I enjoyed this read. One thing that struck me, time and time again, was the thought that none of these responses sound even remotely like Steve Ballmer. For example:
Q. [What leadership lessons have you learned from] Bill Gates?
A. Bill is the most analytically rigorous person. He’s always very well prepared, and in the first five seconds of a meeting he’ll find some logical flaw in something I’ve shown him. I’ll wonder, how can it be that I pour in all this energy and still I didn’t see something? In the beginning, I used to say, “I’m really intimidated by him.” But he’s actually quite grounded. You can push back on him. He’ll argue with you vigorously for a couple of minutes, and then he’ll be the first person to say, “Oh, you’re right.” Both Bill and Steve share this. They pressure-test you. They test your conviction.
I get the sense that Nadella is a thoughtful, intelligent person, that he constantly assesses the moving pieces to get his arms around the big picture.
Also:
So how do you create that self-organizing capability to drive innovation and be focused? And the high-tech business is perhaps one of the toughest ones, because something can be a real failure until it’s not. It’s just an absolute dud until it’s a hit. So you have to be able to sense those early indicators of success, and the leadership has to really lean in and not let things die on the vine. When you have a $70 billion business, something that’s $1 million can feel irrelevant. But that $1 million business might be the most relevant thing we are doing.
To me, that is perhaps the big culture change — recognizing innovation and fostering its growth. It’s not going to come because of an org chart or the organizational boundaries. Most people have a very strong sense of organizational ownership, but I think what people have to own is an innovation agenda, and everything is shared in terms of the implementation.
Just an impression, but he could be just what Microsoft needs right now.
Yeah, he’s exactly what M$ needs — to Apple.
He’s way too enamored by Bill.
Bill’s vision is a failed vision since the internet happened. What the heck is he doing as a technology advisor anywhere?
no that’s not true.
he is probably one of those people who thinks iPad and Windows Tablets, iPhone and Windows Mobile are the same thing. And the success of iPad and iPhone are just coincidences.
I said it during the search: “an engineer at the helm is what Microsoft needs.” I think he’s going to do great.
Honestly, this interview was far too superficial to draw any conclusions from it. Of course, I do understand that it would make no sense to ask questions like “what changes will you make”, “do you see any of the past decisions as wrong” etc. at this point. But the interviewer could have come up with a bit more exciting stuff, other than breast-feeding Nadella invitations to dump a management style and buzzword soup litany on him/us…
There would have been a lot of interesting questions, even without being rude. Will you continue with the company’s reorganization as planned, or do you see reasons for adjustments? How will you handle the integration of 30k additional staff members from Nokia coinciding with that reorganization? What’s your take on providing MS software products on additional platforms? What is MS’s interest in Nokia’s dumbphone and Asha lines (the vast majority of Nokia’s sales), what can they do for MS? Etc ad inf. Any of these would have revealed more about his way of thinking than “what do you ask in interviews?”. This was more like a paid for article.
He sounds as though he’s aware of the negative aspects of the cultural bubble his company lives within, that Ballmer and Gates helped create.
The question is whether he can overcome that culture’s prejudices and managerial inertia to create products that people outside the bubble will actually want.