Almost a month after the announcement of a wave of major dismissals, Satya Nadella is released and published a note to employees.
How to justify the dismissal of 9000 people when ” Microsoft is booming – our stock market performance, our strategic positioning and our growth are all up »? More specifically, the dismissal of 28,000 people in two years, when the company raised $ 200 billion in profit?
Even Satya Nadella, the boss of Microsoft always very good at the words, seems to kick in touch. More than three weeks after the announcement of layoffs, the boss sent a note to the group’s employees, also published on the official website of Microsoft. He tries to rationalize the group’s strategy.
“An industry that has no franchise value”
In her note, Satya Nadella indeed recognizes that layoffs may seem incongruous while the company is at the best of its form and has never radiated so financially.
He explains it partly by ” The mystery of success in a sector that has no franchise value “, Ie an unstable industry” unforeseen “, Unpredictable and” dynamic Where we cannot rest on the achievements.
But one thing is certain for Satya, the employees who set up waves of layoffs will be able to find ” determination, courage and lucidity necessary to carry out our mission ».
A mission that Satya Nadella considers in full transformation.
“From a software factory to an intelligence engine”
Obviously, Microsoft’s new mission is around AI. According to the boss of the firm, Microsoft has always developed tools for people and businesses with them to carry out their missions in the best conditions.
Now, in the AI era, Microsoft must transform itself for ” Create tools that allow everyone to create their own tools ».
Imagine if the 8 billion people could have a researcher, an analyst or a coding agent at hand, not only to obtain information, but also to use their expertise in order to achieve things that are beneficial to them.
Security, AI and quality
To achieve the objective of this new mission, Satya Nadella draws three axes of priority for Microsoft: quality, transformation of AI and security.
Microsoft has indeed pointed out in recent months for very important safety flaws in its products. We obviously think of the world Crowstrike breakdown, but also more recently of the massive piracy of Microsoft SharePoint.
The spicy question of culture
Finally, Satya Nadella addresses the question of corporate culture within Microsoft.
This is a particularly crucial subject within the group as the atmosphere has changed in recent years, as a Frandroid survey revealed it at the start of the month.
The boss believes that Microsoft must keep his “Growth Mindset”, the name given to the strategy implemented by Satya Nadela a decade ago and which must, in principle, push each employee to always learn and improve, to help others.
The daily practice of being a learner, not a knowing. He reshaped our culture and helped us direct with more humility and empathy. We have to keep this.
But there too, he wants the group’s culture to adapt to AI: ” This platform change is reshaping […] the way we are structured and that we work together every day ».
For Satya Nadella, the technological revolution is close to that of the 90s: “ When PCs and productivity software have become the standard in each home and on each desk! This is exactly where we are now with AI ».
What we have learned in the past five decades is that success is not a question of longevity. It is a question of relevance. Our future will not be defined by what we have built before, but by what we allow others to build now.
We can still notice that he does not send a word to the video game activity of the group which grew up enormously with the acquisition of Activision Blizzard and Bethesda. It is however this activity that was the most heavily affected by the waves of successive layoffs.
