Satya Nadella - Hit Refresh

On the morning of February 4, 2014, I was introduced to employees as Microsofts third CEO alongside Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, the only CEOs in Microsofts forty-year history.

William Collins

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This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2017

Copyright 2017 Satya Nadella

Foreword 2017 William H. Gates III

Cover design by Milan Bozic

Satya Nadella asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins

Source ISBN: 9780008247652

Ebook Edition September 2017 ISBN: 9780008247676

Version: 2017-08-28

To the two families that have shaped my life: Anu, our parents and our children; and my Microsoft family

Contents

Ive known Satya Nadella for more than twenty years. I got to know him in the mid-nineties, when I was CEO of Microsoft and he was working on our server software, which was just taking off at the time. We took a long-term approach to building the business, which had two benefits: It gave the company another growth engine, and it fostered many of the new leaders who run Microsoft today, including Satya.

Later I worked really intensely with him when he moved over to run our efforts to build a world-class search engine. We had fallen behind Google, and our original search team had moved on. Satya was part of the group that came in to turn things around. He was humble, forward-looking, and pragmatic. He raised smart questions about our strategy. And he worked well with the hard-core engineers.

So it was no surprise to me that once Satya became Microsofts CEO, he immediately put his mark on the company. As the title of this book implies, he didnt completely break with the pastwhen you hit refresh on your browser, some of whats on the page stays the same. But under Satyas leadership, Microsoft has been able to transition away from a purely Windows-centric approach. He led the adoption of a bold new mission for the company. He is part of a constant conversation, reaching out to customers, top researchers, and executives. And, most crucially, he is making big bets on a few key technologies, like artificial intelligence and cloud computing, where Microsoft will differentiate itself.

It is a smart approach not just for Microsoft, but for any company that wants to succeed in the digital age. The computing industry has never been more complex. Today lots of big companies besides Microsoft are doing innovative workGoogle, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and others. There are cutting-edge users all around the world, not just in the United States. The PC is no longer the only computing device, or even the main one, that most users interact with.

Despite all this rapid change in the computing industry, we are still at the beginning of the digital revolution. Take artificial intelligence (AI) as an example. Think of all the time we spend manually organizing and performing mundane activities, from scheduling meetings to paying the bills. In the future, an AI agent will know that you are at work and have ten minutes free, and then help you accomplish something that is high on your to-do list. AI is on the verge of making our lives more productive and creative.

Innovation will improve many other areas of life too. Its the biggest piece of my work with the Gates Foundation, which is focused on reducing the worlds worst inequities. Digital tracking tools and genetic sequencing are helping us get achingly close to eradicating polio, which would be just the second human disease ever wiped out. In Kenya, Tanzania, and other countries, digital money is letting low-income users save, borrow, and transfer funds like never before. In classrooms across the United States, personalized-learning software allows students to move at their own pace and zero in on the skills they most need to improve.

Of course, with every new technology, there are challenges. How do we help people whose jobs are replaced by AI agents and robots? Will users trust their AI agent with all their information? If an agent could advise you on your work style, would you want it to?

That is what makes books like Hit Refresh so valuable. Satya has charted a course for making the most of the opportunities created by technology while also facing up to the hard questions. And he offers his own fascinating personal story, more literary quotations than you might expect, and even a few lessons from his beloved game of cricket.

We should all be optimistic about whats to come. The world is getting better, and progress is coming faster than ever. This book is a thoughtful guide to an exciting, challenging future.

I joined Microsoft in 1992 because I wanted to work for a company filled with people who believed they were on a mission to change the world. That was twenty-five years ago, and Ive never regretted it. Microsoft authored the PC Revolution, and our successrivaled perhaps only by IBM in a previous generationis legendary. But after years of outdistancing all of our competitors, something was changingand not for the better. Innovation was being replaced by bureaucracy. Teamwork was being replaced by internal politics. We were falling behind.

In the midst of these troubled times, a cartoonist drew the Microsoft organization chart as warring gangs, each pointing a gun at another. The humorists message was impossible to ignore. As a twenty-four-year veteran of Microsoft, a consummate insider, the caricature really bothered me. But what upset me more was that our own people just accepted it. Sure, I had experienced some of that disharmony in my various roles. But I never saw it as insolvable. So when I was named Microsofts third CEO in February 2014, I told employees that renewing our companys culture would be my highest priority. I told them I was committed to ruthlessly removing barriers to innovation so we could get back to what we all joined the company to doto make a difference in the world. Microsoft has always been at its best when it connects personal passion to a broader purpose: Windows, Office, Xbox, Surface, our servers, and the Microsoft Cloudall of these products have become digital platforms upon which individuals and organizations can build their own dreams. These were lofty achievements, and I knew that we were capable of still more, and that employees were hungry to do more. Those were the instincts and the values I wanted Microsofts culture to embrace.

Not long into my tenure as CEO, I decided to experiment with one of the most important meetings I lead. Each week my senior leadership team (SLT) meets to review, brainstorm, and wrestle with big opportunities and difficult decisions. The SLT is made up of some very talented peopleengineers, researchers, managers, and marketers. Its a diverse group of men and women from a variety of backgrounds who have come to Microsoft because they love technology and they believe their work can make a difference.