Book Review: Hit Refresh (Satya Nadella)

If you are part of or in preparation to be the next generation of leadership in your organization, this is the book for you. How do you lead your companies into future that is changing fast. How do you convince employees to experiment and innovate when they still believe in the success formula that have brought the company where they are today but may not be relevant tomorrow.
In February 2014, Satya Nadella became the third Microsoft CEO succeeding Steve Balmer and Co-founder Bill Gates. Microsoft in 2014 is not the dominant force in technology like it was in the 90s when PCs are the main technology people use in their daily lives and Microsoft Windows runs in most PCs. Today we are more familiar with smartphones and tablets that runs Android by Google or iOS by Apple.

In short, like many established companies, they have become the victim of their very own success. For those of us who remembers the glory days of Microsoft in the 90s and early 2000s, they controlled 90 percent of the world’s desktop systems sales. Microsoft grew rapidly and maintain profits by releasing new releases of their successful softwares. With time, they forget how to innovate and eventually were too late to catch up with the fast changing world of mobile.
This book is a great read to learn how exactly a leader like Nadella is able to pull change instead of pushing change in all the divisions and departments within Microsoft. His understated and calm demeanor made many doubted his ability to re-energize the organization. But he has proven many wrong and the result is clear, stock price has more than doubled, Microsoft for few years now keep growing in revenue and profit. There are great lessons to be learned from this book that is very relevant to established companies in Indonesia that are transitioning to the next generation of leaders who are tasked to lead the companies into an uncertain future.

 3 Generations of Microsoft CEOs, Founder Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer and Satya Nadella

Empathy is Key to Success

Hit Refresh makes it clear that Empathy is the fundamental building block that lead to the successful transformation of a company. Empathy can be a hard concept to practice in everyday operations, Hit Refresh describe this practice quite clearly and it is a great insight for industry leaders looking to change the company culture to be more agile and customer focused.
He encouraged all of his managers at a corporate getaway to deep dive into their deepest motivation and use these information to align them to the new direction he is taking the company, into ‘mobile first, cloud first’ world. Understanding these personal motivations are key breaking down some of the internal barriers within the company effectively. The practice of empathy is seeped into every aspect of the business especially in understanding future customers need. As such, Microsoft is able to focus their energy to value-added activities for their customer base.
I don’t blame you if you may sound skeptical at this point, but I encourage you to read this with an open mind and explore further the concept of Empathy that is easier to say than done. However, when done well, you are creating a whole different organization that is more robust and agile. Nadella has definitely made the concept of Empathy tangible and practical for every industry leaders.

‘The C in CEO Stands for Culture’

Nadella makes you re-thinking the role of top management in the 21st century. According to Nadella, the number 1 job of the leader of the organization is to shape the organization’s culture that will propel it forward towards its objectives and its mission.
This idea is very relevant . Nadella took the helm of Microsoft from predecessors that have built a competitive and silo-driven organization which has significant contribution to the company success in the past. However to survive in a changing world, innovative new business ideas must not only be coming from the top management, but through highly collaborative culture, new insight, new ideas from all levels will have to be encouraged, cultivated and developed effectively.
The right culture plays a big role in transforming an organization and the one person he believes must be the ultimate driver is the CEO. This resonates with me a lot more than I thought with time as I lead an already established organization myself. Companies and organizations must be able to harness great new ideas and trust its operations to execute and solve problems that will arise from experimenting and building new businesses. No longer, the man at the top is the ‘know-it-all’ who will always have the best ideas.

Growth mindset

The growth mindset is the notion that one must not take anything for granted and always be willing to check your assumptions as new information and data comes in. In today’s world, change is the only thing that is constant. Everything you know about how today works can be completely invalidated tomorrow. We must not be taking too long to realize that how we work today need to be revisited and improved upon.
Again, mindset is about changing and synchronizing the set of behaviors and values of people within an organization. This is a constant struggle for many organizations especially when you have many senior people who over time has developed a ‘know-it-all’ mentality through experience. Creating a mindset that will be willing to constantly learn is not easy and Hit Refresh explore the process as it happened in Microsoft.
If these concepts that were just mentioned excites you and you want to start to break down those walls of silos within your organization, Hit Refresh is your guide. For those of you who are in the struggle transforming their organization to face the ever-changing future, Nadella will comfort you and let you know you are not alone.