Success versus failure. It’s a topic that’s clearly weighing heavily on the mind of Microsoft’s () new CEO Satya Nadella.
Microsoft’s previous CEO, Steve Ballmer, led the company into . But that wasn’t enough. He also which caused him to retire from the job years before he planned.
Nadella takes over a huge and successful company with a lot of issues that need fixing from its culture to
In an interview
, Nadella said Ballmer taught him two things: 1) He should never compare himself to others, and 2) he never needs to ask how he’s doing. If he’s not doing a good job, he’ll know.
Here’s what Nadella said.
“I remember asking [Ballmer]: “What do you think? How am I doing?” Then he said: “Look, you will know it, I will know it, and it will be in the air. So you don’t have to ask me, ‘How am I doing?’ At your level, it’s going to be fairly implicit.”
I went on to ask him, “How do I compare to the people who had my role before me?” And Steve said: “Who cares? The context is so different. The only thing that matters to me is what you do with the cards you’ve been dealt now. … The lesson was that you have to stay grounded, and to be brutally honest with yourself on where you stand.”
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