By Aakriti Chowdhary
Enthroned as the new CEO of Microsoft, Satya Nadella, 46, successfully climbs up the ladder of success. A company veteran, Nadella, born in Hyderabad in 1967, currently lives with his wife and three kids in Bellevue, Washington. Devoting 22 years out of 46 to the company, Nadella believes, the key to success is to “renew or die”. A man who loves to learn, Satya believes,” Any company, including ours, it’s all about what we do going forward versus what we have done.” Leading Microsoft’s $45 billion commercial business, heading cloud and enterprise group, Nadella believes his greatest responsibility is to accelerate their ability to bring innovative products to their customers more quickly.
Recognizing the need to transform its products and services, Microsoft successfully recognized its need to change its handlers. Along with the appointment of Satya as the new head, Microsoft announced that its poised co-founder would step down from his ceremonial post of board chairman to serve as a technical adviser to the company and Nadella, thus making up for the lack of experience of Nadella’s in the field of product and service strategy.
An enterprising individual, who has learnt to learn from others, describes the day of being appointed as the new CEO as a “humbling day” which reminded him of his first day at Microsoft that “empowers people to do magical things with their creations”. In his letter to a 100,000 employees, Satya is confident that Microsoft has it all, talent, resources and perseverance, in abundance to build a foundation that has and will help change lives. In very first interview he convincingly answered the question pertaining to why Microsoft and why the CEO of Microsoft, stating, “In the world that is becoming more software driven, opportunity is what derived me to raise my hand for this job.”
Succeeding Steve Ballmer, after his announcement of retiring five months ago, Nadella is being considered a “safe choice” by many. Investors approved of this very decision as Microsoft traded marginally higher. It was up by less than one percent though.
Challenges as adventures, opportunities as humbling, constraints as grounding and restrictions as a driving force, Satya Nadella is being considered as another Indian-born genius lost to the western pool of opportunities. With the aim to ruthlessly remove any obstacle to innovate, Nadella would increase his bank balance by $1.2 million this year, with a chance for a bonus up to 300%of his salary in the coming years.
Preventing the “do more company” to stagnate, motivating one and all to find more meaning in their work and capitalizing on every unique opportunity that comes by is what lies ahead of this experienced but young, tech savvy individual who believes that Microsoft has the best platform to change the world.
