This speech is anything but clear from an engineering or analytical perspective.

"Outsized success" is always in relation to the value of the allocated resources. "Conventional success" is making slightly more than liquidating those resources and following a passive investment strategy, like index funds yielding 8% APR.

So what "Satya" is saying here is "I want higher risk, higher reward strategies", but "don't be unlucky" (don't "make a habit of" failure).

I'm no exec, but I'm my opinion, this is a poor strategy in the consumer and especially enterprise software and services space.

"Satya" is wrong: there are 3 knobs. The missing knob is risk allocation. This works in two ways: some areas are intrinsically risky, and some areas you choose to take risk in. Either way, you allocate that risk with strategy and resource allocation (the other two knobs). If an area can't fail, you may spend more resources to de-risk or hedge, or strategically avoid change or the area. If an area has outsized opportunity, the strategy and allocation takes more risk there.

"Satya" is telling the whole room that their area should favor high-risk, high reward strategy and allocation, when he should be telling them that they must determine if their area should favor or avoid risk to maximize the entire company's return on investment.

The real estate team should not be a risk center. It should not fire 90% of the janitors in favor of "AI first" robot vacuums. It should not decide that real estate as a service (WeWork) is a good strategy over buying real estate in advance of need. It should avoid capacity crunches while putting holdings in LLCs to reduce downside risk. It should vertically integrate the data centers (land, connectivity, power, water, regulation/politics/PR).

Lots of Microsoft failures look like risk misallocation to me. Windows phone was allocated risk too late in moving away from Windows CE. Windows Vista took too much risk and failed to release until features were rolled back. Windows 11 (financialization of the OS) seems like they are betting the farm to secure some ad and subscription revenue, and keep their low margin PC maker partners happy, while they make the platform the least attractive it's ever been.

I like it. There is something subtle here that marks Nadella as a pretty good senior manager (assuming the paraphrase is accurate). He explained what the job is and how to do it in a simple and concise way.

Now you'd think that would just be normal practice but I have witnessed a disturbing number of leaders who either never got this talk or lack the empathy to realise that you have to explain to people what they should be doing. I will single out "leaders" who demand people get vague (or even specific) results and they have to figure it out. That is the extent of the leader's communication. All too common a practice, that can work with the right people but it is bad management.

Nadella isn't doing that here. He is still asking for vague (or specific) results, but he is including a "with these tools and by doing these things" part that is quite important and makes the whole talk actionable.

“You only have 2 controls: 1) The clarity, culture, and energy you give your teams; and 2) Resource allocation.”

But sir, that’s four controls.

“Four! You only have 4 controls: 1) The clarity, culture, and energy you give your teams; 2) Resource allocation. And a fanatical devotion to mandatory OneDrive storage!”

- - -

Jokes aside, I think the key to the piece is the hackneyed Navy Seals line: the speech describes little more than command-and-control, chain-of-command, classical militaristic mission assignment plus the scientific method. So there is a kernel of truth even if one disagrees with the cultural model and rejection of any hope for managing up.

Surprised by the hate here, I thought this was great.

Microsoft (and anyone's) success is probably a function of strategy + execution + luck.

So I think it's hard to solely judge this philosophy by Microsoft's success or not.

He's basically saying: "You must take calculated, strategic risks. But don't be wrong too much."

What's a better strategy?

> Once we were seated, he delivered the most concise, precise, and actionable lesson in leadership imaginable—a lesson I believe everyone could benefit from. As I recall, he said:

> > Congratulations …. your days of whining are over .

> > In this room, we deliver success, we don’t whine.

> > Look, I’m not confused, I know you walk through fields of shit every day.

> > Your job is to find the rose petals.

> > Don’t come whining that you don’t have the resources you need.

> > We’ve done our homework.

> > We’ve evaluated the portfolio, considered the opportunities and allocated our available resources to those opportunities.

> > That is what you have to work with.

> > Your job is to manufacture success with the resources you’ve been allocated.

> > And yes – you have a hard job.

Not concise: he could've said "Your job is to manufacture success with the resources you’ve been allocated. No ifs, ands, or buts."

Precise: what does he mean by "success"? Maximizing profit?

Actionable: yes. The rest of the lesson is "you control how resources are allocated within your team, and of course also the attitude and instructions you present to them. Set a goal for 'outsized' success (e.g. increase growth), have a plausible plan to that goal, follow the plan, and if the plan becomes no longer plausible have a new one. If you do that, you can occasionally fail and not be kicked out."

> Satya was not giving us a pep talk, he was giving us an architecture for success.

Maybe it was also an "architecture for success" but it was a pep talk. Also, this entire post sounds like typical AI, and like typical AI has lots of filler and vapidity. It would really benefit by having concrete examples of great leadership.

When I first came across this article I legitimately thought it was satire, I was expecting the author to go through some hazing à la soggy biscuit. But it's a serious article.. Oh my.

It seems wrong that a "Technical Fellow" is charged with leadership, rather than sharing technical knowledge.

I find the word "success" a bit jarring. It sounds like "stock price" and not "great products", which is how I think about Microsoft and why Apple has gone past Microsoft (and why Apple is struggling now, having lost that focus on the product in at least software design).

What’s with that awful AI-generated infographic at the end? The piece would be better without it…

I was expecting sudden clarity on the contrast between this team of elite succeeders and the general perception of Microsoft products today.

Nope, this is the Super Bowl, period. I guess at those levels real life does not matter anymore, just _success_.

Is this author a real person who was really a senior exec at Microsoft? If this piece isn't a parody, it's deeply revealing of what's going on in that company, but probably not in the way he intended.

Honestly thought this was some sort of satire on corporate ass-kissing at first.

Is this a parody? It seems obviously made-up but the other comments seem to be taking it at face value?

> Re-read it again and again until you get it.

OK, now I get it.

"This is my room. This isn't your room. I'm the most important person here. You should be honoured to be standing in the same room as me. But you're not here to help make decisions. I already made the decisions. Good luck"

Satnav Nutella is more or less a lesson in how not to do tech leadership.

The great Irony of showing a Google NotebookLLM generated infographic for this Microsoft pep talk.. (after how many billions MS is spending on Gen AI infra and Copilot)

Yup, Navy Seals and all that..

Seems like Satya may have over allocated his “success” there

Sure, they’re a successful organization but they’ve built their success on the backs of a ruthless layoff of thousands of they’re own loyal employees, and the transition of the American information economy to Indian offshore workers

Ha, more cult of personality, down to idolizing every word from a simple casual speech.

I am genuinely unable to decide if this is satire or sincere. Please someone tell me that this is a parody.

[flagged]

I mean, it's a very nice speech but why is Microsoft failing everywhere except Azure? Doesn't seem like outstanding results to me.

Oh, hi Mark