Satya Nadella: we reinvent productivity

An open letter from the head of Microsoft to all employees.

Author: Satya Nadella, Head of Microsoft
To: All employees
Date: July 10, 2014, 6:00 AM Pacific Time
Subject: beginning of 2015 fiscal year

Bold ambitions and our foundation

Team,
')
Beginning 2015 fiscal year, I want to thank you for all the contributions you made in the past year. I am proud of what we have all achieved together, despite significant changes in our business and organization. The feeling of this moment and the growing enthusiasm inspires me.

On that first day, when I took on a new role for myself, I said that our industry does not value traditions - it is driven only by innovation. And I also noted that in order to accelerate innovation, we must re-find ourselves — our unique core. We all need to understand and concentrate on the things that only Microsoft can give to others, how we can, once again, change the world. I believe that the work ahead will be more impudent than everything we created earlier.

I propose to hold July in the dialogue about our ambitious ambitions and new directions. Today, I would like to merge our strategic direction, the large-scale opportunities that I have been discussing over the past months, and the fundamental cultural changes necessary for success.
On July 22, we will announce our financial achievements for the last quarter, and then I will elaborate on what we will do in the next reporting year. During July, I will exchange views with our leading management team (Senior Leadership Team) about what technical and organizational changes we need. Later on MGX ( Microsoft Global Exchange conference July 22-25 in Atlanta, Georgia - approx. Transl.) We will gather together to discuss the solutions, and then bring them to life.

Our worldview

We live in the world of mobile devices and cloud services. Digital technologies have become ubiquitous, there are a lot of smart devices around us. Billions of sensors, screens, devices — in conference rooms, living rooms, cities, cars, phones, personal computers — form an extensive network with data streams that interweave in all directions in our lives. The power of electronic computing will manifest itself in almost everything around us, benefiting from any data arising from the interaction of people among themselves and people with machines. We are moving from the past, in which computers had little opportunity, to the present, where their power is almost unlimited, and where the truly valuable thing is increasingly human time and attention.

In this new world there will soon be more than 3 billion people whose devices have access to the Internet - from farmers in the far corners of the world with their smartphones, to professionals with dozens of devices connected to cloud services, and simplifying many aspects of work and life.

The combination of multiple devices and cloud services used to produce and consume information opens up incredible opportunities for us. Our customers and society as a whole expect us to maximize the role of technology while maintaining eternal values. We will create more natural interfaces for people to interact with machines. We will develop and launch secure platforms and infrastructure that are open to many industries. We will allow data to be freely used to achieve personal intellectual goals, while ensuring security and confidentiality. By doing all this, we will change the world to the maximum extent.

Our passion is to let people succeed in the world of mobile devices and cloud computing.

Our core

Microsoft was based on the confidence that technology will create opportunities for people and companies to express and fulfill their dreams, thanks to the penetration of personal computers at every table in every home.
Later we described ourselves as a company of “devices and services”. And despite the fact that devices and services helped us change, it was time to focus on a new unique strategy.

At its core, Microsoft is a company of productivity and platforms for the mobile and cloud world. We will rediscover efficiency to give everyone and organizations on the planet to do more and achieve more.

We think of the productivity of people, teams and business processes of entire organizations as a single, connected digital basis. We are also thinking about related platforms for individuals, IT, and developers. This comprehensive view allows us to solve more complex, full of details, pressing daily problems with every day more and more digital world. It also opens the door to unlimited growth opportunities - technology, expressed in% of GDP, will grow as digital technologies penetrate into all aspects of our lives.

We have a rich heritage and unique abilities in building technologies and platforms for increasing productivity. We help people do their work. Things like periodic reports, recipes, budgets. Things like chatting with family and friends all over the world (in vain did they buy Skype - approx. Transl.). Things like painting, poetry and the expression of ideas. Things like running Formula 1 or maintaining the life of a whole city. Such things as creating a game from the spark of your imagination. Things like helping to create a vaccine against HIV and technology that allows the dumb to communicate using voice.

At its core, Microsoft is a company of productivity and platforms for the mobile and cloud world. We will reinvent productivity technologies that allow each person and each company to do more and achieve more.
Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO, 07/10/2014

Microsoft has the unique ability to bring together devices, applications, documents, data, social networks, providing digital opportunities in such a way that people are at the center of all this and are able to do more and achieve more in an environment in which time becomes more and more rare .

Productivity for us goes far beyond documents, reports and slides. We will reinvent productivity for people plying the growing ocean of devices, applications, data and social services. networks. We will build solutions aimed at improving the effectiveness of groups, organizations and individuals by putting all of them at the center of digital opportunities. We will shift the concept of productivity from the simple production of something to the inspiration of people to new achievements. We will create tools that better predict people's needs, be more personal and useful. We will allow organizations to move from automated business processes to intelligent business processes. Every opportunity we create will take into account the rich environment of every single person at work and in life to help him organize and carry out his tasks in an easier way.

Productive people and organizations are the main driving force of individual self-realization and economic growth, and we must do everything we can to create the means and platforms to make it omnipresent. We want to think of each user from two sides - as a person using technology at work or in school, and also as a person for whom technology has become an integral part of his personal life. Such people strive to achieve their goals with the help of technology and need new cloud services, constantly using time management, scheduling, advanced self-expression, teamwork, meetings, search and research services, also demanding more control over security and privacy. Microsoft will penetrate all corners of life, focusing on the imminent approach of the number of devices connected to the Internet to 3 billion. And we will approach this task from the perspective of platforms. Microsoft developers and partners will make every effort, opening up new opportunities for each individual and each company on the planet.

At Microsoft, we will re-focus on re-implementing platforms for efficiency. We will focus entirely on building technology for "dual" use ( for work and for personal life - approx. Transl.). Our infrastructure of cloud OS, OS for devices, and also the equipment will be under construction around this main goal and form wide ecosystems. Microsoft will present digital opportunities for work and life in the most personal, sensible, open and inspiring way.

We will present new tools for the mobile and cloud world. The first and main goal of these tools will be productivity. As a result, people meet and interact more easily and efficiently. This will allow new ways to express ideas. People will experience the magic of transparent manufacturability with Delve and Cortana. They will be able to ask questions in natural language and receive answers using Power Q & A. We will destroy language barriers with the help of a translator for Skype. Applications will be designed for dual use and will be able to separate data into work and personal life, based on the individual characteristics of each. They will be designed so that anyone can easily find these applications, try and then buy them in a simple way. They will be designed so that when moving from device to device, the richness of the content and the breadth of services change, so that the person is always at the center, not the device. This transition is now in the active phase as the Office applications on the desktops are transformed into the Office 365 cloud platform. We will continue to promote and develop tools to increase the efficiency of teams and organizations, such as Skype, OneDrive, OneNote, Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint , Bing and Dynamics.

Gradually, all these tools will become increasingly connected with each other, more closely related to the context of application and more individual for the user. For example, now the Cortana application on my Windows Phone phone receives data from sensors on the highway and combines them with the schedule in my calendar to remind me to leave work at a time so that I can get to my daughter’s concert on time. In the future, Cortana will turn into an even more personal assistant who can take notes, set up meetings and understand whether my question about the weather today is choosing clothes, or whether it is a more difficult task of planning a family vacation. The opportunities provided by Microsoft will be unique, because they will be based on information from work and from personal life and allow users to control their personal data.

Cloud OS

Cloud OS is the greatest opportunity if we assume that we are working on it from the position of its own power. With Azure, we are one of the few hyper-scale cloud service providers. The combination of Windows Server and Azure makes us the only companies with public, private and hybrid cloud platforms available to modern business. We will increase the return on investment (ROI) of our customers on the IT infrastructure by combining their private data centers with our public cloud into one whole. We will allow our customers to use the cloud OS to speed up the development of their business and satisfy all their data and application needs.

Outside the server side of the cloud infrastructure, our cloud will also open up more opportunities for employees. For example, our new Enterprise Mobility Suite will allow IT companies to manage and maintain the security of Windows, iOS and Android devices used by their employees. We also allow enterprises to safely deploy SaaS applications (both our own and third-party vendors) and integrate them transparently with existing security and control infrastructure. We will continue to develop innovations in the field of higher-level services: management of directory services (Active Directory), storage media, analytics tools, machine learning tools, media services, web and mobile backend tools, developers productivity tools, and many others.

OS for consumer devices and own hardware platforms

Our Windows system and our own hardware will set the bar for productivity. Windows will provide the richest and most compatible digital possibilities for work and life on screens of all sizes, from phones, tablets, laptops, to televisions and giant 82-inch panels. We will ensure the primacy of Windows as the most secure, manageable and functional system for the needs of modern business and IT. Windows will provide ample opportunities for developers by enabling the launch of universal applications (Univesal Windows Applications) on any devices. Windows is evolving to use new I / O tools, such as speech, pen, gestures, and to incredibly increase the personal abilities of each.

Our own devices will expand digital work and life. For example, Surface Pro 3 is the most productive tablet in the world (we would like to believe - approx. Transl.) We will develop our own equipment to stimulate demand for the entire Windows ecosystem. This means that from time to time we will create new categories of devices, such as Surface. We will also create a market for Windows Phone, which is our goal for Nokia devices.

I also want to share thoughts about the XBox and its meaning for Microsoft. In the case of a large company, I consider it important to highlight the basis of business, but it is also important to make decisions in other business areas in which we can have fundamental influence and success. One of the largest digital life categories, measured by both time and money spent in it, is games. We are happy to have XBox to pursue this opportunity to follow in this direction with a unique and powerful innovation. Microsoft will continue to develop XBox and amaze gamers. XBox is one of the most revered global brands with a growing community and an increasing fan base. We also benefit from technology moving from our business to gamers to our business to improve efficiency: graphics and NUI (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_User_Interface), Skype speech recognition, Kinect camera technology, improvements Azure to simulate a GPU and more. Summing up, we will continue to develop XBox, in parallel creating additional value for Microsoft business.

While many now define mobility by device, Microsoft determines mobility by capability. We are now seeing the infancy of the mobile world. Over the next few years, we will see new changing categories and applications aimed at a variety of devices of all sizes.

Our culture

Our ambitions are big and our passion for changing our culture should be the same.

I truly believe that we spend so much time on this at work, not to increase our own importance and satisfaction. Together we have the opportunity to create technology that will change the entire planet.
Nothing can be excluded from consideration when we reflect on changing our culture to implement this main strategy. Organizations will change. Mergers and acquisitions will occur. The duties of the workers will change. New partnerships will be formed. Outdated traditions will be questioned. Our priorities will change. There will be new skills. New ideas will be heard. New employees will be hired. Processes will be simplified. And if you want to create together with Microsoft and change the world, you and your team should add a lot more changes to this list that you have enthusiasm to realize.

I am tasked with making Microsoft the best place to work smart, daring, ambitious people. Most importantly, we are completely committed to our customers. Loyalty to customers is everyone’s business. I expect our engineering teams to do things that our customers fall in love with. I see how our sales and marketing divisions demonstrate unique capabilities and value user convenience above all else.

To provide the capabilities our customers need in a mobile and cloudy world, we are streamlining our business processes, focusing primarily on customers, data, speed, and quality. We will become more efficient in terms of anticipating the needs and requirements of our customers and more flexible in terms of reaction to the information we receive from the market. We optimize the workflow and reduce the amount of time and effort required to do the job. You can target fewer processes with a more focused and measurable result. Fewer people will be involved in decision making and more emphasis will be placed on responsibility. You will also see investments in two new functions: applied science and software engineering. Each team of engineers will have relevant resources that will be engaged in measuring performance and analyzing market forecasts, which will allow us to develop innovations more effectively. Software engineering will evolve so that information moves faster with fewer barriers from the inception of a product or service to its implementation for customers.

We also know that these changes will require training, training, and experimentation. Over the next 6 months, you will see investments in our workforce, such as improved training, development, more opportunities to test new ideas and grow new projects. I also heard from many of you that changing jobs is a test. We will change the processes and attitudes so that you can move more transparently within the company to those roles where your contribution and personal growth will be maximum. All this will certainly require from you considerable responsibility and the need to do an excellent job for clients, but everyone understands that investing in training and development will bring great benefits to all.

To summarize, each team at Microsoft must find ways to work more simply, faster, and more efficiently. We will increase the fluidity of information and ideas by taking steps to make the organizational structure flatter and develop more transparent business processes. Changes in culture mean that we will work in new ways. Often people think that this will concern others, not them personally. In fact, all of us must take a new approach and start working together to make Microsoft better. Shortly before that, I asked each of the top management teams to simplify their activities, how they do their work, as much as possible. We will return to this issue in July.

A couple of months ago, at a meeting with investors, I quoted Nietzsche and said that we must "be brave in the face of reality." Moreover, we must be brave in the face of opportunity.

We have a clear goal to allow each person, each organization to do more and achieve more. We have the ability to reinvent performance solutions and platforms for the world of mobile devices and cloud computing. Now we need to build the right culture in order to be able to take advantage of these opportunities. And these cultural changes begin with each of you.

The words of Rainer Maria Rilke reflect this best of all:

this is how the future enters into us, to become us long before it acquires life
(Letters to the young poet , Borgeby-proud, Sweden, August 12, 1904)

We must have the courage to change as individuals. We have to ask ourselves, what idea can I bring to the world? What kind of spark can I find in myself? Whose individual life can I change? What kind of customer can I inspire? What new skills can I develop? What team can I build? What tradition can I destroy?

Having the courage to change personally, together we will change this company and use these opportunities for a long time.

Satya.

Translator's comment.

Congratulations to those who read to the end :) To be honest, the author’s idea turned out to be rather dry and some kind of official. Perhaps this is due to the focus of this message to some extent more on investors, and not on company employees. One feels the company's concentration on B2B, and not on B2C solutions, although Satya speaks of the “dualism” of future projects. As an end user, this text does not really inspire me; it looks like Microsoft’s apology for having done something wrong in recent years, but now they promise to correct it. Nevertheless, I believe that the words of great leaders always provide rich food for thought, so I did not regret a few hours of my time to translate this message.
PS Mistakes are welcome in PM.