Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has urged employees to meet the company’s ambition with a desire to change and evolve its culture.“I truly believe that we spend far too much time at work for it not to drive personal meaning and satisfaction,” he says in an e-mail to employees.
“Together we have the opportunity to create technology that impacts the planet.
“Nothing is off the table in how we think about shifting our culture to deliver on this core strategy. Organisations will change. Mergers and acquisitions will occur. Job responsibilities will evolve. New partnerships will be formed. Tired traditions will be questioned. Our priorities will be adjusted. New skills will be built. New ideas will be heard. New hires will be made. Processes will be simplified.
“And if you want to thrive at Microsoft and make a world impact, you and your team must add numerous more changes to this list that you will be enthusiastic about driving.”
He took the opportunity to motivate employees and urge them to make the most of new market opportunities, speaking about Microsoft’s culture as well as its core focus and world view.
As regards the company’s world view, Nadella points out that computing power will digitise nearly everything around us and will derive insights from all of the data being generated by interactions among people and between people and machines.
“We are moving from a world where computing power was scarce to a place where it now is almost limitless, and where the true scarce commodity is increasingly human attention.
“In this new world, there will soon be more than 3 billion people with Internet-connected devices – from a farmer in a remote part of the world with a smartphone, to a professional power user with multiple devices powered by cloud service-based apps spanning work and life.
“The combination of many devices and cloud services used for generating and consuming data creates a unique opportunity for us. Our customers and society expect us to maximize the value of technology while also preserving the values that are timeless. We will create more natural human-computing interfaces that empower all individuals. We will develop and deploy secure platforms and infrastructure that enable all industries.
“And we will strike the right balance between using data to create intelligent, personal experiences, while maintaining security and privacy. By doing all of this, we will have the broadest impact.”
He adds that Microsoft was founded on the belief that technology creates opportunities for people and organisations to express and achieve their dreams by putting a PC on every desk and in every home.
“More recently, we have described ourselves as a ‘devices and services’ company. While the devices and services description was helpful in starting our transformation, we now need to hone in on our unique strategy.
“At our core, Microsoft is the productivity and platform company for the mobile-first and cloud-first world. We will reinvent productivity to empower every person and every organisation on the planet to do more and achieve more.”
He says Microsoft will focus on reinventing productivity and platforms. This includes a focus on digital work and life experiences; a cloud-based operating system; and device operating system and hardware.
Nadella points out that Xbox is still an important component of Microsoft, and the company will continue to develop the platform.