Name: Microsoft’s EVP: ‘I Think Microsoft Has a Very Good Business Model’
Uploaded: 2018-09-24
Duration: 4 min 50 s
Description: Peggy Johnson discusses the company’s culture at Fortune’s Brainstorm Reinvent conference.

Talk about the culture that you've witnessed these past four, you said four years? Yeah, I've been there four years. Well again, that was at the very start of it, and he said I need to change this company. And he talked about this book that he had just read called Mindset by Carol Dweck, the Stanford psychologist. And she'd written about This idea of having of growth mindset, so having the ability to be free to think beyond boundaries, and he said I've gotta change the company so they do that again, and I have to say one of the things that struck me at Microsoft is the pure raw talent that is on that campus, I remember the very first days when I was there, everybody who came into my office I was blown away by And Sati had this idea of changing that culture from what he called it a know- it- all culture to a learn- it- all- culture. And he was gonna do this by introducing this concept and saying we're free to innovate again. And that started to take effect, and it started to roll through all the many layers of Microsoft. And the change became palpable, and fairly quickly. I mean a lot of people have commented on that, that the change was fairly quick, but they were ready to believe in something new, they were ready to innovate again. And then he mixed that with an infusion of this outside in perspective, of which I was one of those. And so we started to Look for talent outside the company and mix it with talent that was in the campus, with this new idea of a growth mindset that just changed everything. Do you think the Microsoft people would have been as receptive to change if they hadn't been through this relative period of, A stagnation, you know, Microsoft people had a reputation of resting investing but for a number of years. You know, I think Microsoft had a very good and has a very good business model and I. And I think any company that has a successful business model, you can sort of fall back on and say well this thing is gonna go on for forever, my old company same way, it has a successful business model and you sort of start to take that for granted So Satya knew that the industry was changing, that technology around us was changing, business models were changing, and if we didn't change, if that company didn't change, we would be left behind. And I think you're right, I think people were ready for that, they sensed that as well. And that was all it took, it was like a spark that started a fire. And again, unbelievably how quick it went through the hallways around the world. I mean, we have offices and people around the world and everybody has bought into this change. Thank you. Thank you this has been great, but I love this idea of going from a know it all culture to a learn it all culture. Now you sort of described it, you said it was a spark and once it happened it spread like wild fire And somehow I suspect it wasn't quite that easy an dI think you got a lot of people in this room they all come from great companies they wouldn't be here if they didn't come from great companies, they're all facing a transition like the one you talked about. Can you talk a little more Tactically. Right. About how you make that transition. Because it was a deep, deep culture at Microsoft. It was, and we have a lot of people, 130 some odd thousand people. And to get that message all the way down through all the ranks, that's challenging to do for sure. One thing that Satya talks about is consistency. So from the moment he was interviewing me until today he's had the same message. Same message. And so the reinforcement of our mission statement. To [ UNKNOWN ] every person and organization on the planet to achieve more, people can repeat that from the top to the bottom, and our visions, it's just something that he starts every one of our internal all hands [ UNKNOWN ] like our executive all hands with that mission statement, with our ambitions, and he goes back to him and he ladders everything up to that And that's helpful and that's something he has advised companies who are undertaking their own transformations to be consistent in your messaging keep coming back to it keep revisiting it. It's something that you don't want to do a box check and put a sticker on the back of your name tag and that's my mission statement I never look at it again It helps that it worked I don't mean to trivialize it but You can be repetitive when it's working. When it's working. You're right. [ BLANK AUDIO ]

Microsoft’s EVP: ‘I Think Microsoft Has a Very Good Business Model’

Peggy Johnson discusses the company’s culture at Fortune’s Brainstorm Reinvent conference.