The Human Transformation
To succeed in this challenge, it is necessary to have leaders who are prepared to stay with a company for a relatively long period of time. If you inherit a particular culture as a leader but only plan to stay with the company for three or four years, you will not achieve very much in terms of cultural change.
Leadership beings with the sharing of an inspirational vision. If a company is asked to give a short presentation about itself, you soon discover a great deal about its personality. If it presents itself with a slide showing the number of staff, the number of awards it has won and its total turnover, this says much about the way they do business. If a company presents itself in terms of an ambitious vision to change the world, this also says a great deal about their attitude.
-but in a much more positive way. Both approaches are possible and acceptable – but the second is 10 times more inspirational than the first. Simon Sinek has described this well in his pioneering book Start With Why. As a company, you can say what you do, how you do it and why you do it. Most companies confine themselves to talking about what they do. A smaller number also discuss how they do it. But very few companies talk about why they do things. This final group usually has the best business results. Why? Because they inspire their customers, their staff and society at large.
Microsoft has had a huge impact on our modern world. In 1971 it was Bill Gates’s dream to have a computer installed in every house and every office. Back in those days this ambition must have seemed ludicrously unbelievable. In the meantime, we all know what has happened. However, during the past ten years Microsoft has come to be seen as something of an ageing giant: a large, financially healthy but rather boring company whose best are now behind it. Microsoft had lost it inspirational aura. On 10 July 2014 the new CEO, Satya Nadella, presented his dreams and ambitions for the future of the company. It was a textbook example of an inspirational speech. His message underlined the way the world is changing. ‘The world does not respect tradition, the world respects innovation, was one of the impressive statements he made. Everyone knows what he means. Microsoft must once again become a company with an impact on society. He described the core of the company in the following terms: