my job is curation of our culture

Last March, Microsoft unveiled Tay.ai, a Twitter bot that promised to usher in a new era of human-to-artificial-intelligence conversation.

Within hours, hackers turned Tay into a venom-spewing racist, and the project was quickly shuttered with a public apology.

In the old days of Microsoft, heads surely would have rolled.

But Satya Nadella, 49, a one-time company engineer who took the reins of the $500 billion tech giant three years ago this month, instead sent the Tay team a note of encouragement.

“Keep pushing, and know that I am with you,” he wrote in an e-mail, urging staffers to take the criticism in the right spirit while exercising "deep empathy for anyone hurt by Tay. (The) key is to keep learning and improving.”

The group responded with Zo, a new AI chatbot that debuted in December. So far, no issues.

“It’s so critical for leaders not to freak people out, but to give them air cover to solve the real problem,” Nadella says in an interview with USA TODAY. “If people are doing things out of fear, it’s hard or impossible to actually drive any innovation...”

"What I realize more than ever now is that my job is curation of our culture," says Nadella, who will explore this topic and others in a book due out this fall called Hit Refresh. "If you don't focus on creating a culture that allows people to do their best work, then you’ve created nothing.”

Marco della Cava

"Microsoft's Satya Nadella is counting on culture shock to drive growth" USA Today. Feb. 20, 2017

prioritizing your work as a leader

"...author Stephen Covey coined Eisenhower's Urgent/Important Principle in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. The tool is based on the way President Dwight D. Eisenhower prioritized the tasks that demanded his attention. This principle recognizes that tasks typically fall into one of four quadrants--and that we tend to complete them in this order:

1. Urgent and Important: Things that are important to do and need to be done now.
2. Urgent and Not Important: Minor tasks that are time-sensitive. It feels good to check these off our lists, but they aren't really critical.
3. Important and Not Urgent: Things that need to be done but don't have to be done immediately.
4. Not Urgent and Not Important: These tasks are neither important nor time-sensitive."

"A few years ago, I began organizing my to-do list into the following buckets (I have put them in recommended order and outlined my thinking for each):

1. Urgent and Important:  Do them because you have to, and delegate where possible to get tasks done right.
2. Important and Not Urgent:  This is the most important bucket because these things move us toward our big-picture achievements. The key to getting these tasks done is to make time each day or week to move toward your goals. 
3. Urgent and Not Important: Get these off your plate and don't let them distract you. Keep your eyes on the prize!
4. Not Urgent and Not Important: Do your best to avoid these entirely."

Robert Glazer

"Start Acheiving Your Long-Term Goals With This President's Task Management System", Inc.com, 20 Nov 2018

the key to business improvement

All it takes is a belief that people are fundamentally good and enough courage to treat your people like owners instead of machines. Machines do their jobs, owners do whatever is needed to make their companies and teams successful.


Laszlo Bock"Work Rules! Insights From Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead", 2015, Hatchette Book Group

maturity and caliber

Headhunters call [the] change of perspective from ego-drive to co-drive “executive maturity.” The mature leader’s burning question is: how do I help others perform?

The developmental psychologist Robert Kegan calls the leap a subject/object shift. You progress from seeing and navigating in the world on the basis of your own needs and motives — and allowing yourself to be governed by these needs — to seeing yourself from an external position as a part of an organism.

It requires a certain caliber and self-assuredness to act in this way. The ability to put your ego on hold may require a great effort. It might be worthwhile reminding yourself of the words of the American President Harry Truman: “It is incredible what you can achieve, if you don’t care who gets the credit.” If you succeed in making this shift, and thereby improving the skills of the people around you, then you will also experience a greater degree of freedom.

Merete Wedell-Wedellsborg

"Help Your Team Do More Without Burning Out" Harvard Business Review. Oct. 15, 2018

be energizing, not energetic

Here is the paradox: You can actually speed things up by slowing down. There is no doubt that being energetic is contagious and therefore a short-term source of momentum. But if you lead by example all the time, your batteries will eventually run dry. You risk being drained at the vey point when your leadership is needed the most. Conveying a sense of urgency is useful, but an excess of urgency suffocates team development and reflection at the very point it is needed. “Code red” should be left for real emergencies... with [a] co-drive mindset, [we need] to widen [our] sights and recognize and reward people who are good at energizing others. Energizing behavior is unselfish, generous, and praises, not just progress, but personality too.

If you lead by beating the drum, setting tight deadlines, and burning the midnight oil, your team becomes overly dependent on your presence. Sustainable speed is achievable only if the team propels itself without your presence. Jim Collins wrote that great leaders don’t waste time telling time, they build clocks.

Self-propulsion comes from letting go of control, resisting the urge to make detailed corrections and allowing for informal leadership to flourish. As Ron Heifetz advocates, true leadership is realizing that you need to “give the work back” instead of being the hero who sweeps in and solves everybody’s problems.

Resist the urge to take the driver’s seat and allow [yourself] to take the passenger seat instead. Leading from the side-line, not the front line will change [perspectives]. Instead of looking at the road and navigating traffic... monitor how the driver is actually doing and what needs to improve. In [your] mind...fire [yourself] — momentarily — and see what happens to [the] team when [they are set] free, [taking] charge instead of looking to [leaders] for answers, deadlines and decisions.

Merete Wedell-Wedellsborg

"Help Your Team Do More Without Burning Out" Harvard Business Review. Oct. 15, 2018