[MUSIC] [APPLAUSE]
>> Stacia, we are so
excited to have you today as you can see. You've said that Microsoft's mission
is not to be cool to make others cool? But Bob Dylan is playing across campus
today and you sold out faster than him. So,
>> [LAUGH] >> We certainly think Microsoft is cool. >> [APPLAUSE]
>> Really though, we're 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 mom. I love that contrast, and I'm curious how that different
life philosophy's shaped you. >> First of all, thank you so
much, Tara, for having me here. It's great to be at the GSB and
Bob Dylan was my idol. >> [LAUGH]
>> So times has been changing, it's interesting. In fact,
my father passed away just last month and I'm here reflecting quite a bit on
what both my parents have meant to me. 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 in life. And he's right, I mean the guy
always used to look at my marks, I mean my score cards and used to be
amazed that somebody could be done bad. But luckily enough I think in some
sense he gave me in spite of all that a lot of confidence because to
him he felt like look it's marathon, you will catch up this is not that hard. And my mother was exactly the opposite of
course the only question she would ever ask me is are you happy? And I would say what
the heck does that mean, when you are reading my score card I
don't know if 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 become
CEOs from the same high school. At that time 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. Sort of when I look back,
I have been perhaps the biggest drivers of what sort of turned out to
be a reasonable several 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. >> [LAUGH]
>> What lessons did you take from the pitch. Well, I mean, [LAUGH] all of us who are
South Asian are obsessed with that sport. And 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,
I think all sport teaches you a lot. And especially at least I feel team sport, I think has a huge impact and
how you think about leadership. I'll never forget this one
particular incident that I think subsequently written about. There's 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 break though. 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 always reflected as
to why did he do that? And then, in fact, much later on in life,
I went back and ask to meet with him. And so at least the way I surmise it as
a leadership decision he made of saying, look, he had recognized the importance
of not breaking my confidence. And I said like well that's
a pretty enlightened decision for a high school leader,
captain of a cricket team to make. And a lot of leadership lessons is that,
right. Which is you gotta make hard calls on,
say, performance, but also you got be able to sort of
understand that you need your team and it's not like everybody is going to
have a good day all the time. And that saddled distinction and
that judgement, right, which is one of the things that I feel
which is the most understated part of leadership is judgement,
and it's so important. And that judgement comes by you exercising
this muscle around passing judgement and learning from it. And I thought that's one
of the lessons I learned. >> He was building a confidence in a way,
by making- >> That's right, that's right. >> So you didn't end up playing
professional cricket, oddly. [LAUGH]
>> Here I am. >> [LAUGH]
>> But you did make you 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, it's a very big part of what is perhaps shaped my world view. And for 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 in our late 20s,
when our first son was about to be born, we were very excited. The household was all about. My wife is an architect and
she was practicing at the time. And so my only concern was when
will I go back to school, or would I go back to work. And how are going to think about
the babies, a day care and what a view. And lo and behold one night
there was some complications and our son Zain was born because of some
complications, he now has cerebral palsy. He's got gas quadriplegic 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 I watch AnuGo up and
down five trading, 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 it 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, right? That's what empathy's 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're all very capable of, life teaches us that and
in small ways, and in tough ways. Like I remember even by the last
interview when I was interviewing at Microsoft was also My
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. And then I said I'll go to
the phone booth and call 911. This is pre-smartphone. And so, he gets up. He escorts 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. >> [LAUGH]
>> 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 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. I believe if you sort of say innovation
is all about meeting unmet unarticulated needs customers,
where is that source of your ability to get in touch with that unmet
unarticulated need going to come from? It's 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. 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. 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,
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 put into
our sort of parlance is respect. For example,
if you don't start from a place so having some respect for the other
person's views, where they come from, their complete history,
it's really hard to develop empathy. So therefore, I think you're
absolutely right to say 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. >> Certainly, 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 Ballmer 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? >> [LAUGH] Steve,
who went to school here, had many- >> [LAUGH] >> He just went for one year, from what I understand. >> [LAUGH]
>> This is the funniest thing I should tell I guess the other guy who were
to school here was Mukesh Ambani. So I believe one day, Steve Ballmer
is 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. >> [LAUGH]
>> So Steve wanted us to really take this new business area, which is our online business. In fact, Susan, who is 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 of 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, as 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
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,
it's 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. >> [LAUGH]
>> 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 at Microsoft, I don't think I even
thought of a Microsoft where Bill and Steve were not actively engaged. I mean, it was just not even
in the realm of possibility. The thing, though, I would say,
especially business school graduates that 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 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, 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 well, it's just
a stop on the way to something else. I actually thought that was a fantastic
job until 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 Ballmer, and many people thought
that the 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 recognize, to your point, that I was taking over from Steve and
Bill. And Steve even though was not a founder,
he had founder 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 describe myself
as a mere mortal CEO. I felt I needed that sense of
purpose to be deeply rekindled. It's something that I re-enforced. 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 as
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 Q. It is easy to compute. And And except by the late 90s,
we had more or less achieved that at least
in the developed world. 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 up, Paul and Bill, built the BASIC
interpreter 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 rebuild 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
our core identity is, 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 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. I distinctly remember,
I guess it was 98 when we first became the largest market
cap company in the world. And many of us were lucky enough to
participate on that wave of growth. But I remember that day when you we
walked around, you could see in campus, people thought wow,
we must be God's gifts to mankind. >> [LAUGH]
>> Right, we're so smart, we're so good, look at us, and
except that was not the case. I mean,
the case was it's a temporal thing. And what matters is your ability to learn,
grow, be grounded in the realities and
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. It was a 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 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 know-it-alls, let's be learn-it-alls. 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. In looking back at that
over the last five years, what was the most
difficult part to change? Because you instilled growth mindset,
you did all of these things. But what were the hardest roadblocks? >> 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 ten people who
don't have a growth mindset. >> [LAUGH]
>> The point about that it's not about going looking for ten 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, yep, we've learnt the that. Here are the ten people
who have not learnt. Then that's a problem. And I think that that's the reality of it,
right? How do you bring about long-term change? And 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, it's 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 anyway, that's the the real, I would say challenge of being
able to implement change at scale. >> Absolutely, and you want to set this
culture of a growth mindset where people can take risks and
make mistakes and learn from them. And you want to 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 in, for me, the ability to sort of,
take even diversity and inclusion. Saying the words, 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, right? 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, 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. It's sort of the way I think I remind
myself of how important to your boy. But it's sort of putting
it in everyday practice. We have three things that are the cultural
I would say pillars for us, right, 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 fragmented setup PnLs. All three of these are just super hard,
easy to say, but require everyday practice
starting with me. >> Certainly, 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. >> Yeah, for example,
the thing that we have recognized is you have to put, I mean you have
to do a lot of things here. For example, we even changed
the compensation of our senior leaders starting, or even mine, to ensure
that we take this as a huge priority. You could say, well,
is the compensation change the real thing? 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 a good sort
of start on a lot of fronts. But the thing that we've come to realize
is every intern class that joins Microsoft every year is more
diverse than the previous one. But then they look around and say, well,
where's that diversity 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 what happens at Microsoft. Interestingly enough, I've also come
to recognize 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 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 are doubling down is, are we truly supporting
managers 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 short thing. And you made this bold bet,
cementing Microsoft strategy in the Cloud. How did you rally all
those around that vision, when many were convinced it wouldn't work? >> I mean, our challenge with
the Cloud was very, very, very successful business in what
was the client server error. And sort of you look at ADP&L that says,
here's a new business. By the way, it's got gross
margins that are sort of 1/4 of this gross margins of the current
business, and it will be good. It's hard to sort of look at
those kind of transitions, because all rationality says that 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,
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 want to go after this. And one of the things that
I've realized as leaders, and many of you in your career are going to
make this kinds of decisions. We're all about solving this
over constrain problem, right? I mean, classic over constrain problem
as we have a huge profit margin. And now you gotta go build a new business,
that 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. So you remove the constraint
,called gross margin. He said go in 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 get to speak from both sides of the mouth,
which is 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 you've done on culture, and strategy, and making this ball bud, are you able to tell which one moved
the needle more for Microsoft's renew. >> I fundamentally believe
that strategies or markets will always be coming and
going, there will 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 right
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 sends a purpose,
which I think is reflection of what you're innately good at as an organization,
right? It's competitive 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. [LAUGH]
>> 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? >> Yeah, I mean look,
I mean I think that all organizations, small or large,
all have amazing opportunities. But I'll make the case for
a large organization, and especially an organization
like Microsoft. I mean think about it,
if you want to have an impact at scale, in fact one of the reasons,
there are two things. When I'm going to recruit 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 which other organization will be
able to have in 190 plus countries, the impact on small business productivity,
public sector efficiency, multinationals in any part of the world
and their competitiveness globally. Health outcomes, education outcomes. This is scale at enormous rate. And so therefore if you want,
join a company like this, but then you have to have the following,
I'd say sensibility. Guess what, you've gotta work with others. [LAUGH] 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 upscale, 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 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 a customers. So it's 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 bring
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. >> [LAUGH]
>> You are a big component 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? >> Look, first of all I'm excited
I'm going to spend sometime with your own work around this. Human centered AI and the work you're
doing there, I think it's so important. Here is 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, right? Think about what AI has done to
people who need the most help, right? Say if you have,ALS now with Eyegaze,
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, so 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
clear-eyed about the consequences of AI, right? If 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
Real Case, 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 we get to decide that as a society. What we are comfortable with and
what we are 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 in the employment side, I do believe that for example, 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. And 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. So therefore,
I think we will come up with mechanisms. And I hope that we have, and
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, 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 responsibilities. So how do you think about who to partner
with in light of those concerns? >> Right, there's multiple things. So, one is what is it that we
ourselves will do to, in some sense, have some core principles that define
what we do and then who we work with. 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 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 only sensible to use it
in certain use cases and not in others. And being clear about it and then ensuring
that that's what we do, and then working knowing that there will be like there's
food safety there should be AI safety. There will be regulation and
we should be okay with it. In fact even if anything our practices,
in our data of what's good, what's not. What's the state of technology
should inform that regulation. >> So
you bring up 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
aspiring tech leader here on balancing that pressure to grow as a company
with your responsibility to society? >> That's an interesting question. Here's what I have at least learned. In fact, Brad Smith who is another
colleague of mine who recently wrote a book called Tools And Weapons. He reflects because he was very much part,
he worked for 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'd say a lot of criticism
of whatever it is that you're doing, I think that 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 industriate
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 Ballmer
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 that 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? Yeah, I mean, I think the ability, To understand yourself is actually, it's a lifetime's journey, right? It's a journey of your lifetime
to really unpack who you are, and what you are good at, what makes
you tick, what are your passions. It's something that, what makes you happy, the question that my mother asked
me all the time and in fact, 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 tick, 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 work place. That's the other thing that I have come to realize is we can be
transactional at work. I'll tell you there was this gentleman,
another GSB grad whom I work for, Doug Bergam, who i s actually
the governor of North Dakota nowadays. But there was this time 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 are going to even
going to spend with your kids. And I said wow, that sounds pretty harsh. [LAUGH] 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 passe in time but the people what you did,
how you behave, what was your, I take great pride in these people whom
I've mentored or go on to do great things. That's the relationship that I think
you seek out a while being true to 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 sacred. 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 the success? >> That's a great question. There's this book I recently read by
David Brooks called The Second Mountain. It was an interesting book because
he talks about it mostly in the context of us. 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 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, if you celebrate
our success 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
Vietnam. That's what's going to help us
be grounded and be successful. And so that invoking of that everyday
sense of purpose is what I think is going to help us the most. >> Thank you Satya and I think on that note we will turn it over
to some questions from the audience. >> Okay. >> Is this thing on? Hi, my name is Tara Carrad Pear and
I am a first year MBA student. And I'm asking this question in conjuction
with my classmate Jeff Krueger 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? >> Yeah, I mean, first of all,
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 democratic institutions and our democratic process. And one of my 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 designed. 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 principle stands
against our government if we do think that that is something
that we want to fight for. In fact, Microsoft, whether it's
in the previous administration or in this administration, we've had cases. It was the Warren case around 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 enshrined in
a legislative sort of set of processes. So that's how I look at it. I don't see how withholding technology
from I said the institutions that we have elected that
are subject to civilian control ultimately to protect the freedom
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 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 am Kashaan, I'm from. I'm a second year MBA student. >> Good city. >> [LAUGH]
>> It's a great city. So my question is today if you were a 22
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, no, yeah. It's an interesting one. I really literally growing up, never
thought I'll ever go outside of Hydro but I had very, I would say very self
satisfying sort of goals in life. I wanted to play cricket and
work for a bank. And.
[LAUGHTER] and things changed. Look, I feel that the opportunity, whether it is in India or
rest of Asia or Africa. We just created two development centers
in Africa, both on the west and east side coasts of Africa,
there is great opportunity. There's great talent. I think digital technology in particular
is a real democratizing force. We were talking even back
stage about how even when the rest of the infrastructures
challenged, there's very novel ways for digital technology to overcome
some of those things, because of the most malleable
nature of software in some sense. So, therefore, I think there's
opportunity everywhere in the world. But, at the same time,
for you to come here, learn from, ;earning a place like
the GSB and being inspired and go back is an opportunity,
I would take if that came about, but at the same time, it doesn't mean that's
the only opportunity I had to have impact. It's interesting you bring
up because globalization, let's face it is going through
a little bit of a challenging phase. And I think that its deserved in
some sense because the globalization was celebrated to a point
where the inequities that were getting you know founded I guess. 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 in Palo 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. Hello. Hi, I'm Casey MBA too. I also worked at Microsoft
before I came here. I think I might be the only one .NET team. Let's go. >> It's great. >> [LAUGH]
>> I was just wondering in your rise to the top, what was the biggest adjustment
you made to your leadership style? As you move 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 in, and become even CEOs
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, it's not
like office hours for each one of them. >> [LAUGH]
>> It is about all of them, all. 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, [LAUGH] Don't be scared. [LAUGH] We're changing it up a little bit,
this time I'm going to ask you to complete afew 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 wakes up in the morning. >> [LAUGH]
>> Good dodge there. I am most grateful for? >> 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 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 Ballmer gave me when I became CEO, be bold and be right. >> [LAUGH]
>> 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. [LAUGH]
>> [LAUGH] Sacha thank you so much it's been a real pleasure. >> Thank you so much. Thank you. >> [APPLAUSE]
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