Microsoft has launched a “cultural revolution” that promotes team collaboration instead of competition and seeking to rejuvenate and become a more agile company 40 years after its creation.
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The change-up, driven following the appointment of Satya Nadella as CEO of Microsoft in February last year, is omnipresent in the company headquarters in Redmond, outside Seattle on the west coast of the United States, where the company has more than 40,000 employees.
If prevailing culture of competitiveness between departments in the past, the fear of failure and resistance to sharing information, has now imposed the idea of “one Microsoft” (One Microsoft) in which people and departments are working together and where failure is an opportunity to learn.
One ‘person’
“Satya has managed to break the Taifa kingdoms level product,” said Alberto Esplugas EFE, a Spanish engineer working at Microsoft since 2003 and is part of the Group of Competition, which continues to develop products that rival firms as Apple, Amazon or Google.
Esplugas recalled that before the arrival of Nadella various divisions, such as Office or Windows, operated independently and had their own results, which favored the competition rather than collaboration.
Jesus Fernandez, a lawyer for Oviedo (Spain) who also works at the Microsoft campus in Redmond, said that “Satya realized the products could not continue in the future, selling their stuff Office and Windows, on the other side their own. “
“Now, Windows has already incorporated which are Office” Fernandez, who also emphasized the change in the way employees are evaluated he said.
Collaboration and not competition
Microsoft used to measure the performance of their workers by their peers.
Now, however, the criteria revolve around the ability of cooperation, steps to help others succeed and the impact of the work of each individual.
“In his book ‘Mindset’ (mentality), Professor of Stanford University (USA) Carol Dweck says he is delighted to have been immersed in this cultural change,” said Hogan, who encourages employees of Microsoft to work not only for their own success, but also to that of their peers.
Under this new strategy, the company founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in 1975 has prompted internal culture of “hackathones” computer competitions in which you work as a team in the development of prototypes of products or services for a short and intense period, culminating with the presentation of prototypes and choosing winners.
Let’s do it
Among those values captain initiative is Ed Essey, a licensed engineer Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), directed “The Garage,” a program that seeks to instill in Microsoft agility, speed, spirit of cooperation and willingness to get “hands to work “, which characterizes Silicon Valley startups.
“We developed the antibodies needed to combat the deadlock,” he told Efe Essey.
