Browsing the Future

In the technology business, it sometimes seems like we spend all of our time hitting refresh. Startups come and go. A rare handful flourish and remake themselves every couple of years as they blow through stages of growth that demand different things of them. People move on to their next plays, transforming their careers as they move from one company to the next. Technology itself is a constant process of renewal, with each generation of invention providing both foundation and motivation for the next.

Hit Refresh, the new book from Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO and my boss, offers a glimpse at something that we’ve never seen: what happens when you hit refresh at the third largest technology company in the world, one with more than four decades of history, and the success that comes from its leading role in the personal computing revolution. I have to confess that I’m fascinated with the process of hitting refresh, and am excited that Satya chose to share a little bit of what that looks like. There are many valuable lessons in the book, and even though not every situation will be like Microsoft’s, there are many things that are the same in any process of reinvention.

Hitting refresh is the choice that we make to move forward, sometimes reacting to changes in the world around us, and sometimes to enable new discoveries that will advance the frontier of what is possible. When I joined my first Silicon Valley company, Google, AI was a movie by Steven Spielberg that I had just seen and my cell phone was something I used to make phone calls. Fourteen years later, AI and mobile and everything in-between have advanced to point that I can have a productive conversation with the phone itself. It's almost unbelievable how much has changed with technology over the past decade and a half.

This cycle of constant reinvention is not easy. It requires curiosity, vision, determination, extraordinary leadership, an amazing, highly adaptable team, and boatloads of hard work. And when you hit refresh on a project, a technology, or a company where there is a track record of success and all of the momentum, expectations, and learned behaviors that go with that success, the individual or group of folks hitting the refresh button need to have the courage of their convictions and boundless patience.

In addition to sharing Microsoft’s experiences, Satya shares many that are uniquely his own. Being an introvert myself, and someone who very much appreciates privacy for my family, it really struck me how generous it was of Satya to share both uplifting and difficult experiences from his work and personal life. Experiencing and figuring out how to deal with both the good and bad that life has to offer is an essential part of the human experience. I always appreciate knowing that leaders and role models are humans, that not everything was easy for them, and in being able to learn something from their difficulties, not just their successes.