The Poetry Quoting Geek
In the very first email Satya Nadella, the newly appointed CEO of Microsoft told his employees, “Our industry does not respect tradition – it only respects innovation.” That is also an accurate summary of the challenge that the CEO will face after the celebrations have died down.He should know. After all he has been heading Microsoft’s cloud computing and enterprise business. As the third CEO of Microsoft after Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, Nadella has the tall task of steering an iconic company that has meandered over the past few years. What makes his task harder is that the company that he is going to head has been successful – very successful in fact. That can be the biggest roadblock to innovation. Success makes companies inward facing.The Windows operating system and its ubiquitous Office software has fueled many indulgences and covered many failures of Microsoft. The game for search has long been taken over by Google. Microsoft has missed the boat on mobile, making it a very distant third player. More than 90 per cent of PCs run Windows, but only 4 per cent of smartphones use that operating system and is almost non-existent in the world of tablets. These may be important constituencies to win over. While Microsoft has always spoken to geeks, Apple won the heart of the customers with its simple but aesthetic design and intuitive interfaces. Facebook has been synonymous with social. Isn’t it ironical that Nadella’s announcement came through on the same day when Facebook celebrated its tenth birthday?Microsoft has long since had a monopoly in workplace computing. It will now need to learn a new language that speaks to the consumers. Would an outsider have been better placed to lead Microsoft to the next level? Boris Groysberg, Professor at Harvard Business School has spoken about the myth of talent portability. Many a superstar CEO brought in from another organization has failed. It is not about not having the right ideas, the CEO has to take the organization along. This change management task is what helps the leader to accomplish the vision that they have.Satya Nadella has built these alliances during the twenty two years he has been at Microsoft running different business units. He is an insider who knows what works and can speak the language that its 100,000 employees (not counting the Nokia numbers). In his new role, he will have to also play the outsider to build a culture of innovation.