Book review - 'Hit Refresh' by Satya Nadella

Finished my first book of the year and I must admit it was a good choice to start off the new year. Here is how I found the book. 

The book is about the journey of Mr Nadella from a software engineer to CEO and he shares many anecdotes which contribute to what he is today. 

Seeing a CEO as a human - The biggest takeaway from the book I had was to see a human as a CEO of Microsoft. Usually for people like me, such CEOs are more demi-god or super humans like Bill Gates, Elon Musk etc but this book made me realize that CEOs are equally human with daily life challenges like ours. 

Eg he talks about his only son suffering from cerebral palsy by birth and how it changed him as a father and shaped up his vision as CEO with Empathy towards others. 

Given the age I am where I also intend to become a father gives me shivers thinking what if my child is like that but then it also gives you hope that if Mr Nadella can deal with it and still become CEO of the largest tech firm in the world, so can you. 

The fact that he went on to have 2 more children after this also shows that his faith was unshakable in social institutions like children and marriage. 

The Journey- He was like any other immigrant from India coming to the US for higher studies and then getting a job. However, rose through the ranks organically and ended up where many of his former superiors were now practically working under him. How he manages those and attracts talent as CEO is what stood out. 

He narrates an incident. Microsoft (MS) was in a law-suit with Samsung because of a partnership conflict and Samsung’s CEO didn’t trust anyone within MS. Nadella reached out to a Business Relationship executive within Qualcomm who had a good relationship with Samsung’s CEO. What caught my eye was the hiring process. It was not a typical HR process. 

He invited her to first a restaurant for dinner and then to his home for lunch and they discussed their shared vision of how they want technology to shape the world. It was so informal but so effective. This executive provided quintessential in resolving the multi-billion dollar conflict. 

The Mindset change in Microsoft (Hit-Refresh)- It’s no secret that when Mr Nadella took over as CEO, MS was struggling to diversify its revenue streams besides Windows and office suites. He makes no qualms in admitting that MS missed the Mobile bandwagon but he uses that experience as a foundation to build MS’ capabilities into cloud and Search Engine products. The biggest challenge he sees in that is culture. He uses Peter Drucker’s legendary lines to explain it - ‘Culture eats strategy for breakfast’. 

He talks about leaders who were complacent with their constant revenue streams like Server businesses and their resistance to change and how we went about changing their attitude to bring them on the path of start-up like culture. From ‘know-it all to Learn-it all’.  

Nadella talks about 3 Cs - Concept, Culture and Capacity as key drivers for growth. This section is what gives the book its title. 

Co-opetition-  Another interesting that Nadella talks about is how the business models have changed over a period of time where there are no permanent enemies in business. Earlier, Apple was considered MS’s biggest competitor and how MS employees considered Apple as their arch enemies but later Nadella describes a product launch where Apple shared stage with MS to introduce MS office suite for iOS. Similarly, MS works in partnership with Dell for their PC business where Windows acts as Software tO Dell’s hardware while both MS and Dell are competing for the same customers in Tablet space. 

How he manages these conflicting interests makes for a great story. 

And the last but not least-

Future of Technology - Quantum computing, Artificial Intelligence and Mixed Reality

Mr Nadella is bullish on these 3 technologies and cites reasons for them e.g. he believes today’s commuting power is not enough to support the calculations needed to generate new AI models to replicate mutations of modern viruses such as Ebola or COVID. Quantum computing can provide that impetus to computing. 

All in all it was a great read. Highly recommended.