“Refresh the page. About the transformations of Microsoft and the technologies of the future from the first person” by Satya Nadella
Satya Nadella is the CEO and Chairman of the Board of Directors of Microsoft. He took over the company in 2014 and accelerated the pace of development so that the share price increased by as much as 500%. Nadella is loved and respected by both IT specialists and investors: confirmed by the Glassdoor rating. He is also an amazing storyteller – we saw this for ourselves after reading his book.
This is not a memoir: on the pages of his work, Satya Nadella describes the life of the company only partially, and presents his personal biography concisely and rather so that the reader understands the context: why Microsoft made such qualitative changes and reached a new level, overcoming fierce competition in the market.
“This book will tell about the transformation that is happening today within myself and in the depths of the company under the influence of a sense of empathy and a desire to help others. But more importantly, this is a book about the changes that are coming into each of our lives as we are fortunate enough to witness the greatest technological breakthrough of all time, which was marked by the development of artificial intelligence, mixed reality and quantum computing. “It is also a book about how people, organizations and communities can and must change—“refresh the page”—in an eternal search for new energy and new ideas, in an attempt to find purpose and rebirth,” he writes. And he adds: “In essence, this is a book about us, people, and about the unique quality that we call empathy. This quality will be increasingly valued in a world that is changing more rapidly due to the rapid flow of technology than ever before. The Austrian mystic poet Rainer Maria Rilke once said: “This is how the future enters into us, to become us long before it comes to life.” It’s so immediate and deep. It is unlikely that it will not touch someone. Unless I’m a real bore.
In this review, we will focus on leadership and spiritual qualities, because it was these two forces in the person of Nadella that launched the flywheel of change for Microsoft. The book contains many names, place names, names of companies and products, so we deliberately did not retell its contents – you need to read each chapter carefully.
What semantic parts does this book consist of?
Satya Nadella reveals three storylines:
his own, about how he moved from India to the USA and found a new home in Silicon Valley and, ultimately, at Microsoft;
working – about the transformation of the company and its corporate culture;
universal – arguing that the fourth industrial revolution is just around the corner revolution.
All this in about 300 pages. You can read it in one sitting, or in nine if you decide to read one chapter a day.
What will you do if you meet a crying baby?
This is a trick question, but it clearly demonstrates where the cult of empathy at Microsoft comes from. At a company interview, after a full day of engineering discussions and testing his professional abilities, Satya was asked what he would do if he saw a crying child in the middle of the street. The novice specialist replied that he would call the rescue service. “You lack empathy, boy. If a baby is lying on the street and crying, pick him up.” These were the words of Richard Tate, the manager behind the popular board game Cranium.
Subsequently, Satya Nadella will face the challenge of being a parent, and it will be a great exercise in both empathy and humility. Let’s do without spoilers. There is a sequence and chronology in reading. It will be great if you follow the author’s thoughts.
What leaders can learn from cricket
Cricket is a sport similar to baseball. This is one of Satya’s early hobbies, which remained with him throughout his life. Through cricket, he believes, one can understand the principles of business and leadership. Usually we don’t do summaries, but this time we can’t pass it up:
“The first principle is to fight passionately and zealously to the end in situations of uncertainty and fear.” One day, the team in which Satya played met with opponents who aroused admiration: these visiting guys played so magnificently. The coach noticed this and ordered the guys to show more aggression on the field, and in addition brought Nadella to the offensive line, although he would have liked to remain on the periphery. I had to remain competitive so as not to lose face. “This story taught me that you should always respect your opponent, but not be in awe of him. Just go and fight,” sums up the head of Microsoft.
“The second principle is simply the need to put the interests of the team first, and only then personal statistics and recognition of your personal merits… One brilliant player who does not think about the team can easily ruin everything.”
“The third priority principle is the key role of leadership. Its essence is to bring out the best qualities in each team member. I remember one particular match in which the opponent easily dealt with my twisted serves. I served extremely poorly, and then the captain of our team showed me by example what real leadership is. When my over was over (that is, when I bowled six balls), the captain himself took my place, although I was a better batsman than a bowler. He quickly took the wicket – the batsman from the opposite team was out. Normally, taking wickets so effectively meant he should have continued to play as a bowler. But instead, he immediately threw the ball back to me, and I took seven wickets on my own. Why did he do this? I guess he wanted to restore my sense of confidence … It was a lesson in subtle, skillful leadership from a person who knows when to take charge of the game and when to reinforce the confidence of the team and its individual members in their own abilities,” Nadella shares.
“You can’t be an empathetic leader if you sit in an office all day and stare at a computer monitor.”
In his book, Nadella admonishes developers as if to encourage the community to follow the true path he knows: “An empathetic leader must go out into the world, meet people where they live, and see how the technologies we create affect their daily lives. Many people around the world today depend on mobile and cloud technologies without knowing it. Hospitals, schools, enterprises, and research centers use the so-called public cloud – a system of universal computers and data processing services that have privacy protection and are accessible through an open network. Cloud computing makes it possible to operate with huge amounts of data. They allow you to perform analytical and intellectual processing of information and turn guesses and hypotheses into informed forecasts. Cloud technologies have the power to change the destinies of people, companies and entire societies.”
Here are the arguments he makes in favor of mobile and cloud technologies:
Developers in Kenya have created a battery for solar energy that has replaced dangerous kerosene stoves. Thanks to the invention, “people living on two dollars a day” can rent safe and cheap lamps and economical cookstoves;
One university in Greece is working with fire authorities to predict and prevent devastating wildfires using cloud data;
Scientists in Sweden are using cloud-based technology tools to screen children for dyslexia, a reading disorder that affects millions of students around the world. Thanks to the analysis of the eye movements of the subjects, parents and teachers know about the problem in advance and can build a competent educational process;
Japan conducted open monitoring of information about radiation contamination after the accident at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, which can reduce risks regarding the quality of food products and their transportation. And all thanks to hundreds of sensors and data from them, which formed a heat map of rice fields and identified areas whose products could pose a threat to human health;
Nepalese researchers used a public cloud to collect and analyze data on homes, schools, hospitals and homes after the devastating 2015 earthquake. This helped to quickly provide assistance to the victims;
The intensive care equipment he visited in a US hospital ran on Windows and was connected to the cloud: it literally saved lives.
Everything is tied to the well-being of people: that’s what Nadella is fighting for.
Satya Nadella writes about the “soul of the company” and reveals the result of the Microsoft team through the history of the cloud revolution, the race for leadership and competition with Amazon, the release of Nokia on Windows. By the way, the author of this article once wrote an entire scientific paper on Lumia – it was so convenient. So hello to the developers and we wish each of you to create products for which users will be grateful.
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