Reading is an integral part of Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s life.
Nadella boasts a top-class presence among CEOs of global companies. He has a reputation for his leadership, and the amount of compensation for fiscal 2020 is as high as $ 42.9 million (about 4.29 billion yen).
He was also selected as the best CEO of 2019 by Comparably, an American career information site, and by Fortune as the Business Person of 2019. In addition, Markets Insider has introduced that Microsoft, led by Nadella, has achieved a corporate value of over $ 1 trillion (about 100 trillion yen) in 44 years since its foundation.
“My ideas come from my reading habits,” says Nadella, who has had such an illustrious career.
In an interview with Fast Company, he said:
“I read a few pages of this book, a few pages of that book. Of course, some books are read from beginning to end, but I just can’t live without them.”
In an interview with The Economic Times, she said reading Mindset by Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck inspired her to change Microsoft’s culture. She says that adopting a “learn everything” mindset has helped her think outside the box, making it easier to implement difficult corporate reforms.
Immediately after becoming CEO of Microsoft, he referred to Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication and recommended that executives read this book. It was around this time that management began to realize that Nadella was different from the previous leaders.
And now, to understand how corporations influence politics and why corporations should have a social purpose, I read Colin Meyer’s Copernican Turn of the Corporation Norm. , recommended to officers.
In addition, Nadella’s reading episodes are too numerous to enumerate.
In this article, I would like to introduce 11 recommended books by Nadella that have greatly influenced my work and life.
T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding
Nadella, who became CEO after 22 years at Microsoft, quotes the poem when explaining how the landscape looks different depending on where you stand.
“The poem ‘Don’t stop searching. After you keep searching, you’ll come back to where you started. Then you’ll see a completely different view.’ It’s only after I changed my position that I realize the meaning of that.”
Marshall B. Rosenberg, Nonviolent Communication
The author, Marshall B. Rosenberg, is the founder of the international peace organization CNVC, and has launched peace programs in various conflict zones. This book is a compilation of his experiences and research perspectives, summarizing the principles of peaceful conflict resolution.
“Nonviolent Communication”, which is also the title, means to respect others and yourself with empathy. Of particular interest is the idea of sharing one’s power with the other party, rather than using it from above.
Nadella recommends the book to Microsoft executives. That underscores that Nadella’s expectations differ from those of his predecessor. When Steve Ballmer was CEO, Microsoft had a culture of conflict. But now the top is promoting nonviolent communication.
Carol S. Dweck, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
The book that made the study of mindset famous. Carol S. Dweck, a professor of psychology at Stanford University and author, found that mindset influences outcomes in a variety of situations, including education, negotiation, performance evaluation, motivation, international conflict, and prejudice against others.
Instead of a rigid mindset, where your abilities stop at a certain point, the book encourages a flexible mindset, where you think you’re absorbing, flexible, and able to grow.
Nadella says this “resilient mindset” is key to transforming Microsoft.
Daniel James Brown, The Boys in the Boat
Author Daniel James Brown, who spent more than a decade at Microsoft, has a style of “bringing historical events to life.” This book also applies to it, and depicts the trajectory of the University of Washington rowing team that participated in the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
Nadella referred to the book in an email about a management shakeup after becoming CEO. It describes the boat’s “swing,” the rhythm that comes from the combined movement of all crew members.
“Our goal is to find that ‘swing’ on this boat, and that’s what we’re trying to do as a company and as a management team.”
Lloyd Alexander, The Book of Three
Nadella frequently quotes passages from this children’s fantasy novel (for which he doesn’t openly endorse the book).
Nadella often quotes the following scene in Chapter 1.
Taran, the main character, expresses his dissatisfaction with his job as an assistant pig breeder and says he wants a title like that of a prince. Then the prophet Darven advises Taran, “No way.” When Taran asks why, Darben explains:
“We learn more from looking for answers and not finding them than from hearing and knowing the answers.”
Chris Hadfield, An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth
By telling the stories of astronaut Chris Hadfield, this book gives readers a cosmic perspective and makes us rethink our way of life on Earth.
Nadella tweeted, “It was a great book!” and quoted from the book, saying, “Don’t try to get there, focus on the process.”
Richard Baldwin, The Great Convergence
Richard Baldwin, a professor at the Geneva Institute for the Advanced Study of International Affairs, explains in this book that new technologies will allow ideas to spread rapidly around the world. For example, if telepresence and telerobotics change the way people work and communicate, companies and nations will be forced to respond.
Nadella sees a commonality between the “ideas” in the book and technology such as the Microsoft HoloLens headset, which enables geographically dispersed people to share ideas and collaborate.
Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation
In this book, socio-economic thinker Karl Polanyi looks back on the history of the British market economy and advocates the idea of realism.
Realism is the application of culture to economic theory. Polanyi then introduces that the word “economy” has two meanings.
One is the general definition of “freedom from want.” The other refers to the way people meet their needs by interacting with society and the world.
“It was my father who recommended this book ‘a long time ago,’ which was published in 1944,” Nadella told Fast Company.
Robert J. Gordon, The Rise and Fall of American Growth
In this book, Northwestern University professor Robert Gordon describes past industrial revolutions, especially the “great inventions” (electricity, pharmaceuticals, modern sanitation, communication technology, internal combustion engines, etc.) that transformed America into what it is today. ), the impact of the current “digital revolution” is very small.
Nadella referred to the book in a speech at the developer conference Build2018:
“When I thought about the history of so many times of great change, opportunity, and upheaval, I remembered a book I read about three years ago, The American Economy: The End of Growth, by Robert Gordon.
The book compares the industrial revolution to the digital revolution and shows how staggering the changes in productivity and growth the industrial revolution brought to society as a whole. Although we hear less of it in recent years, it is said that the contribution of digital technology to productivity statistics is due to the PC.”
Ian Goodfellow, Joshua Bengio, Aaron Carville, Deep Learning
This book is a textbook on one of the most important technologies of our time, “machine learning,” and the authors are three pioneers in this growing field.
After the publication of this book, Joshua Bengio became an advisor to Microsoft.
Ian Goodfellow is best known as the creator of the widely used algorithm GAN (Generative Adversarial Network).
Aaron Carville is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Operations Research (DIRO) at the University of Montreal, where he also researches new machine learning models and methods.
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, and Yann LeCun, chief AI scientist at Facebook, also praised the book.
Colin Mayer, Prosperity: Better Business Makes the Greater Good
This book shows how business leaders can make a difference through their work, and how it can ultimately fix dysfunctional systems.
“This book teaches us what it means to have social meaning within a company, or what the consequences are for the world if we don’t,” Nadella said.
The lessons of this book can be applied to the current world situation.
Nadella recently spoke to Time magazine’s Eben Shapiro about George Floyd’s death, how Microsoft is responding to the pandemic, and how it is tackling systemic discrimination in the workplace.
“If we want social change outside the company, we must also promote change within the company. And that, in turn, will lead to change in communities and the world.”
*This article first appeared on May 4, 2021.
[original text]
(Translated by Mariko Tahara, edited by Hiroya Ogura)
Source: BusinessInsider
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