Satya Nadella | The man who rebuilt Microsoft

thehindu.com/news/international/satya-nadella-the-man-who-rebuilt-microsoft/article34861134.ece

In his book Hit Refresh, Satya Nadella,

the Microsoft CEO, reminisces about his
first day in that role, way back in early
2014. “If there was any one theme I
wanted to emphasize that day,” he writes,
“it was that we must discover what would
be lost in the world if Microsoft just
disappeared.” The man who is just the
third CEO in Microsoft’s history then
writes, “We had to answer for ourselves,
what is the company about? Why do we
exist? I told them it was time for us to
rediscover our soul — what makes us
unique.”

More than seven years later, Mr. Nadella has now been given the opportunity to shape
Microsoft’s vision as its chairman as well. He will be only the third chairman in the
company’s 46-year history, and will be only the second, after its iconic co-founder Bill
Gates, to hold the positions of chairman and CEO at the same time.

When Mr. Nadella took over as CEO in 2014, Microsoft was seen as a company whose best
years were behind it. Toward the end of his predecessor Steve Ballmer’s term, pressure
was mounting on the company to come up with a roadmap that would place it among the
most dominant technology companies once again. This was a time when Microsoft was
struggling to shape a future that moved away from its dependence on the Windows
operating system, which served it well during the years of the personal computer boom.
Times had, however, changed.

In the years leading up to 2014, as the world adopted mobile devices in a big way,
Microsoft struggled to make a success of its new ideas and ventures. Its forays into mobile
devices, for instance, were a failure. The stock price reflected its state and was largely
stagnant for a long time.

In the seven years since taking over, Mr. Nadella has been widely acknowledged for the
revival of Microsoft’s fortunes. It is once again one of the most valuable companies in the
world today. According to current prices, it is in fact No. 2 in terms of market
capitalisation just behind Apple and just ahead of Amazon. Its market capitalisation is in
striking distance of $2 trillion. What Mr. Nadella did was not just move away from the
Windows past but also build and fund future business such as cloud computing. Two
years ago, a Bloomberg Businessweek article, with the title ‘The Most Valuable Company
(for Now) Is Having a Nadellaissance’, wrote: “Under Nadella, it cut funding to Windows
and built an enormous cloud computing business — with about $34 billion in revenue

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over the past year — putting it ahead of Google and making progress in key areas against
the dominant player, Amazon Web Services”. In fact, the article says, “His first email to
employees ran more than 1,000 words — and made no mention of Windows.”

A marathon
The Hyderabad-born Mr. Nadella once said in a Stanford GSB event, “My father was a
Marxist economist and civil servant... He looked at my grades and was amazed someone
could be so bad! But he said, ‘It’s a marathon. You’ll catch up.’ My mother’s only question
to me was ‘Are you happy?’” He got his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from
Mangalore University, and then did his MS in computer science from the University of
Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He also has an MBA degree from the University of Chicago. Mr.
Nadella, who grew up wanting to be a professional cricketer, now uses analogies from the
sport he loves liberally to make sense of real-life situations. He also spoken quite a bit in
recent years about how the disability of his son profoundly impacted his ideas of
leadership.

As CEO, Mr. Nadella had to take tough decisions, one of which was the writing off of the
over $7 billion acquisition of Nokia’s handset business, leading to thousands of job cuts.
He also put more money in growing businesses such as cloud computing, and also led big-
ticket acquisitions such as those of LinkedIn, Nuance and GitHub. He reorganised the
company and made sure its products were compatible with products and devices from
other stables.

This was in line with what he had put in a memo to the board, before he was picked as
CEO. He had bet on a plan toward a “renewal of Microsoft”. This was to cater to a world
where “humans will interact with experiences that span a multitude of devices and
senses.” The success of the plan has put Mr. Nadella at the top-most position of a
company he joined 29 years ago.

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