” in which a leading player is Microsoft itself.
Importance of empathy
Through all this transformation, empathy is the touchstone of leadership for Nadella — not a powerpoint, but a living, loving experience that he has imbibed, also through caring for a child with special needs. Nadella arrives at the conclusion that “the choice of leading through consensus versus flat is a false one.”
“Any institution building comes from having a clear vision and culture that works to motivate progress both top down and bottom-up.” Nadella is unafraid of making top down decisions — he politely terms them “not universally loved”; he thinks that C in the CEO stands for culture, and culture building becomes the core of his leadership style. Leaders need clarity, energy, and execution in a manner that balances long term and short term goals. Humility as opposed to hubris, empathy over envy and enmity are the values that strive him. Cooperation and competition can coexist, he says, illustrating the example of allowing Linux applications to run on Windows as well — a dramatic turnaround in the company’s approach to competition. Such ties — one could call them ‘Co-Co’ partnerships — between Microsoft and other giants such as Google and Amazon are an inevitability of technological progress. This equally applies to strategic partnerships among countries also, which are a mix of cooperation and competition in most cases.
Microsoft’s own reputation had not been about empathy, and the CEO is candid about it, when he says its style “that was once seen as crushing the competition is now focussed on achieving business growth by empowering everyone on the planet.” He concedes that “diversity and inclusion is a bedrock strategy... but as a company and as an industry, we’ve come up far too short.”
Leadership is an “art form, not a science” for him, and so is innovation. Poignance and excitement do not stand apart in his writing, but melds, and evokes layers of thoughts in the reader’s mind, including the unsettling promises of mixed reality, Artificial Intelligence and quantum computing. But fear not, Nadella tells you, his reassurance is based on some generous assumptions that he makes about the nature of technology and human beings. At the centre of the vision that transformed Microsoft has been the emphasis that it is the human, not the machine, that is mobile, and the empowerment of humans will make technological progress an unalloyed good for society. But the impending technological wave will make machine mobility independent of human mobility and could question this assumption.
Technology diffusion in a society appears to be an apolitical phenomena in this telling. The influence of finance capital on it, and on the creation of technology itself, is touched upon only in passing. The CEO’s responsibility is to the investors, but he must also be accountable to the citizen, Nadella says at one point, mindful of a serious flaw in what American economist Robert Reich calls ‘Supercapitalism’ where investors and consumers are richly rewarded at the cost of citizens and labour. Nadella quotes one of his favourite authors, Tracy Kidder, to say that “technology is nothing more than the collective soul of those who build it.” Nadella’s book is undoubtedly an exposition of his empathetic soul, but its survival in the collective is not as indubitable. And the finance capital that underwrites it all is evidently soulless.
If you are excited about the future, read this. If you are scared of it, even more so.
Hit Refresh; Satya Nadella, HarperCollins India, ₹599.
Book Review: Hit Refresh by Satya Nadella
November 5, 2017, 10:21 pm IST Abhijit Bhaduri in Just Like That | Lifestyle, World | TOI
When Satya Nadella took over as the CEO of Microsoft in February 2014, India celebrated.
He had the tall task of steering an iconic company that has meandered. Success has the tendency to make companies very inward looking. It is sobering to realize that Nadella is the third person to lead Microsoft. The three CEOs were so different from each other.
Bill Gates was the quintessential nerd. Ballmer had an aggressive chest thumping style that was very different from the founder’s. But Nadella’s introspective style came through in his first email to the employees. He said, “Our industry does not respect tradition — it only respects innovation.” He is equally at home overseeing code as he is with poetry. The voracious reader quotes Oscar Wilde and is forever trying out online courses.
Hit Refresh (publisher: Harper Collins) is a book that is the blueprint Nadella has in mind as he tries to change the culture of Microsoft from know-it-all to learn-it-all. The new culture at Microsoft is all about listening, learning more and talking less.
The book is a terrific study in changing culture. Nadella’s decision to launch Windows 10 in Kenya instead of Sydney was an effort to build a culture of inclusion. Both countries have educated and tech savvy customers as well as skill gaps. Building a culture that obsesses about the customer is not easy.
Hit Refresh is a good look at Nadella’s view of leadership. Here are the three things leaders have to do:
1. Bring clarity to those you work with. Simplify things.
2. Generate energy around your teams and the company. Build teams that are stronger today and tomorrow.
3. Find a way to deliver success. Balance short term and long term. Innovate. Be global minded.
Another terrific chapter of the book is about “Friends or Frenemies”. Ballmer derisively referred to Apple as the “fruit company”. Satya knows that he is leaving the audience shell-shocked when he pulls out an iPhone from his pocket. But this one has Microsoft software and applications on it. Being able to collaborate and compete with the giants in the marketplace means walking the tight rope. He has formed partnerships with his fiercest rivals – Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon – the AGFA companies.
“Sometimes that means working with old rivals and sometimes it means forging surprising new partnerships.” – Satya Nadella
He speaks of the strengths of his competitors with respect and acknowledges the need to find smart ways to partner with companies that have a strong market position with their service or device. Time and again while reading the book, I felt it is a book written by a leader who has no fear of being authentic and vulnerable.
He speaks about his biggest fumble at Grace Hopper when he told an audience at the celebration of women in computing that they should not ask for raises but instead trust that hard work and the long-term efficiency of the system would reward them.
What makes Hit Refresh so interesting is Nadella’s capacity to acknowledge his mistake, laugh at it and inviting Microsoft employees to look at the video and learn from it. That is truly a leadership lesson devoid of a preachy tone that most leaders cannot help but adopt.
He wrote this email to the employees soon after the PR fiasco.
“Toward the end of the interview, Maria asked me what advice I would offer women who are not comfortable asking for pay raises. I answered that question completely wrong. Without a doubt I wholeheartedly support programs at Microsoft and in the industry that bring more women into technology and close the pay gap. I believe men and women should get equal pay for equal work. And when it comes to career advice on getting a raise when you think it’s deserved, Maria’s advice was the right advice. If you think you deserve a raise, you should just ask.”
Each business shift seems to have been triggered by reflection. That is the ring of authenticity and vulnerability that comes through in Hit Refresh. The book is a hit. But more than that, it is a refreshing read.
DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.
Satya Nadella is only three and a half years into his tenure as the CEO of Microsoft and he has already written a book about his experiences. Hit Refresh: The Quest to Rediscover Microsoft’s Soul and Imagine a Better Future for Everyone will be released on Sept. 26.
As he acknowledges in the book, it’s an odd time to write about running the tech giant. Nadella, getting out in front of the “why” question, says he wanted to write from the middle of the “fog of war”—the battle to rescue Microsoft from a slow fade into the background of the tech landscape. And there’s plenty of material here. In stepping out of the long shadow of former Microsoft leaders Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, Nadella has already accomplished what seemed impossible, increasing Microsoft’s market cap by $250 billion since taking control. As Fast Company recently pointed out, this adds up to “more value growth over that time than Uber and Airbnb, Netflix and Spotify, Snapchat and WeWork” combined.
The timing of the book’s arrival from Harper Business, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, is even less peculiar when you also consider that one of Nadella’s central missions is to recreate Microsoft’s culture and image in the eyes of its employees, business partners, customers, investors, and, finally, the world. In Hit Refresh, the chief executive details the ways he seems to have made formerly disillusioned and perhaps embarrassed Microsoft employees proud of their work and employer again, partly by refocusing their sights on where the company was going, and why, rather than where it had fallen behind. He describes his pioneering approach to partnering with “frenemy” corporations.
The book itself is another way that Nadella is taking control of the Microsoft story, and the results are mixed.
For the average reader, Hit Refresh will be most compelling in the more personal sections, where Nadella describes his early life in India; the influence of his mother, a Sanskrit scholar; and his arrival in the US, where he attended University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee to complete his Master’s degree in engineering, and, with other Indian students, gave up smoking rather than stand outside during the shockingly cold winters. Nadella describes his awkward first interview at Microsoft, which he joined in 1992, when he was 25 years old. He eventually became head of the company’s cloud and enterprise group, and was credited for moving Microsoft to the cloud when he was tapped as CEO.
It’s intriguing to learn of the methods Nadella used as CEO to disrupt culture in the company, to change the style of communication from one that was top-down and rigid to one that was empathetic and collaborative. For instance, he recounts the time he used a company-wide spat over milk routinely being left to spoil out on the counter to drive home—with some levity—his belief in the “growth mindset,” and personal empowerment, as a way to solve problems, rather than complain about them.
In another instance, he recalls an early meeting with his senior leadership team in which he brought in sports psychologist Michael Gervais, who had worked with the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks, to meet with Microsoft’s executives and bring their self-awareness to a deeper level. During that meeting, held on soft couches arranged in a circle, the managers opened up about their personal passions and philosophy. Nadella writes:
“We were asked to reflect on who we are, both in our home lives and at work. How do we connect our work persona with our life persona? People talked about spirituality, their Catholic roots, their study of Confucian teachings. They shared their struggles as parents and their unending dedication to making products that people love to use for work and entertainment. As I listened to them, I realized that in all my years at Microsoft this was the first time I’d heard my colleagues talk about themselves, not exclusively about business matters. Looking around the room, I even saw a few teary eyes.”
Unfortunately, the strange narrative arc of Hit Refresh means we soon lose these vivid, ground-level reports from inside Microsoft. The book moves from being a personal story, to a management how-to, to a series of long sections in which Nadella reflects on the future of digital rights and freedoms, artificial intelligence and augmented reality, quantum computing, and what he thinks countries will need to do to be included in the next wave of tech-enabled globalization (one that companies like Microsoft hope to lead, naturally). Those chapters read more like keynote speeches—albeit thoughtful, insightful speeches that include literary references and lovely summaries of various economic and philosophic theories.
The “refresh” in the title is meant to refer to the “refreshing” of a web page, which Nadella admits is a quaint notion in today’s web culture. It’s also his way of signalling his respect for the Microsoft that came before him, one that, by the time he took over, had turned into a collection of fiefdoms where secrecy ruled and hostility ran high between competing Microsoft businesses.
The empathetic spirit he begins to emphasize as CEO, as a way to bring the workforce together, is a value he also connects to Microsoft’s ethos more broadly: he argues that the company exists to help democratize the tremendous power of today’s computational abilities, the way Gates and co-founder Paul Allen democratized access to computers period. Nadella makes the case for the company becoming a ubiquitous tool in the lives of its users, who will soon be living in a world of ubiquitous intelligence. What end users will do with those tools—build companies, schools, or cure cancer—is where each of Microsoft’s 100,000-plus employees is supposed to find meaning. He links the company’s purchase of LinkedIn to democratizing employment opportunities, and emphasizes the value of Minecraft in classrooms, in his nod to that unexpected acquisition.
Nadella claims in the book that he has seen a “tangible shift” in Microsoft culture, though he considers the job a work in progress. Whether insiders will challenge this depiction remains to be seen, but Nadella’s personal dedication to seeing his work through an existential lens is convincing, most especially when he talks about his son, Zain, who was born with severe disabilities. He credits his experiences raising Zain, and his wife’s approach to parenting, with teaching him the meaning of—and need for—empathy. He writes:
During one ICU visit, after I took on my new role as CEO, I looked around Zain’s room, filled with the soft buzzing and beeping of medical technology, and saw things differently. I noticed just how many of the devices run on Windows and how they were increasingly connected to the cloud, that network of massive data storage and computational power that is now a fundamental part of the technology applications we take for granted today. It was a stark reminder that our work at Microsoft transcended business, that it made life possible for a fragile young boy.
The experience helps him see Microsoft’s mission in a new light, and in the process convinces the reader.
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Hit Refresh, by Satya Nadella
Microsoft’s chief executive outlines how empathy can change corporate culture
Satya Nadella put his finger on what had gone wrong at Microsoft: the frustration of a workforce that was losing and was no longer considered cool © AP
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Review by Richard Waters
October 23, 2017
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If you ask around the tech industry these days, it is hard to find anyone with a bad word to say about Satya Nadella. It could have something to do with the deftness with which Microsoft’s chief executive has turned around his company’s fortunes. Nearly four years into the job, a company whose fate seemed tied to the shrinking PC market has found a new lease of life.Or it could be the way he has buried the hatchet with Microsoft’s old enemies. By making up with fellow Indian engineer Sundar Pichai at Google, he ended one of the industry’s most divisive rivalries. Even Apple has become the subject of polite co-operation.Then again, it could be just that he is so, well, nice. Empathy is Nadella’s North Star. And in this short book, he does not just elevate it to the level of a personal philosophy. It is also the foundation on which to rebuild Microsoft’s culture, and the answer to one of the most pressing questions of our time: whether we can find a way to live in harmony with the robots (and each other) in the artificial intelligence-driven future.A heavy dose of empathy, it turns out, was not a bad antidote to the things that ailed Microsoft. Feared and disliked during its heyday, there was little sympathy as its power waned with the PC market. Nadella is too much the diplomat to criticise his predecessors. Indeed, he pays generous tribute to Steve Ballmer for encouraging him to strike out in his own direction, while also noting that it was Ballmer who set the more open course for which Nadella himself has received the credit.For anyone attuned to Microsoft’s history, there are some knowing references. He twice criticises a culture in which everyone felt the need to be “the smartest person in the room” — clearly an allusion to the hyper-competitiveness of Bill Gates, who made the company in his image.But is empathy a strong enough foundation on which to rebuild a corporate culture? Nadella encourages managers at a corporate getaway to tap into their deepest motivations. As they indulge in uncharacteristic self-examination, “teary eyes” are in evidence.This is the “soul” of his book’s subtitle, as in: “The quest to rediscover Microsoft’s soul and imagine a better future for everyone”. If he stumbles in describing how he sought to build a new culture, it is because he does not have the words here to convey the living, beating heart of the company. For Nadella, key moments include watching his employees get teary over a corporate video, or describing an internal email in which he outlined a new corporate mission statement (the FT’s Lucy Kellaway decided it was “unreadable, largely meaningless hyperbole”).Yet he was clearly on to something. Breaking down some of the internal barriers has had an energising effect. And he put his finger on what had gone wrong: the frustration of a workforce that was losing and no longer considered cool. Former Microsoft engineers and others close to the company testify to the change that Nadella has wrought.This is a short book, which is probably as well. Too often, it is cast in generalisms that fail to bring the drama of corporate renewal to life. “There was constant tension between diverging forces,” Nadella says of one battle. There is little sense of what it was like in the heat of the moment, or how he won the day.The natural restraint is also a shame when it comes to Nadella’s discussion of his personal life. His brief descriptions of the influence of his wife and mother, and that of his son with cerebral palsy, are moving. But as a description of his journey of self-discovery, they leave us wanting more. The final chapters of the book address some of the big questions facing technology. It has become fashionable to attack the power of Big Tech. Nadella, unabashed, insists on a “moral obligation” to push forward with innovation — and an equally powerful obligation to weigh social and political impacts of technologies like AI and to make sure the benefits are widely shared.Early in this book, Nadella admits to having felt some hesitation at writing a personal account so soon in his term. He should not worry. There will be more than enough material for a deeper look when it is all over.The writer is the FT’s West Coast editorHit Refresh: The Quest to Rediscover Microsoft’s Soul and Imagine a Better Future for Everyone, by Satya Nadella, HarperBusiness £20/$29.99