MSFT Microsoft Corporation

By Shira Ovide 

For nearly all of Microsoft Corp.'s first 40 years, the company was defined by two excitable, aggressive bosses: Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. The company's current leader, Satya Nadella, in many ways couldn't be more different.

Mr. Nadella, 48 years old, is more likely to quote German philosopher Friedrich Nietzschethan to scream and shout like his predecessors. His mission is markedly different, too: attempting to make Microsoft more innovative, a change that critics say was long overdue at a company that tended to fall behind in emerging technology areas.

Messrs. Gates and Ballmer built a $350 billion software empire on the popularity of Windows, the personal-computer operating system that for years was the default interface of office life. Yet the primacy of Microsoft's Office software--with its built-in Outlook email, Word for writing documents, and Excel spreadsheets--is no longer a sure thing. Rival tools for office tasks have arrived, include file-sharing service Dropbox Inc., Apple Inc.'s iPhones, and workplace versions of Google Inc.'s Gmail and Docs, many of them free.

Thus Mr. Nadella is intent on talking about the evolution of Office, a program that first started appearing in 1989. These days, there is the cloud-based subscription variant known as Office 365. The latest downloadable version of Office, released last week, adopts features familiar to users of Google Apps for Work, which allow colleagues to work together on the same document or digital presentation.

The idea, says Mr. Nadella, is to make Office work seamlessly with non-Microsoft workplace technologies as well as other Microsoft.

In an interview, Mr. Nadella proved an unabashed supporter of the home team, gently prodding a reporter to use Microsoft's digital note-taking app. The India-born executive also talked of seeing Microsoft as an outsider, struggling to be a present parent in the smartphone age, and the importance of nonbusiness reading.

Edited excerpts:

WSJ: Technologies like Dropbox and GoToMeeting have enabled new ways of working in the last few years, but few of those technologies came from Microsoft. What does that mean?

Mr. Nadella: There has always been competition. The only way to deal with it is to keep innovating, and that's what we do.

WSJ: Consumers are accustomed to apps and browsers getting updated all the time. And yet we're talking about the next version of 25-year-old Microsoft Office. Does that seem old-fashioned?

Mr. Nadella: There's nothing old-fashioned about it. The way Office gets updated if you're an Office 365 subscriber, is just like going to an app store. It just updates for you. We're very, very clear we're living in the future, except that we also have a lot of people who may want [to download and install Office on their computers].

WSJ: In just a few years, you went from heading research-and-development for the Bing search engine to becoming CEO of the company. How did you rise so rapidly?

Mr. Nadella: I don't know I can say I've reflected a lot on what that journey has meant to me or what lessons can be learned by me and others. The thing that has helped me the most as I took this job, though, is the fact that I've worked in a variety of jobs in a variety of contexts at Microsoft. Some where we already had achieved a tremendous amount of success, [and some] in places where we had to struggle through. That combination always helps. Even if I look at how I think about the leadership team here, people who have had that kind of experience I think are the ones who are the most successful.

WSJ: At your first public event as CEO, you said you sought to see Microsoft as an outsider would. How did you give yourself a fresh perspective on this company where you've worked for 23 years?

Mr. Nadella: I've always had more of that insider-who-has-that-outsider sensibility. Insularity mostly breeds with more success. That's something that I have obviously tried to do much more consciously as a CEO.

WSJ: You meet every Friday for four hours with your senior leadership team. Why?

Mr. Nadella: Once a month we have an eight-hour meeting, and the other three weeks we have a four-hour meeting. The senior leadership team of any company [has] got to stay on the same page. Any organization can easily devolve into a bunch of silos.

WSJ: How do you ensure you're getting honest feedback?

Mr. Nadella: Anyone should be able to tell me anything. That's the culture we strive for. I actively spend a lot of time with my leadership team, but I also spend a lot of time with the grass-roots employees. I go visit people in their offices. Sometimes unannounced...you can ask a few questions and know what's happening.

WSJ: You have a consuming job, and family is important to you. What do you do to make time for your family?

Mr. Nadella: First, I must admit that it's a struggle. I think of it as finding some harmony between work and life. Even if it's just small things. Like if I take my daughter to a lacrosse game, how much time am I on the phone versus actually watching her lacrosse game? I strive for the few moments that I'm doing something with them that I'm actually present. They appreciate it, and I appreciate it.

When we had our first son there was a period of time I just needed to be out because of some medical issues and so on. Microsoft let me have that time. That perhaps more than anything else brought the most loyalty from me as a 28- [or] 29-year-old first-time father. For a person like me who's setting policies now, I reflect back on it.

The only rule I have is [make] time to actually read outside of work. Like T.S. Eliot. That I think is the only way to keep yourself fresh.

Subscribe to WSJ: http://online.wsj.com?mod=djnwires

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 29, 2015 16:16 ET (20:16 GMT)

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT)
Historical Stock Chart
From Mar 2024 to Apr 2024

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT)
Historical Stock Chart
From Apr 2023 to Apr 2024