Part B: Going Beyond the Case I have attached the full instructions, my previous part A paper and the case Instructions As you know, a core principle at JWMI is “learn it today; apply it tomorrow.” Th

Satya Nadella at Microsoft: Analyzing the Case 0

Satya Nadella at Microsoft: Analyzing the Case

Name

JWI 510

Dr. Blanche Wallace

02/24/2020

In 2000, when the handing over of Microsoft Corporation took place from Bill Gates to Steve Ballmer it started experiencing several problems; the most significant was the crashing of the stock market that took place just after 17 days of the taking over of the company by Steve. The level of innovation started to cripple along with low employee and customer satisfaction levels. Satya Nadella took over the responsibilities of the company as a CEO in 2014 to put Microsoft Corporation back to the right track by overcoming all the problems. The case study attempts to evaluate the problems at Microsoft in 2014 with a discussion on change and leadership strategies adopted by Nadella to overcome the same problems. The study also aims to analyze the success achieved by Nadella as the CEO that took the company to the wake of growth and success.

There were several challenges were there at the organization when Nadella took over the charge. The teams were also not performing well with several dysfunction within departments. He developed various goals for transforming the weak workplace into a strong and progressing workplace. This section tends to provide in-depth information regarding all these areas.

The most critical challenge that Nadella faced after taking over the CEO ship at Microsoft was the crippling innovation culture. The performance management system i.e., stack ranking implemented at Microsoft was declining the motivation level of the employees in a great manner. A lot of politics was involved in workplace activities and decision-making process (Barr, 2014). The stacking system at the workplace was killing collaboration and restraining employees from sharing their opinion due to the threat of influencing their position adversely. Due to the same practices, the turnover rate also increased massively, and talented employees of the company started to leave. The satisfaction rate of the employees from the company declined to about 29% (Ibarra, Rattan & Johnston, 2018).

There are about five dysfunctional areas as per Lencioni that Microsoft as a team has been facing. Absence of trust is the first which means no employee within the team was willing to be vulnerable. For example, the stacking system discouraged the employees from sharing their ideas with the seniors due to the fear of position damage. Fear of conflict means that all the employees were interested in artificial harmony instead of constructive debate (Bedi, 2018). For example, bickering and power play delayed the launch of e-book and Smartphone technology wasting the complete efforts of the employees involved in the same innovation process. Lack of commitment describes that the loyalty level of the employees towards the roles, responsibilities, and organization was limited. For example, there was a stack ranking system implemented at the workplace by which all the employees were encouraged to play politics for achieving top positions (Mcleskey & Waldron, 2015). Avoidance of accountability means that all the employees were pushing their mistakes to low levels setting the low standards. For example, all that the employees were interested in their own personal gains and successes instead of taking up the responsibility for taking appropriate actions for the correction of mistakes committed by them or their subordinates (Nadella & Euchner, 2018). Inattention to results describes that all the employees were majorly interested in their own success or reputation instead of team results. For example, the employees were making efforts for getting their ideas accepted by buttering up to the seniors without paying attention to the depth of the ideas (Silver, 2018).

There were various goals set by Nadella after taking over the responsibilities of Microsoft Corporation. These goals include;

• To foster the culture of innovation at the workplace.

• To ensure continuous and regular communication between the complete workforce.

• To increase the number of suggestions, feedback, and recommendations by encouraging open door policy and open environment (Silver, 2018).

• To minimize the hierarchical power distribution at the workplace.

• Development and maintaining effective recruitment policies for hiring and retaining the right talent for the company.

• To make use of proper change management practices for undertaking suitable changes effectively at the workplace (Ibarra & Rattan, 2018).

• To make use of effective technology and planning for removing all the obstacles in the way of Microsoft towards success.

Microsoft was witnessing enormous problems when Nadella took over the workplace as per the information provided in the previous section. This section intends to discuss and overview the leadership style adopted by Nadella for overcoming the same issues. This section also provides information regarding strategies adapted by Nadella for improving teamwork along with the growth mindset.

Goleman's theory of leadership provides various leadership styles including affiliative, coaching, authoritative, democratic, coercive, and pacesetting. However, the leadership style adopted by Nadella seems to be more relevant with the affiliative leadership style taking a contribution from coaching one. The rationale behind the same is that Nadella was highly focused on the development of harmony between the team members (Silver, 2018). It means that he was interested in arranging the entire workforce on the same platform for encouraging the culture of sharing ideas and opinions. Nadella made various steps like the abolishment of the performance management system for boosting the emotional bonding between the employees (Cote, 2017). He encouraged all the employees to reach the seniors for gaining appropriate coaching to overcome the problems being experienced by them. He also developed himself as a role change model for providing coaching to all the employees for embracing the same change (Ibarra, Rattan & Johnston, 2018).

Nadella keenly replaced the stack ranking performance system with coaching and continual feedback system along with a compensation process for improving the teamwork between the managers and employees. One company Ethos was introduced by him for shifting the focus of the employees towards common problems (Allio, 2015). He encouraged the groups across Microsoft by discussing the ideas and their learning style. He attempted to promote and foster diversity and inclusivity at the workplace by improving harmony among employees by working as a team. He focused on the delivery of clear roles and responsibilities among all employees for enhancing accountability with an opportunity of complimenting each other’s strengths and weaknesses (Ibarra & Rattan, 2018).

Nadella had much interest in transforming the culture of Microsoft with a growth mindset. He was interested in the development of the same attitude of growth mindset by all employees. With the growth mindset, it means that all the employees within the company were encouraged to overcome the hurdles and stand against the challenges. For example, diversity and inclusion were supported by Nadella’s regime providing an opportunity to all the employees to collaborating as a team with other employees coming from different social backgrounds to improve their learning, skills, and expertise helping them to grow eventually contributing towards the growth of the company (Mcleskey & Waldron, 2015).

Previous sections provided information regarding the challenges arising for Microsoft when Nadella took over the workplace as a CEO with his strategies. This section tends to evaluate that either the leadership approach adopted by Nadella was effective or not considering the results attained by Microsoft after the implementation of the leadership approach by him.

Nadella achieved success in arranging the entire workforce at a single platform for witnessing massive successes in terms of product innovation. The positive results of Nadella’s change management are quite evident through the Glassdoor rating that Microsoft has once again become a magnet for the attraction of top engineering talents amongst the five best Artificial Intelligence Companies with over 95% customer satisfaction (Ibarra, Rattan & Johnston, 2018). A cloud computing service that is known as Azure was chosen by more than 95% of the Fortune companies all around the world. Cote (2017) also supports the same that when the level of collaboration and integration increases between the workforce, the level of innovation improves massively due to open communication, feedback, and suggestions.

There are several metrics available for evaluating the success of the change management initiatives adopted by Nadella. The employee satisfaction rate increased up to 95% from 24% (Ibarra & Rattan, 2018). Revenue of the company expressing the sales and profits of the organization due to the level of innovation and teamwork increased by 12% with a 3% increment in the market share (Ibarra, Rattan & Johnston, 2018). Customer satisfaction rate evident through the results recorded from about 85 million people giving Microsoft as a formidable data hoard for AI Operations.

Empowerment is the core soul of the change carried out by Nadella for Microsoft that made the company witness positive results. It means that the company needs to ensure access to technology along with an equal opportunity for all the employees to sustain success (Mcleskey & Waldron, 2015). The company needs to ensure acceptance and encouragement of diversity, involvement, open communication, feedback, suggestions, etc. for ensuring an appropriate level of innovation at the workplace (Bedi, 2018). It needs to continue with the effective performance management system for retaining the trust of the employees over the reward for them against their contributions.

It comes with lesser doubt that Nadella had been successfully bringing enormous positive changes at the workplace. However, there are still some challenges including biases that restrict the management to bring every deserving individual on the board (Ibarra, Rattan & Johnston, 2018). The changing of mindset of all the management is still a job to be done as some employees and managers in the company are still interested in complaining about others instead of overcoming the problems effectively.

Microsoft Corporation was experiencing critical issues starting from the 20th century. The employees were not collaborating, and it was leading towards nominal innovation and poor accountability at the workplace. The employees were more interested in their gains instead of increasing the growth and success of the company. The satisfaction rate of the employees was quite low with a high turnover rate. Nadella took over the organization with a growth mindset aiming to empower the entire workforce for embracing the growth for the organization including their own. The change management was carried out positively by Nadella using affiliative and coaching leadership style. The performance management system was replaced with an effective one and teamwork was encouraged at the workplace using various strategies like common goals, ethics, diversity, involvement, open communication, etc. for improving the level of innovation, employee satisfaction, and customer satisfaction for achieving the desired success. The organization needs to continue with the same strategies for continuing the success along with the elimination of biases for combating future challenges.

References

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