Satya Nadella: Inside man

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Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. (Source: Microsoft)

4 February 2014

On the same day that Facebook celebrated its tenth anniversary (4 February 2014), Microsoft announced it had appointed a new CEO, the third bearer of that title in the company’s history. Satya Nadella, a 22-year veteran at Microsoft, follows in the footsteps of Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer to become leader of the Windows giant.

It was perhaps apt that Nadella’s ascension to the top job at Microsoft should become public on the day that so much press coverage had been focused on the 10th anniversary of Facebook’s founding. After all, Facebook is one of those upstart companies that has stolen some of Microsoft’s limelight in the past few years, so it’s probably fair Microsoft should try to steal some of it back.

Mind you, it’s understandable that most of the major media outlets devoted space of some kind to observing and commenting on Facebook’s tenth birthday. Even TechCentral got in on the act. As the TechCentral story notes, as many as 1.2 billion people (or one seventh of the world’s population) use Facebook on a monthly basis. It has more than a trillion stored status updates, text posts and pieces of content and had revenues of $7.9bn in 2013. Those revenues are still small beer, however, in comparison to Microsoft which had revenues of nearly $78bn for the year ending 30 June 2013 and profits of almost $27bn.

Anyway, to return to Nadella, his most recent tenure as executive vice president of Microsoft’s cloud and enterprise group should stand him in good stead as the company seeks to maintain and extend its relevance in the post-PC world.

Beyond that, it’s going to be hard to say exactly what Nadella is going to do and how he is going to change Microsoft in the coming months. The good news is that, as an insider, he has a good understanding of the company. The bad news is that, as an insider, he may not have quite as good an understanding of where the company needs to go.

In an interview provided by Microsoft, Nadella predicted the industry was heading towards “a mobile first, cloud first world” but stressed this was a world where everything was becoming digital and “software driven”. The opportunities would be “unbounded”, he added. All of which is true but the opportunities are not solely unbounded for Microsoft. They’re also the same for a number of other companies.

In a memo to Microsoft employees following his appointment as CEO, Nadella stated: “Many companies aspire to change the world. But very few have all the elements required: talent, resources, and perseverance. Microsoft has proven that it has all three in abundance. And as the new CEO, I can’t ask for a better foundation.”

But it’s a statement that says more about Microsoft than it does about the wider industry. After all, how many companies really aspire to change the world? How many believe they can do so? And if you accept that the answer is few, if any, you have to ask just how many companies need all the elements to achieve that goal.

Yes, talent, resources and perseverance are all necessary qualities but there is also the issue of perspective. Nadella says Microsoft has all three in abundance and I’m sure he’s right but you also need to be able to use them wisely and appropriately. Because if you don’t, you could end up wasting talent and resources persevering with a strategy that won’t benefit the company in the long run. As someone who has been at Microsoft for 22 years, Nadella is likely to have first hand experience of that too.

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