What I Learned from Microsoft Israel’s CEO

When the meeting between Microsoft Israel’s CEO and me was arranged for 7:30 in the morning – I was already suspicious.

While I arrived sleepy and muddled, Shelly Landsmann was already functioning at peak performance, full of energy, after her third coffee of the day. I understood that I was dealing with an extraordinary type of person.

It turns out that Shelly had gotten up that day at 4:30am and had already managed to cook, do laundry, go shopping, talk with family members and a few friends, scan the newspapers, send emails and tasks to her team…

Shelly’s energy levels exemplify what Microsoft has been going through in recent years. At the beginning of the decade it seemed that Microsoft was becoming a kind of dinosaur, somewhat lost in the jungle, watching the new Internet mammoths – Facebook and Google– from the sidelines.

But over the past three years, since Satya Nadella was appointed global CEO, the company has begun flourishing again and has increased its value by $250 billion (more than Uber, Airbnb , and Wework – combined). The company shed non-profitable initiatives in areas where it struggled to compete, like its cellular division (and that of Nokia). It entered areas of significant growth, notably the area of cloud services, where Microsoft Azure has risen to second place in the field, after Amazon.

Superficially, it may seem that the difference is mostly the result of making the correct strategic choice of combining developing fields with technology. But when one takes a closer look, Shelly says, one sees that the key change really took place at the level of organizational culture and company spirit. Satya understood that it was not any particular technology or company decision that was holding Microsoft back, but rather its organizational culture – that evasive, intangible thing which envelops everything.

Shelly says that before Satya’s time, Microsoft focused mainly on… itself. Microsoft did what it knew how to do and tended to keep doing it. Satya brought about a change in the company’s central goal: instead of striving to be “an operating system for every device in the world”, Satya defined the goal as “creating an impact and empowering people and organizations”.

This grand statement reflects a profound and deep change in approach, based on Prof. Carol Dweck’s “growth mindset” theory. This theory divides people into two groups: those with a “fixed” mindset and those with a “growth” mindset. People with a “fixed” mindset think that talent is a gift from God and that their job is to know everything and excel in everything. Those with a “growth” mindset understand that the engine for growth is not talent, but acquired skills, so their main task is to always work on developing and growing.

Shelly says that while in the past, she might have told an employee at a quarterly review that “he is not meeting his goals”, today the conversation would look completely different. First of all, she says, he already knows his situation, so there is no point “telling him off” for not meeting his targets. Instead, she now focuses on how to provide him with the tools and the skills that he needs to succeed.

According to Shelly, the most important question that every employee must ask himself is: what impact do I have; what value do I create for the company and the customer?

They say that Bill Gates used to grab people in meetings and start grinding them down with involved questions and if they did not know something, he would rake them over the coals. Today, Microsoft does not expect people to “know everything”, but rather, to “learn everything”. These days at Microsoft, it is legitimate to answer questions with “I don’t know, let me learn about the subject and I will get back to you”. The result is that the company is now much less pompous, and much more open to learning and evolving along with market demands.

From Shelly I learned how important those human and inter-human “soft capabilities” are in creating “hard and measurable successes”. I understood that in the end, it is not technological tools that prevent a company from moving forward –  and not even the decisions made by upper management about the next trend. Rather, it is a company’s everyday conduct that holds it back – the inclination to protect what we already know how to do, to focus on what is important to us and not on what the customer needs. The little things, like how meetings are conducted, or how we respond to someone whose opinion is totally different from our own.

I learned from her that in the end, beyond all the slogans and principles, it all starts with personal example, and everything really comes down to ego management.  How do you perceive yourself? Do you understand (really understand) that you don’t know everything? Are you open (really open) to innovation? Are you interested (really interested) in the employee standing before you and his capacity for growth?

Although all of us, as executives, have learned to recite the right slogans, we are not always careful about implementing them on a day-to-day basis. There is a certain gap between how we perceive ourselves and what actually happens ‘on the ground’.

Self-awareness is the key challenge for all of us. It is very difficult to look at ourselves objectively. So we have to search for people who are sincere and direct (and confident) enough to guide us and help us grow – people who can show us our own blind spots and suggest new perspectives.

I am leaving for the weekend with many questions to introspect about and a desire to continue growing and developing. Am I open-minded? Am I continuing to learn? Do I know how to manage my ego?

Have a good weekend,

Gefen