> Once we were seated, he delivered the most concise, precise, and actionable lesson in leadership imaginable—a lesson I believe everyone could benefit from. As I recall, he said:<p>> > Congratulations …. your days of whining are over .<p>> > In this room, we deliver success, we don’t whine.<p>> > Look, I’m not confused, I know you walk through fields of shit every day.<p>> > Your job is to find the rose petals.<p>> > Don’t come whining that you don’t have the resources you need.<p>> > We’ve done our homework.<p>> > We’ve evaluated the portfolio, considered the opportunities and allocated our available resources to those opportunities.<p>> > That is what you have to work with.<p>> > Your job is to manufacture success with the resources you’ve been allocated.<p>> > And yes – you have a hard job.<p>Not concise: he could've said "Your job is to manufacture success with the resources you’ve been allocated. No ifs, ands, or buts."<p>Precise: what does he mean by "success"? Maximizing profit?<p>Actionable: yes. The rest of the lesson is "you control how resources are allocated within your team, and of course also the attitude and instructions you present to them. Set a goal for 'outsized' success (e.g. increase growth), have a plausible plan to that goal, follow the plan, and if the plan becomes no longer plausible have a new one. If you do that, you can occasionally fail and not be kicked out."<p>> Satya was not giving us a pep talk, he was giving us an architecture for success.<p>Maybe it was also an "architecture for success" but it was a pep talk. Also, this entire post sounds like typical AI, and like typical AI has lots of filler and vapidity. It would really benefit by having concrete examples of great leadership.
I like it. There is something subtle here that marks Nadella as a pretty good senior manager (assuming the paraphrase is accurate). He explained what the job is and how to do it in a simple and concise way.<p>Now you'd think that would just be normal practice but I have witnessed a disturbing number of leaders who either never got this talk or lack the empathy to realise that you have to explain to people what they should be doing. I will single out "leaders" who demand people get vague (or even specific) results and they have to figure it out. That is the extent of the leader's communication. All too common a practice, that can work with the right people but it is bad management.<p>Nadella isn't doing that here. He is still asking for vague (or specific) results, but he is including a "with these tools and by doing these things" part that is quite important and makes the whole talk actionable.
I find the word "success" a bit jarring. It sounds like "stock price" and not "great products", which is how I think about Microsoft and why Apple has gone past Microsoft (and why Apple is struggling now, having lost that focus on the product in at least software design).
What’s with that awful AI-generated infographic at the end? The piece would be better without it…
Ha, more cult of personality, down to idolizing every word from a simple casual speech.
Oh, hi Mark
I mean, it's a very nice speech but why is Microsoft failing everywhere except Azure? Doesn't seem like outstanding results to me.