Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Satcha, we are so excited to have you today, as you can see. You've said that Microsoft's mission is not to be cool, it's to make others cool. But Bob Dylan is playing across campus today, and you sold out faster than him, so. We certainly think Microsoft is cool. Really though, we are so grateful to you for making the time to be with us, and we have a lot to cover, but I thought we could start with your childhood in India. You've said that your father never met a test, he didn't ace, while your mother was the opposite of a Tiger Mum. I love that contrast, and I'm curious how their different life philosophies shaped you.
First of all, thank you so much for having me here, it's great to be at the GSB, and Bob Dylan was my idol, so time's awesome changing. It's interesting, in fact, my father passed away just last month, and I've been reflecting quite a bit on what both my parents have meant to me, and my father was a Marxist economist and a civil servant, and he had a definitive point of view on what life was all about, and the struggle of life, and he's right, I mean, the guy always used to look at my marks, my scorecards, and used to be amazed that somebody could be that bad, and. Luckily enough, I think in some sense, he gave me in spite of all of that. A lot of confidence, because to him, he felt like, look, it's a marathon, you'll catch up, this is not that hard, and my mother was exactly the opposite, of course, all the only questions she would ever ask me, are you happy? And I would say, what the heck does that mean? When you're reading my scorecard, I don't know whether I should be happy or not. But again, the two of them, I think, when I look back, growing up in Hyderabad in India in the late 70s, early 80s, interestingly enough, there are three or four of us, who now suddenly have become CEOs from the same high school in this, you know, at that time, what was off the grid place, I think it was that ability to think, that ability to pursue your own passions, and have enough confidence as well as some humility. As sort of when I look back, perhaps the biggest drivers of what turned out to be a reasonable set of things.
Absolutely, yeah, it's really clear how much your parents influenced you, and another foundational influence for you was sports. Now, my fellow international classmates and I were mystified daily by American sports references. So we're very happy to talk about cricket. Yeah. You love cricket and you dreamt of playing professionally. What lessons did you take from the pitch?
Well, I mean, you know, all of us here in South Asian are obsessed with that sport, and you know, it's sort of. In fact, that's right. I mean, that was what I was pretty much all bound up in, all through my high school, into college. And when I look back, you know, I think all sport teaches you a lot. And especially at least I feel team sport, I think, has a huge impact on how you think about leadership. I'll never forget this one particular incident that I've been subsequently written about. There was this guy who was my school captain who went on to do pretty well in the context of Indian cricket. I was bowling trash that day. And he took over from me, got a wicket, which is a breakthrough. But then he gave me the ball back. And then I went on to have perhaps the best bowling spell I've ever had in my life. And I've always reflected as to why he did he do that. And then, in fact, much later on in life, I went back and asked him even. And so at least the way I surmised it was a leadership decision he made. Saying, look, I recognize that this guy, he had recognized the importance of not breaking my confidence. And I should look, well, that's a pretty enlightened decision for a high school leader, you know, captain of a cricket team to make. And a lot of leadership lessons is that, right? Which is you've got to make hard calls on, say, performance. But also, you've got to be able to sort of understand that you need your team. And it's not like everybody's going to have a good day all the time. And that subtle distinction and that judgment, right? Which is one of the things that I feel, which is the most understated part of leadership, is judgment. And it's so important. And that judgment comes by you exercising this muscle around passing judgment and learning from it. And I thought that's one of the lessons I learned. He was building your confidence in a work by making it.
So you didn't end up playing professional cricket. And here I am. But you didn't make your way to the US. And soon after you started your own family. And in reading your book, something that really moved me was how much you talk about your family. And the role they've played bringing empathy into your life. Could you share with us how being a parent has shaped you?
Yeah, I mean, it's a very big part in part of what is perhaps shaped my worldview. And for both my wife and me, both my wife and I grew up together. We went to the same schools. And we were the only children of our parents. So when we were both late in our late 20s, when our first son was about to be born, we were very excited.
The household was all about, you know, my wife was an architect. And so she was practicing at that time. And so my only concern was when will I go back to school? And I'll go back to work and how are we going to think about the baby's daycare and what have you? And Lauren, behold, one night, you know, there was some complications. And our son Zane was born because of some complications he now has cerebral palsy. He's got, he has quadriplegia and is locked in.
And I would say for the first, maybe as many as five years, I struggled with it primarily because I felt that all these plans that I had for what our life was going to be like had taken a real turn. And then I watched Anu go up and down 520 in Seattle, taking him to every therapy possible speech, occupational. And then I was just watching it and still moaning my own sort of whatever issues. But then he dawned on me that nothing actually happened to me. Something had happened to my son and that I needed to as a father step up and do my duty.
In other words, it is the harsh but real lesson around being able to see the world through the eyes of my son. That's what empathy is all about. And I think that's what it is. I mean, it's innate in us all as humans. I think empathy is something that we are all very capable of. Life teaches us that. And in small ways and in tough ways.
Like I remember even the last interview by the last interviewer when I was interviewing at Microsoft was also a life changing moment for me. So I went through this interview. It was all caught on screen at that time. And so this guy sort of says, hey, here's a question for you. You're at the crossroads, a baby falls and is crying. What will you do? And I say, wow, this is some search algorithm I didn't learn.
It must be some variant of some traveling salesman problem or something. And I sort of really thought about it for a few minutes. I'll go to the phone booth and call 911. This is pretty smart phone. And so he gets up. He squirts me out and he says, you know what? You need to develop some empathy because when a baby falls, you pick them up and hug them first before you call. And I thought that's it. I'm definitely not going to get this job.
And lo and behold, I did get the job. But nevertheless, I mean, I really think that that's so core. And some people say, well, what does that have to do with sort of business? Or what does it have to do with work? And I believe it has everything to do with work.
You know, I believe if you sort of say innovation is all about meeting unmet unarticulated needs of customers. Where is that source of your ability to get in touch with that unmet unarticulated need going to come from? Your ability to in some sense be able to listen between the lines to be able to extrapolate. And that's to me deep sense of empathy, right? So people talk about design thinking. I think design thinking is empathy.
And so therefore I do believe that life teaches you empathy. And you know, empathy is the source to success in any innovative agenda you have. It's inspiring to hear you say that you think empathy is innate when we're living in a world where sometimes it feels like empathy is on the decline. So I think your point around empathy is really well taken.
It's a great question because in fact, you know, it is such a big word. And it is hard. In fact, even recently at Microsoft, we realized that it's important for us to even understand what are the necessary conditions to even develop empathy. So one of the words we have developed, you know, we put into our sort of parlance is respect. For example, if you don't start with from a place of having some respect for the other person's views, where they come from, their complete history, it's very hard to develop empathy. So therefore I think you're absolutely right to say, you know, before you think about some of these higher level things, you have to sort of even question what are the basics that we need to get right. And that's become so core to your leadership at Microsoft.
So if we turn now to Microsoft, before you were CEO, you took this job leading Microsoft's first real cloud business. And Steve Barmer apparently told you this might be your last job at Microsoft because if you fail, there's no parachute. That feels like a lot of pressure. Why did you make that jump? You know, Steve, who went to school here, had many, he just went for one year from what I understand.
This is the funniest thing I should tell you. I guess the other guy who went to school here was Mukesh Ambani. So I believe one day Steve Barmer was introducing Mukesh in Bombay. And he joked that both of us dropped out of GSB except that Mukesh had never told anybody that he had dropped out of GSB. So there was a real scandal.
And so Steve, you know, wanted us to really take this new business area, which was our online business. In fact, Susan was here and I worked on it for a long time as well. And he felt that look, this is a place where we needed to make progress. And Steve had this very clear sense. So what it means to succeed. And his point was you're going to go learn a lot.
And of course, I'll fire you if you don't do a good job with it. And it is sort of a way for him to perhaps communicate both why he is the CEO cared about this business. And at the same time, his expectations. But I must say that particular tour of duty has been the most influential in how I've sort of thought about whether it's distributed computing at its core, whether it's the economic models that are going to be emergent. And that has been very, very helpful doing different things inside the company.
It has helped me grow to run the company eventually. So I actually appreciate Steve both giving me that opportunity and more importantly giving me the message that look at the end of the day its performance that matters. Did you know at the time that that decision was putting you on a path to one day becoming the CEO? No way.
Most people ask me this, which is like, hey, did you have a sense that you'll become CEO? No. First of all, none of us grew up even. To us, especially having grown up in Microsoft, I don't think I even thought of a Microsoft where Bill and Steve were not actively engaged. And it's just not even in the realm of possibility.
The thing though, I would say especially, you know, business school graduates are an ambitious lot and you're all sort of saying, when am I going to be my CEO? My only advice there would be, you know, it's like don't wait for your next job to do your best work. That I think is the crux of it, which is if you think about every job you get as the most important job and as the thing that is perhaps your last job, but you gave it all. And of course, you know, from there, a lot of things will happen.
And that's at least how I, it was not like the job that I had before becoming CEO, I somehow thought was just a stop on the way to something else. I actually thought that that was a fantastic job until, you know, I got the next job. And that next job was ultimately to become the CEO of Microsoft.
And when you took that job, you faced some high expectations. Microsoft is struggling. You're following, as you mentioned, Bill Gates, Steve Barmer. And many people thought that this CEO should come from outside. So what did you draw on in that moment?
Yeah, I mean, look, I'm a consummate insider. I've grown up at Microsoft now 28 years. And I also recognized your point that I was taking over from Steve and Bill and Steve, even though it was not a founder for, he had found a status in the company. Bill and Steve built the company, Bill and Paul founded the company.
And the one thing that perhaps I was more grounded having worked with them is as a non founder CEO, I needed to make explicit. Some of the things that I think founder CEOs can take for granted because founder CEOs can carry just because of who they are and what they mean to the organization a lot. And telegraph that very broadly and have followership.
Whereas I described myself as a mere mortal CEO, I felt I needed that sense of purpose to be deeply rekindled is something that I, you know, reinforced and culture. Both sort of these two pillars of sense of purpose and culture needed to become much more explicit.
For example, when I joined Microsoft in 92, we used to talk about our mission is putting a PC in every home and every desk. It was pretty inspiring, right? I mean, you could even do an Excel spreadsheet, P times queue. It was easy to compute. And, except by the late 90s, we had more or less achieved that, at least in the developed world.
举个例子,当我在92年加入微软时,我们曾谈论过我们的使命是让每个家庭和每个桌子上都有一台电脑。这非常鼓舞人心,对吧?我的意思是,你甚至可以做一个 Excel 电子表格, P 乘以队列,这很容易计算。至少在发达国家,到了90年代末,我们已经基本实现了这一目标。
And since then, we had the struggle of what's next. And I felt like I needed to sort of go back in fact to the very origin of the company, right? I mean, Microsoft got started when we built or Paul and Bill built the basic interpretor for the Altair. And I believe that everything that needs to be known about Microsoft in 2019 can be traced back to our origin, which is we build technology so that others can build more technology, right?
I felt like we were doing things out of envy and others we needed to get back to what we are core identities, right? Especially in 2019, where every company is a software company around the world, we can just basically be a software platform and tools provider and have a good business. And so I felt let's be proud of who we are. Of course, we got to express it differently. And then, you know, really reinforce that. That's why we talk about our mission around empowering people and organizations.
The other piece though is we had to work on our culture. You know, I distinctly remember, I guess it was 98 when we first became the largest market cap company in the world. And many of us, you know, were lucky enough to participate on that wave of growth. But I remember that day when we walked around, you could see in the campus, people thought, wow, we must be God's gifts to mankind. Right? We're so smart. We're so good. Look at us. And except it was not the case. I mean, the case was, you know, it's a temporal thing and it only matters.
What matters is your ability to learn, grow, be grounded in the realities and, you know, and our customers and what have you. And so that's why I wanted a culture that stood for that learning organization. And in fact, my wife had introduced me to a book by a Stanford professor, Carol Dweck, which I'd read mindset many years before I became CEO, you know, was huge influence in our household as it relates to our own children's education.
But quite frankly, it was a great education for me because when I read that book, I realized that that that notion of growth mindset applies to individuals like me. It applies to companies like Microsoft. So we took that meme of growth mindset and said, look, let's not be no adults. Let's be learned all. And it's been a very helpful part of I would say our journey around this. What is a cultural meme that we can even make first class that we can have a real dialogue on?
Absolutely. And you talk a lot about this cultural shift. And in looking back at that over the last five years, what was the most difficult part to change? You instilled growth mindset. You did all of these things. But what were the hardest for it blocks? Look, I think it's always, it's a challenge. It's one thing to say growth mindset because sometimes people will come to me and say that Microsoft, Satya, we found the 10 people who don't have a growth mindset. The point about that, it's not about going looking for 10 people. It's about me being comfortable with confronting my own fixed mindset each day. And that's the hard part of it.
When you say you're a learning organization and you say, we've learned that here are the 10 people who have not learned, then that's a problem. And I think that's the reality of it. How do you bring about long-term change? I'll say one other thing. One of the reasons why I feel at least we have some momentum. I'm very careful not to sort of paint this as some destination we will reach or have reached for sure. It's going to be something that every day we're going to have to confront our fixed mindset.
We're always going to be imperfect. There is going to be a gap between what is our espoused sort of culture and what is the lived experience. The question is, are we working to bridge that gap? And it's very uncomfortable, especially in business where everything is graded by how close to perfection are you. To say, let's be imperfect and celebrate imperfection is just a hard thing. And that's why leadership at the top setting the tone, walking the walk, I think is the hard part.
But that's the real challenge of being able to implement change at scale. You want to set this culture of a growth mindset where people can take risks and make mistakes and learn from them. You want to walk the walk the walk.
When have you had to lead by example on this front? Well, I mean, every day I would say. But in some sense, the decision one makes, for me, the ability to sort of take even take diversity and inclusion. Saying the word, saying we're going to make progress is one thing. And then to recognize that progress has to be something that really has to come from one's own first change in behavior.
And take the everyday experience of the senior leadership team meeting itself. It's an interesting thing. Every time I question myself on everything that we talk about as what we espouse that is more broadly applicable across the company, how much of it is represented in the behaviors starting with me of our own senior leadership team. We have some very amazing women who are part of our leadership team are they participating like anybody else.
And in fact, am I allowing for them to be able to really make sure that we are listening to them, they are able to feel like they're driving the company. And starting with that type of sensibility, which by the way is not constant, but at least I'll be pushing is sort of the way I think I remind myself of how important you're point about it sort of putting it everyday practice.
We have three things that are the cultural pillars for us. One is diversity and inclusion. The other one is customer obsession. And then the other one is to bring the company together as one company as opposed to you know, you know, fragment of set of PNLs. All three of these are just super hard. Easy to say, but require everyday practice starting with me.
And I think diversity and inclusion is an interesting one because it's a topic that can invoke a lot of defensiveness. So to apply a growth mindset to that area is particularly powerful. You know, for example, the thing that we have recognized is you have to pull media to do a lot of things here. For example, we even change the compensation of our senior leaders starting even mine to ensure that we take this as a huge priority. You could say, well, you know, is the compensation change the real thing of you know, I'm not saying it's the only thing that needs to change, but it's an important thing.
I myself had probably perhaps not recognized that measuring things, having a real metric around it and then compensating is actually is a good sort of start on a lot of fronts. And so, but the thing that we have come to realize is every intern class that joins Microsoft every year is more diverse than the previous one. But then look around and say, well, where's that diversity? You know, in the company. And so that means the real currency of a culture is inclusiveness. And that I think is the core job of what leaders do and what is the everyday experience of, you know, what happens at Microsoft.
Interestingly enough, I've also come to recognize that that first level manager has probably the most influence on what happens. And so I distinctly remember as a lead at Microsoft with five people working for me, who all were thinking, why is this guy leading us? Right? I mean, it's always the case because the first level job is the hardest job because there are five people who are also just recent graduates who are just sort of looking at you and saying, I can do what you do. And then you have a boss who's asking you to do many things.
And so it's sort of real pressure cooker in the sense you sort of really have to do a lot. But that's when your attitude, your nurturing of that five people who are working for you around inclusiveness will matter a lot. So one of the things that we're doubling down is, are we truly supporting managers, you know, at all levels to be able to sort of in fact support their team so that they can bring the best out of them and then have them feel included as part of the company.
So we've talked a lot about culture. Let's shift and talk a bit about strategy and particularly the cloud because today we sort of take the cloud for granted. But when you took over, it was still far from a sure thing. And you made this bold bet cementing Microsoft's strategy in the cloud. How did you rally others around that vision when many were convinced it wouldn't work?
我们已经谈了很多关于文化的问题。现在我们换一下话题,讨论一下策略,特别是云计算,因为今天我们似乎认为云计算理所当然。但是当你接手时,云计算离成功还有很长的路要走。你做了这个大胆的赌注,巩固了 Microsoft 在云计算领域的战略地位。在很多人认为这不会成功的情况下,你是如何团结其他人共同实现这个愿景的?
I mean, you know, our challenge with the cloud was very, very successful business in what was the client server era. And sort of you look at any PNL that says, oh, here is a new business. By the way, it's got gross margins that are sort of one fourth of this gross margins of the current business. Oh, and it'll be good. It's hard to sort of look at those kind of transitions because all rationality says that, you know, you should avoid it as much as possible. And except in tech in particular in many other businesses, these transitions are secular.
They're inevitable. And so the question is, you know, how do you make that transition? And that's where I must say Steve, when he was a CEO, was the one who gave me permission. And the decision he made was, look, we've got to go after this. And one of the things that I've realized is leaders in many of you in your careers are going to make these kinds of decisions.
You, we're all about solving these over constrained problem, right? I mean, classic over constrained problem is, oh, you have a huge profit margin. And now you've got to go build a new business that sort of sort of replaces this business. And by the way, you should have the same gross profit margin. And guess what? It's not possible. So someone somewhere has to remove some constraint. Who does it? Leaders do it. And you remove the constraint called gross margin.
He said, go win this market. And that's what was then made it possible for us to do all those things that have now gotten us to the other side. But to me, I've learned a lot from that. So in fact, if anything, I feel like as a leader, sometimes, you know, you get to speak from both sides of the mouth, right? I need growth and I need profit. In many cases, your job as leaders is to, in fact, unconstrained. Take on the risk. In fact, in the first multiple years, Amy Hood, who's my CFO and myself, we said, look, let us take on the risk. And then actually metric a lot of our leaders more on customer satisfaction usage versus profit, revenue, even. And I think that that's sort of the type of decision making one needs in order to make these harsh transitions. And when you look back and you look at all that you've done on culture and strategy and making this bold bet, are you able to tell which one moved the needle more for Microsoft's renewal?
I fundamentally believe that, you know, strategies or markets will always be coming and going. There'll be lots of changes. I'm a fundamental believer in that sense of purpose and culture as the two pillars that are necessary in order to get a lot of other things right. Of course, if you don't get your strategy right or your ability to sort of ride a particular wave of innovation, and especially in tech, it's pretty harsh, right? I mean, it's very hard to recover. But that said, though, the question is, what is it that will give you the best probability of even catching those? And to me, that sense of purpose, which I think is a reflection of what you're innately good at as an organization, right? It's comparative advantage, except it's codified in that identity. And culture is what allows you to express that identity with new opportunity.
I think many of us in this room want to use our careers to create impact at scale, and you have committed almost 30 years to Microsoft, which seems unfathomable to many of us. How do you think about. Flies, by the way. How do you think about entrepreneurship and this idea for those among us who maybe want to work in large organizations to create change in the world? What advice would you have? I mean, I think that all organizations, smaller large, all have amazing opportunities, but I'll make the case for a large organization, and especially in organizations like Microsoft.
I mean, think about it. If you want to have impact at scale, in fact, one of the reasons. There are two things. When I'm brand recruiter at a college, I'm always telling people, like, hey, look, if you want to be cool, go join somebody else, but if you want to make others cool, join Microsoft. And I say that because I believe that, you know, which other organization will be able to have, you know, 190 plus countries, the impact on small business productivity, public sector efficiency, multi-nationals in any part of the world, and their competitiveness globally, health outcomes, education outcomes. This is scale at, you know, enormous rate.
And so therefore, if you want, join a company like this, but then you have to have the following, I would say, sensibility. Guess what? You got to work with others. In other words, that's, I think, a key important skill. Like, what does it mean? I mean, you do a lot of that. Many of you have got a lot of work experience even before coming to business school. But fundamentally, to do anything useful and big and at scale, it's all about teams. Teams inside or teams outside. That's what it takes.
And the second thing that you also need is to realize that, you know, a lot of people talk about the matrix and the complexity of large organizations. That's, again, the case. I mean, even for small companies, you just have a different type of matrix. You'll have a VC, you'll have a board, you'll have customers. So you're never going to escape working with people. You're never going to escape bringing multiple constituents together. And I think that you should pick whether whatever size of organization recognize that scale only comes because you're being able to bring many constituents together.
You say that we can never escape working with people, which brings me to my next section on AI. You are a big proponent of AI. And you believe that AI will be good for humankind. And you argue that in an AI future, human traits, like empathy and creativity, will be more important than ever. And yet, in some ways, technology has made us less connected. So how do you see AI augmenting humanity rather than detracting from it?
First of all, I'm excited. I'm going to spend some time with your own work around this human-centered AI and the work you're doing there. I think it's so important.
Here's how I come at it. First, before we get into some of the unintended consequences of AI, one of the areas that I am deeply involved in is accessibility. I mean, think about what AI has done to people who need the most help. Say if you have ALS, now with IGaze, you can type and communicate. If you have visual impairment of any sorts, you can interpret the world by using the latest in computer vision. If you have dyslexia, be using some machine reading and comprehension techniques. You can start teaching a middle school kid how to read, because reading then leads to their participation in our economy. So I would first say some AI and say AI capabilities are helping more of us participate fully in our societies and in our economies.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't be clearied about the consequences of AI. The first one is what are the ethics of AI? We as, in fact, creators of these platforms and tools have to even, before we even get to sort of the big topic of ethics, improve the state of the art of the software engineering around AI so that things like bias and so on are being dealt with. There's this fantastic line I love of RealCase, which is he talks about how the future enters in you and transforms itself in you before it becomes real. So we are creating AI. It's humans who are creating AI. So we get to shape what the craft of creation of AI looks like, how we design systems where the human is in loop. We get to decide that as a society even, what we are comfortable with and not comfortable with.
So I don't want to abdicate all of that and feel like this is just going to happen outside of our control. So that's at least how I think about it and also on the employment side. I do believe that, for example, I mean, you know, this, is it zero sum? I don't think that is the case. I think that there will be more jobs. The question is, how do we really use, in fact, all of the sort of levers we have, economic and social to skill people for the jobs that are going to be there and many of those skills might be different types of skills than the ones that are valued today. For example, there's no reason why our society can't have wage support for teachers in a different way in a world where there's a lot of abundance of AI doing a lot of other things for us or artists or what have you. Therefore, I think we will come up with mechanisms and, you know, I hope that we have, you know, in fact, more than hope, I feel that we shouldn't abdicate our responsibility to control our own future that I think we all want to live in.
And given Microsoft's vision to democratize AI, you know, there are concerns about what might happen if those tools get into the wrong hands. And you've just mentioned not to abdicate that sort of responsibility. So how do you think about who to partner with in light of those concerns? Right. I mean, there's multiple things. So what is it that we ourselves will do, in some sense, have some core principles that define what we do and then who we work with. You know, take facial recognition that's quickly becoming the topic which I think is going to even have regulatory frameworks around it in the state of Washington. We participated even in creation of that regulation.
So I think that first before we, you know, even the regulation is in place, we have guidelines on what we think is the right use because the maturity of the models really make it possible, you know, only sensible to use it in certain use cases and not in others. And then being clear about it and then ensuring that that's what we do. And then working, knowing that there will be like this food safety, there should be AI safety. I mean, there will be regulation. And we should be okay with it. In fact, if anything, our practices and our data of what's good, what's not, what's the state of technology should inform that regulation.
So we have the topic of regulation and today it seems that relationships between regulators and many large tech companies are fraught. In its early days, Microsoft may have fought its own battles, but today Microsoft is leading with openness. And so what's your advice for the aspiring tech leaders here on balancing that pressure to grow as a company with your responsibility to society? That's an interesting question. Yes, here's what I at least learned. In fact, Brad Smith, who is another colleague of mine who recently wrote a book called Tools and Reppens. He reflects because he was very much part. He worked with Bill. He worked with Steve. And now he works with me very much part of our own struggle.
I would say the one thing that we at least I took away from that time is when there is, I would say a lot of criticism of whatever it is that you're doing. I think it's appropriate for us to look in the mirror and perhaps learn about what it is that we're being criticized about. And perhaps there are changes that we need to actually bring about. So I would say scrutiny of large organizations is absolutely something that is going to only happen.
And I think large organizations should welcome it. And we all can learn from it. And the core though, especially in technology business, we collectively as an industry have to just mature and mature at a very fast rate because the impact of digital technology in our lives and in our society is so deep now that for us to assume that we're just going to have unfettered access to all parts without thinking about the unintended consequences of this technology are long gone. And so therefore for us as an industry, for us as a company to both recognize the opportunity of these technologies and the responsibilities whether it's in security, whether it's in privacy, whether it's in AI and ethics, I think is going to be central.
And these are not going to be terms of competition even. I think this is where the industry at scale has to get a lot better. And I think that that moment is upon us and I do see positive change. But it is definitely a time for self-reflection and change. So I want to circle back to your own leadership style and values. And what strikes me is that you seem to combine this sense of self and ability to stay true to your leadership style. You even have a story of Steve Barma telling you it's too late to be different.
With on the other hand, this real belief in a growth mindset. And I think for many of us at the GSB, there's this question of how do you stay true to your own style while still knowing when and how to grow in the right direction. And so how do you think about those two things?
I mean, yeah, I mean, I think the ability to understand yourself is actually it's a lifetimes journey, right? It's a journey of your lifetime to really unpack who you are and what you're good at, what makes you take, what are your passions? Is something that what makes you happy? The question that my mother asked me all the time and in fact the more the older I get, the clearer I am in understanding even what she was asking. And then to be able to understand others, that's also another journey of a lifetime, right?
Which is you sort of feel like you understand what others are saying. You understand where they're coming from. I think that's really what is going to perhaps help you with both be true to yourself, your identity, what makes you take, what makes you happy. While knowing that ultimately I think a lot of that satisfaction you get is because of your ability to empathize the ability, it could be your family, it could be your workplace. That's the other thing that I've come to realize it can be transactional at work.
I will tell you there was this gentleman and another GSB grad whom I worked for, Doug Burgham, who's actually the governor of North Dakota nowadays. But there was this time, you know, in my mid 30s, he said something to me which just had a profound impact. He said, look, you're going to work at Microsoft more time than you were going to even spend with your kids. And I said, oh wow, that sounds pretty harsh. And yet it is true. And his main point was you better think about work having deeper meaning than being transactional. And as I've thought about that, the only way it's not going to be transactional is when you relate to people you work with.
And that's what you'll remember. The projects you worked on, the technologies will all be passé in time. But the people, what you did, how you behave, what was your, you know, I take great pride in these people who might have mentored or go on to do great things. That's the relationship that I think you seek out while being truly yourself and what makes you happy. And you mentioned humility earlier and how important it is to you. And you have this quote that says when everyone is celebrating you is when you should be most scared.
And I think it's safe to say that people are celebrating Microsoft's renewal. So how do you keep yourself and your teams grounded among this success? That's a great question. You know, there's this book I recently read by David Brooks called The Second Mountain. It's a interesting book because he talks about it mostly in the context of us.
You know, there's that first mountain, which is what perhaps many of you as graduates of GSB are going to be on and you're going to seek excellence and success in the professional career. And then you're eventually going to get to that second mountain and then you're going to sort of in his words relate to the world and community and what have you. And I feel that that's really what's there for Microsoft. The way, you know, having gotten to whatever high market cap in 98.
Now for us, it's more not our market cap, but what is our market cap leading to to your point, it's if you celebrate our success, but real, but fundamentally realize if you sort of go back to our mission and our business model, right? It's not even a sense of mission and purpose that somehow abstracted away from what's core driving our business model. We need to see success all around us. That's it. And so if we celebrate that small business in Kenya or that large multinational in Sweden or that public sector company in Indonesia or in Vietnam, that's what's going to help us. Be grounded and be successful. And so that invoking of that every day sense of purpose is what I think is going to help us the most. Thank you, Sacha. And I think on that note, we will turn it over to some questions from the audience.
Hi, my name is Tara Carrad-Pierre and I'm a first year MBA student and I'm asking this question in conjunction with my classmate Jeff Kruger who unfortunately couldn't be here, but we're both interested. You've mentioned that at Microsoft, you've made a principal decision that you're not going to withhold technologies from institutions that have been elected in democracies to protect the freedoms we enjoy. This position, as you probably know, stands in contrast to a number of your peer tech companies here in the Valley. Can you elaborate on your decision framework as CEO to have Microsoft pursue US Department of Defense contracts like the Jedi Cloud Project at DOD?
Well, first of all, you know, one of the things that we're engaged in is with deep respect for all opinions that people may have on things that we should be concerned about. But on this one, we've been very clear from day one on the statement you read out, which is I feel that I have great belief in our democratic institutions and our democratic process. And big fears is that somehow CEOs or corporations try and substitute for what I think in the long run is the most important thing for us, which is our democracy to work as design.
And in this case, if we don't like what our government does, we have this one great opportunity, which is we get to change, we get to vote. We get to even take principal stance against our government if we do think that that is something that we want to fight for. And in fact, Microsoft, whether it's on the previous administration or this administration, we've had cases, you know, the warrant case or on privacy is something that we were able to go fight. And then ultimately through the Cloud Act, bring about change, which was a bipartisan legislation, which I feel is a good step in the direction of having privacy and shrine in a legislative sort of set of processes.
So that's how I look at it. I don't see how withholding technology from, as I said, the institutions that we have elected that are subject to civil in control ultimately to protect the freedoms we enjoy is going to help. That doesn't mean we shouldn't have ethical principles, we shouldn't advocate for ethical principles. And in fact, these institutions that we're talking about have perhaps a more of a history around these ethical principles as well. And so for us to rely on that and reinforce that, I think would be important.
Hi, I'm Prishan. I'm from Hyderabad. The second year MBA student. So my question is today, if you were a 20 year old engineering graduate from India, would you stay back in India and work in the tech and startup ecosystem or would you come to the US and why? And if you come to the US, how can we all think of contributing back to our home country?
Yeah, I know it. It's an interesting one. I mean, I really literally growing up, never thought I'd ever go outside of Hyderabad. I would say very self-satisfying sort of goals in life. I wanted to play cricket and work for a bank. And things changed.
Look, I feel that the opportunity, whether it's in India or rest of Asia or in Africa, one of the we just created two development centers in Africa, both on the west and the east side of, you know, close to Africa. There is great opportunity. There's great talent. I think digital technology in particular is a real democratizing force.
We were talking even backstage about how even when the rest of the infrastructure is challenged, there is very novel ways for digital technology to overcome some of those things because of the most malleable nature of software in some sense. I think there's opportunity everywhere in the world. But at the same time, for you to come here, learn from, you know, learn in a place like the GSB and be inspired and go back is an opportunity I would take if that sort of came about.
But at the same time, it doesn't mean that that's the only opportunity ahead to have impact. You know, it's interesting. You bring up because globalization, let's face it, is going through a little bit of a challenging face. And I think that it's deserved in some sense because the globalization was celebrated to a point where the inequities that were getting founded, I guess, or inequities that developed in local communities were not addressed. Whatever happens in this next phase of globalization will not only in fact help that grand convergence of opportunity all over the world, which was, by the way, a very good thing in that first phase of globalization. But also address the local inequities, whether it's in India or in Polo Alto. I think that that's what I think is needed, whereas there is real innovation that brings equitable growth everywhere. Is perhaps the opportunity for GSB grads in 2019?
This is for Hello. Hi, I'm Casey Lohan-Hoot and MBA too. I also worked at Microsoft before I came here. I think I might be the only one. Thanks. That's great. I was just wondering in your rise to the top, what was the biggest adjustment you made to your leadership style as you moved up in the company? You know, it's interesting. I must say there's many, many dimensions. Perhaps the biggest adjustment was that ability to grapple with what is it that uniquely only you can do versus what others in the team can do, getting much better at it was the most helpful.
But the CEO job, when I look back at it, and many of you who may start out and become even CEO's much earlier on in your career, I had not understood perhaps even growing up at Microsoft how multi-constituent the job is, right? I mean, that's perhaps the biggest adjustment I've had to make is recognizing it's about customers, it's about partners, it's about all your employees, it's about your investors, it's about governments, it's about many, many, many of these constituents. And by the way, it's not about, like, well, you know, it's not like office hours for each one of them. It is about all of them, all the time. And how to think about that multi-constituent world, I think is perhaps the biggest adjustment that one makes as you grow in any organization. And the faster you grapple with it, the better off you will be and your organization will be.
So we'll now turn it back to our traditional lightning round. And I'll wait a, don't be scared. We're changing it up a little bit this time, I'm gonna ask you to complete a few sentences for me. So I feel most energized when? I see someone very excited about the impact of what they're doing. What keeps me up at night is? What rakes me up in the morning. Okay. Good, good, good, good dodge there. I am most grateful for. The, the sense of, the love, the affection of people that I've had the good fortune, whether it's my family, whether it's the people I've come across at work, the organizations that I'm involved in, it's just such a blessing.
When I look back, that's the thing that sort of really I'm most thankful for, the people in my life in all spheres of it. The most important piece of advice I could leave this audience with is? Is the piece of advice that Steve Barmer gave me when I became CEO, be bold and be right? Which is if you're not bold, you're not going to do much of anything, and if you're not right, you won't be there. Sathya, thank you so much. It's been a real pleasure. Thank you so much. Thank you.
回顾我的人生,我最感激的就是生命中所有领域的人们。我最想向观众们传达的最重要的建议是什么呢?就是 Steve Barmer 成为 CEO 后给我的建议,就是要勇敢并且正确。如果你不勇敢,你什么也做不了;如果你不正确,你也不会成功。Sathya,非常感谢你。这真是一次愉快的经历。谢谢你。