 Information: Though Microsoft had achieved great success since 2000, it lagged behind its competitors such as Google since 2013 esp. in areas like search engine and cloud computing. However, after Nadella took the helm, Microsoft started to revive and even reached the top in terms of its financial data in 2020

• Reasons that lag behind competition:

  • Change of era: the original mission of Microsoft only suited the PC era; while stepping towards the mobile era, the mission is outdated and could not guide Microsoft

  • Unfriendly culture: the original culture was hierarchical, hostile and inflexible, which to some extent hinders the innovation and thus the development of the company, especially for the technology companies like Microsoft

• Reasons that successfully revive:

  • Mission redefinition, strategy alteration and culture transformation: Microsoft redefined its mission to empower every person and organization and altered its culture to learning culture accordingly  Mission: from "A PC on every desk and in every home, running Microsoft software” to “to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.”  Strategy: from hardware to cloud business  Culture: from “Know-it-All” to “Learn-it-All”

 Insights: Transforming into a learning culture is extremely important for technology companies like Microsoft since the culture could enable them better create and innovate. Several insights could be generated from Microsoft’s experience in transforming its culture to a learning culture. In order to provide reference to other organizations, these insights could be summarized into a “LEARNT” model which is originally generated from this case.

• Leadership: Leaders in the company are responsible to better understand the corporate culture and mission, and then act as the models to have the influence on their fellow employees and therefore promote the culture.

  • Implementation: Microsoft set up the guide for the leadership, including creating clarity, generating energy and delivering success

• Empathy: The employees have to have empathy for the customers, and therefore the company could better understand the customers, provide better products and service and therefore satisfy their needs

  • Implementation: as noted in the case, the employees are required to hear customer feedbacks and also established the customer-obsessed culture

• Association: When a company wants to promote higher employee morale, it can associate the employees’ personal fulfillment with the company’s mission, as claimed in the material that the consistency could drive employees to give more of their discretionary time.

  • Implication: The association between personal fulfillment and the company mission leads to a higher employee’s devotement and therefore higher work efficiency. Therefore, other companies could think these questions: What are the possible personal values that aligns with the mission? What kind of people could be recruited in the future?

• Revolution: The corporate culture should be revolutionized or updated as the external environment alters or when the mission changes. Old habits have to be abandoned while the new ones have to be embraced.

  • Implementation: Microsoft has its employee data analysis system to figure out the signals for the new culture, which could provide useful insights

  • Risks: As suggested in the material, some employees stuck to the old ways and tried to demonstrate the superiority; moreover, too much data in the system also brings difficulties in distinguishing signals and buzz

• Nurturing: The growth mindset believed that the potential could be nurtured and every one can grow and develop. Therefore, opportunities have to be identified to develop potentials

  • Implication: the nurturing thinking could also be applied to the company and business. The fixed mindset limited Microsoft within the PC market, while the growth mindset promotes Microsoft to develop in cloud business

• Team: Teamwork is more appraised than the individual heroism, which might lead to excessive inner competition and bad working environment. A good team should have cohesive goals and should be inclusive and diversified to be creative and innovative.

  • Implementation: Microsoft tried to recruit people based on shared commonalities regardless of gender, race and religion, and it could be observed that the proportion of employee types is becoming equal Appendix

 Appendix

Table 1: transformation from the PC era to cloud era

Table 2: Stakeholders

Table 3: Framework – LEARNT

Table 4: the relationship between the stakeholders and LEARNT