Seeing Around Corners by Rita McGrath

Author:Rita McGrath
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HMH Books

Empathy as a Galvanizing Force

The Kin story, and Microsoft’s immense failure to make much headway at all in the world of mobile phones (clearly an inflection point for tech), exemplify the lack of a key component of being able to drive through an inflection and emerge in better shape at the other end. This is when seeing the inflection coming is not enough. To mobilize the organization around the messages being sent by weak signals, it is essential to create a company-wide shared point of view about the future. In contrast, the story of Microsoft today is a textbook example of how to do this, beginning with, yes, the word “empathy.”

Satya Nadella took over as CEO in February of 2014, ending a bruising six-month search that looked at people external to the company. In his very first public commentary, the themes that Nadella had been using to mobilize the organization were evident. The first was a promise to create “people-centric” IT, centered on the user, whether at work or at home, overcoming the traditional distinction many have made between consumer-focused versus enterprise-focused business. He mentioned creating great experiences (rather than great products). He talked about partnerships and ecosystems and cooperating with others.

Most significantly, Nadella placed a huge emphasis on culture. As he later said, “There is something only a CEO uniquely can do, which is set that tone, which can then capture the soul of the collective. And its culture.” One of the biggest changes he made was to focus explicitly on leading indicators, which is entirely consistent with the theory I’ve been describing in this book. He explained, “We no longer talk about the lagging indicators of success, right, which is revenue, profit. What are the leading indicators of success? Customer love.” His challenge, as he described it, was the challenge of “getting an entire organization to fall in love with these leading indicators of success.”

That, in essence, is what this chapter is all about: how do you create the conditions in which a critical mass of people all share a common point of view of the indicators that will presage future success?

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