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Satya Nadella at Microsoft: Instilling a Growth Mindset
By Herminia Ibarra, Aneeta Rattan
When Satya Nadella took over as CEO of Microsoft in 2014, he inherited a firm fading toward irrelevance, plagued by internal fights and inertia. Earlier that year his wife, Anu, had given him a best-selling book by Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck entitled Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, suspecting it might give Nadella some ideas for Microsoft. He adapted the idea to encourage employees to shift from Microsoft’s historical “know-it-all” culture to embrace a “learn-it-all” curiosity. The case study provides background on Nadella’s challenges and context, as well as how he and his leadership team executed their culture change effort.
Learning objectives
- Show a leader’s thought process on the need for culture change, with particular focus on the vision for change as a reflection of the life experiences of the leader.
- Detail the execution levers that Nadella and his team identified and used during the change process.
- Introduce the concept of organisational culture, focusing on the process of culture change and the role of leaders and their teams in reinforcing or transforming culture.
- Introduce the idea of “mindsets,” focusing on how they affect behaviour and reflect organisational culture, and what leaders can do to inculcate a growth mindset as a means of making cultural change and enhancing organisational performance.
Details
Publication Date: | June 2016 |
LBS Case Code: | CS-18-008 |
Topic: | Organisational Behaviour |
Subjects: | Change management, Corporate culture, Leadership, Performance |
Industry: | Computer software |
Geography: | United States |
Pages: | 20 |
Format: |