Satya Nadella

Satya Nadella, as per name is revered in Tech industry for his honesty and strong values. Born in humble Telugu family in Hyderabad, India, he has proved that anything can be achieved with strong determination, perseverance and strong values. Nadella, now 52, attended Hyderabad Public School and later did his Electrical Engineering from Manipal Institute of Technology, after not clearing IIT. His passion for computers led him to move to US, and he got MS in Computer Science from University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. He also received MBA from University of Chicago Booth School of Business. 

He gives full credit to his parent’s upbringing for what he is able to achieve. He is equally vocal about his wife Anu, who gave him strong support at family front. With two special children and handling their needs with empathy, Satya and Anu Nadella have set-up a strong example for parents struggling with such challenges. 

Not only in Family and personal life, his tagline ‘Keep Empathy in core and a desire to empower others’ always his mantra while dealing anything. The way he transformed Microsoft is applauded and praised across industry. He started completely new and fresh relationship with competitors like, Google, Apple, and Samsung etc. The three very important leadership lessons he prescribes are:

1. Compete vigorously and with passion in the face of uncertainty and intimidation. Always have respect for your competitor, but don’t be in awe.

2. Put your team first, ahead of your personal statistics and recognition.

3. Bring out best in everyone.

He had a great passion for cricket and he gives credit to cricket for these leadership lessons.

Though he maintains that he is not particularly religious, but he is really influenced by ‘Gautam Buddha’, in the way that Buddha clarifies that living life’s ups and downs only one can build empathy for others. He gives utmost importance to respect and empathy for others.

He took charge of Microsoft in 2014 and specially worked on, strengthening Microsoft cloud platform ‘Azure’, focusing more on existing core products office 365 and Bing to increase revenue share by being more flexible to integrate with other platforms. Under Nadella Microsoft revised its mission statement to "empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more". This has resulted in fresh perspective in renewed and more win-win partnerships with competitors. His key goal has been transforming Microsoft's corporate culture into one that values continual learning and growth. He has cited the book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck as inspiration for this philosophy around a "growth mindset".

With his outlook on future technologies Satya Nadella and leadership, went on for acquisitions which shaped the current structure of Microsoft, some of them are:-

1. Mojang, a Swedish game company, known for freeform computer building game, Minecraft. This being a cross platform game, Nadella thought to be part of his strategy to collaborate to achieve more.

2. Xamarin, having cross platform implementations for common language infrastructure and common language specification. This again a strategic acquisition in line with Nadella’s strategy to opening up Microsoft to integrate with wider tech community to serve customers better.

3. LinkedIn, a social networking platform for professionals.

4. GitHub, distributed version control and source code management and open source development platform. This again stamping the Microsoft’s strategy on investing in open source technologies and thus breaking the historical image of calling open source as Cancer.

With all changes that he brought in Microsoft, company now is burgeoning to new heights, Microsoft stock tripled by sept 2018.Nadella in his book "Hit Refresh" quoted, that leadership at Microsoft must be "boundary-less and globally minded in seeking solutions." The new Microsoft is quite optimistic for future and particularly focusing on Mixed Reality, Artificial Intelligence and Quantum Computing as technologies on which they will focus. 

Nadella believes that everyone, organizations and individual, need to hit refresh all the time in their life if things are not working, to get new perspective and achieve more. His life is example to others that challenges should be faced and can work as catalyst to grow one as better human being which can influence surrounding in positive ways.