TEAM WSL
Satya Nadella is a husband, a father and the CEO of Microsoft – Only the 3rd 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. He joined Microsoft in 1992. As much a humanist as a technologist, Nadella defines his mission and that of the company he leads as empowering every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.
Here are Top 22 Inspiring Lessons from his book ‘HIT REFRESH’, that resonate with every leader trying to bring about change in the company.
1. Only through living life’s ups & downs you can develop empathy. That in order not to suffer, or at least not to suffer so much, one must become comfortable with impermanence.
2. My passion is to put empathy at the centre of everything I pursue.
3. Cultural transformation would be slow and trying before it would be rewarding.
4. At the core, it’s about us humans and the unique quality we call empathy.
5. Hit Refresh – To reenergize, renew, reframe, and rethink their purpose.
6. An empathetic leader needs to be out in the world, meeting people where they live and perform their daily activities.
7. I realized that in a successful company it is as important to unlearn some old habits as it is to learn new skills.
8. Any institution-building comes from having a clear vision and culture that works to motivate progress both top-down and bottom-up.
9. Leadership means making choices and then rallying the team around those choices.
10. To me, meeting customers and learning from both their articulated and unarticulated needs is the key to any product innovation agenda.
11. A leader must see the external opportunities, the internal capabilities and culture – and all of the connections among them. And respond to them before they become an obvious part of conventional wisdom.
12. My approach is to lead with a sense of purpose and pride in what we do, not envy or combativeness.
13. Listening was the most important thing I accomplished each day because it would build the foundation of my leadership for years to come.
14. Stand for timeless values, restore productivity and economic growth for everyone.
15. Consistency is better than perfection.
16. We will reinvent productivity to empower every person and every organization on the planet to do more and achieve more.
17. Culture is how an organization thinks and acts, but individuals shape it.
18. We can have all the bold ambition. We can have all the bold goals. We can aspire to our new mission. But it’s only going to happen if we live our culture if we teach our culture. And to me, that mode of culture is not a static thing. It is about a dynamic learning culture.
19. It is our ability to work together that makes our dreams believable and, ultimately, achievable.
20. Bring clarity to those you work with.
21. Leaders need to inspire optimism, creativity, shared commitment and growth through times good and bad.
22. Find a way to deliver success, to make things happen. This means driving innovations that people love and are inspired to work on: finding a balance between long term success and short-term wins.
