Culture is the hardest thing to change within any organisation let alone Microsoft…

In the 80’s 90’s and early 2000’s Microsoft’s culture was notorious, they were arrogant, and wouldn’t think twice about doing the dirty on their partners if it suited.

Back then, they were pretty much the only game in town. They knew it and acted like it. Money poured in from continuous licence and upgrade sales, making them complacent.

Cloud computing crept upon them, and they choose not to react, allowing competitors, such as Amazon with AWS (Amazon Web Services) and Google Cloud to get a head start.

Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer eventually realised Microsoft were at a crossroads and had to re-engineer their business model, whilst also change their culture from being closed and arrogant to being open and empathetic. And they were not the right people to do it.

In choosing Satya Nadella (in my opinion) they made the best decision in Microsoft’s history, and probably the best CEO choice ever in tech turnaround history.

‘Hit Refresh’ is Nadella’s story.

Detailing how he changed the Microsoft business model from desktop and licence to cloud and subscription, whilst also changing their culture to open and collaboration seeking.

It is an amazing modern day tech turnaround story, made even more special when you consider Nadella’s own personal story.

Nadella grew up in India and moved to North America in his early twenties to do his masters, and then joined Sun to write software, before being poached by Microsoft in 1992. Spending the next 22 years learning his trade, before being appointed CEO in 2014.

It’s not just an inspiring business model and cultural change story, it’s also an inspiring personal story. And I doff my cap to you Satya Nadella.

‘Hit Refresh’ gets a 👍 & ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

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…thank you & see you next week.