- Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella recently appeared at the Fast Company Innovation Festival in NYC where he reflected on the Pentagon, community, and productivity
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella recently appeared at the Fast Company Innovation Festival in New York City where he reflected on the Pentagon deal, community, and productivity. In his fifth year as CEO, Nadella has made a big mark by getting the market capitalization of Microsoft to surpass $1 trillion thus making it the most valuable company in the world.
When it comes to the market cap, Nadella is modest about it. At the conference, Nadella said it is dangerous to fixate on financial figures like the market cap as a measure of success. He learned this experience after working at Microsoft during a period when Microsoft had become the most valuable company in the world back in 1992.
“People would walk around, those of us who had joined in the early ’90s, and think, ‘Oh, we must be very good. Look at us and look at our market cap.’ And that’s always the beginning of the end: when you start somehow thinking that you are God’s gift to mankind and you aren’t grounded in what initially drove your success,” said Nadella in an interview with Fast Company editor-in-chief Stephanie Mehta at the event as reported by Harry McCracken. “Inspired by that time is why I say we need to go from ‘know-it-all’ to ‘learn-it-all.’”
Prior to Nadella becoming CEO of Microsoft, the company was at a turning point. Google was dominating search and online advertising. And Apple was selling millions of iPhones every day. And Microsoft Windows Vista was constantly getting bashed by reviewers.
Fortunately, Nadella was able to rebuild the company culture based on past lessons and future planning. Nadella has been bullish on cloud computing, mobile apps on rival platforms, augmented reality. And that strategy paid off.
What Microsoft has not changed from the past is that it is focused on building tools that democratize technology.
“Remember, Microsoft was a company that was founded by building the BASIC interpreter for the Altair,” added Nadella via Fast Company . “And so our goal for anyone, whether it’s a retailer, whether it’s a manufacturer or a healthcare company, if they’re all wanting to be software companies, (we) want to commodotize digital tech.”
Another major win for Microsoft is the $10 billion Pentagon deal. As part of this deal, Microsoft is going to sell its software and services to the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) as part of the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) initiative.
A number of Microsoft employees did not want the company to bid for the contract due to the divisiveness associated with the Trump administration. Nadella pointed out that it was right for the employees to push back.
But Nadella pointed out “as an American company, we want to make sure that our best and greatest technologies are available to those institutions that we have elected to protect our freedom.”
During an internal town hall meeting, Nadella also said that the senior leadership team agreed Microsoft should offer the best technology to the institutions that protect the freedom and democracy of the U.S.
Microsoft won the Pentagon deal over Amazon AWS, which was the only one left after IBM, Oracle, and Google were ruled out.
During the Fast Company event, Mehta also asked Nadella about his opinion around gentrification in Seattle. Due to the concentration of highly paid technology workers in Seattle, the less affluent workers are getting priced out of neighborhoods. To help those workers, Microsoft said it is investing $500 million in affordable housing in the area.
“Microsoft needs employees,” explained Nadella. “Employees live in communities. Communities need hospitals. Communities need schools… Investors are willing to go long.”
Mehta had also asked Nadella if he had any productivity suggestions for handling a busy schedule. “One of the things we sometimes confuse is all things we should be doing versus all the things that only you could do.” And by focusing on all the things that only you could do is “a filter that has been super helpful for me.”
And when Nadella does not know an answer, he has the ability to find someone who does.
