Why Satya Nadella is an inspirational personality for many of us?

[former_member182098]

There is no better time than now and it gives me immense pleasure to start my new blog in this new year with the newly elected CEO of Microsoft "Satya Nadella". I find it extremely difficult to write a few words on such an inspirational personality, as I do not have any knowledge about him before. Like any other people, I only saw on the internet and news papers that he has become CEO of Microsoft. The name suggests he is from my own state and curiously I looked at his wiki. Being a Telugu (my mother tongue) person, it is a great proud feeling for me. Like me, many people might not be knowing his name a month back, unless they are closely associated with him. But, now today everybody in the world knows him. The whole world is looking at him what he is going to deliver for Microsoft. Being an Indian, being an employee of Microsoft, being a cricket lover, being a Telugu person, being an information technology professional, being an innovation lover, being a poetic lover, being a family oriented person, being a school mate, being his friend, being his college mate and being his professor, everybody has their own cherished moments to see him at that highest position. This is just an attempt to inspire all our SCN community members from the incredible journey of an incredible, extraordinary and outstanding personality. There is no other motive behind writing this blog. There are many number of CEOs of big companies does exists in this world, but why should we talk about Satya. First things first, it is not an ordinary thing to become a CEO of Microsoft, which is magnanimous in its scale, operations and resources. It is a great achievement to lead one of the world's best software companies. When, people can only dream to be part of such an amazing organisation, he proved with his sheer excellence to lead the entire Organisation. It is an unbelievable 22 years of amazing journey with such an exemplary organisation with great commitment. Being an Indian, going to US and leading Microsoft is nothing less than visiting moon or climbing Mount Everest. In fact, this is a very proud feeling for every Indian and every Microsoft lover.

Most of the Indians that I have seen are hard working, soft spoken, down to earth, shy, introvert and humble with abundant knowledge. There may be some exceptions to this rule, but to the core, I stick to what I said. They are dedicated, disciplined and committed with "to do more" attitude. I am in no way making less the people from other countries. I have worked with highly talented people from various countries and cultures across different industries. Hence, no negative remarks to my words please. We should accept the talent wherever it is coming from, particularly when the world becomes a global village with the technology. Like me, the fellow Indian people are in search of global opportunities, working long hours in the destiny countries, missing all those lovely moments at home. This success story would bring lot of cherish to those people away from home and also people at home. What this success story means to India? It means a lot. It is a great recognition for India on the global scale. It also breaks the myth that the "Indians are generally not good managers".

When, once in a life time personality like Bill Gates states that there is no better person than Satya to lead Microsoft, we can just imagine what commendable qualities that he might be having. Bill is always respected by people across the boarders and around the globe for his philanthropic gestures. Many people like me would still love him for his generosity. When there is extreme competition for such a gigantic position and it is always not an easy task to select one, still Bill has kept utmost faith on Satya. I am very sure that the whole Microsoft team would proudly take this great organisation to a new league. Being a passionate Microsoft lover and user, I cannot imagine a day without using the Microsoft products. Particularly, being a core accounting professional, I could not imagine my life without MS Excel. Like me, no other accounting and finance professional in this world would accept their lives without Excel. These Microsoft products are part of parcel of our lives. I know there could be challenges like the computers and laptops are dying, cloud capabilities are enhancing and severe competition from Google & Apple etc., but, I am sure Microsoft will use these hurdles as their opportunities under the dynamic leadership of Satya.

Like any other curious internet user, I am also searching more about him, his education, journey, positions and achievements. I am privileged to read his email drafted to all Microsoft employees, as it is published in number of websites. When he started his first sentence with a word "humbling day", it shows the great character of his personality. Diamonds shine by its inherent power, great personalities shine by their humility and humbleness. The more they become big in their life, they becomes very humble and down to earth. It is really a well drafted and thought provoking letter, not just for Microsoft employees, but his words would inspire any professional. When he says in his communication "Our industry does not respect tradition - it only respects innovation", it clearly states what his focus is. Visionaries think beyond generations. If you have any chance, please go through his mail, it clearly shows what a great vision he is having.

Why should we all discuss about these things? Is it really helpful for our Careers? Would our SAP Careers get any overnight change? How would his success story help our careers? When we are only struggling for our next jobs, does this outstanding journey is any meaning to us? Would SAP Consultants or IT professionals benefit in any way out of the above discussion? These are all the general questions that might be lingering around in our minds. Career means it is not just updating CVs, forwarding to agents and attending rigorous interviews. Career is not just job, it is a journey of professional life with loads of commitment. Even if we can get 0.1% of his commitment, iceberg of his extraordinary journey and particle of his success, it is more than enough. If we can get a page or even a word out his experience that would mean that we have achieved a lot of success. If you have willingness to inspire yourself, you can inspire from anything and everything. We are very fortunate that we are born in the same era like him. May be tomorrow he becomes a history, but that would be learning lessons for future generations. I hardly know him for a week or so, however, when I reminds his name, I can see his smiling face a fresh. I cannot describe such a confident feeling myself, you only need to experience yourself personally. When his professors and friends are proudly saying about him, you should experience their feelings, definitely their feelings cannot be described.

Probably, I am the least deserved person to write anything thing about him. Still, I get lots of inspiration from his articles, blogs, interviews and stories. If our SCN professional community can get a leaf out of the great book of Satya Sir, I am sure it would be not only helpful in our careers, but also our personal lives. Let us all learn together from this great visionary and extraordinary personality.

I always love to capture the thoughts that I get at half sleep in the morning, before they get evaporated. At writing this sentence, I am still in half sleep :smile: I strongly believe that the thoughts we get in the early morning comes from our senses. As I reiterated, I have no qualification or authority to write about him, but I would sense and inspire myself of his following great qualities. Hope you would also love them. At the same time, it is unfair on my part to imagine his every best quality. The people who have closely associated with him in their lives would know him better. If there are any such lucky people around in our SCN community, please share your experiences, as a learning experience to the SCN Community.

Perseverance

It clearly shows what is required to be a successful individual in life. His amazing commitment for the same organisation for more than 22 years and still feeling the same amount of energy to make it big. He believed that the Microsoft is the world's best and dedicated his entire life for the company. His sheer excellence in business and technology makes him the right choice for the most prestigious position. When ordinary people are still struggling to change the organisations frequently for small amount of salary hike, his level of perseverance and commitment would be a great direction for all of us. I could say join the professionally managed organisation, work hard with commitment and perseverance without looking for monetary gain, your excellence would be automatically recognized and rewarded.

Inspiration

If you read his email communication to employees, he says "This is the same inspiration that continues to drive me today". It is so hard and tough in this difficult political and economic world for anybody to maintain such an inspiration for so long. Therefore, it is our duty to inspire ourselves from everything and anything. If we have right attitude, we can get inspiration from even objects like Sun, Sea, Moon and Mountains etc. When we listen an inspiring story like this, it is our primary duty to inspire ourselves to the core. It clearly shows how important in our life to be inspired at all times. Hope his inspiration will give us a fresh life. Let us all inspire ourselves from his great success story.

Execution

God has given great gift to humans to dream. Every human dream their future in one way or the other. However, most of the people would fail to execute their dreams. They would create their own comfort zones and lingering around them for years, when they come out from one, they would again create another comfort zone. By the time they come out of these comfort zones, this short human life is over. Only exceptional people would execute what they wanted in life. I could imagine in my own words from Satya's interviews "Dare to dream big, execute your plans well and work hard". In this regard, I would like to recollect the words from legendary Lionel Messi - "Starting early and staying late. Training day after day, year after year. It took me 17 years and 114 days to become an overnight success".

Leadership

If you see Satya's Wiki blog Satya Nadella - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia it clearly shows the leadership positions that he held. Being one of the world's best organisation, everybody looks at it with different analytic findings. It is not an easy to perform exceedingly well on year to year basis in this extremely competitive technology market. Cloud services in Microsoft grew to $ 20.3 billion in June 2013 from $ 16.6 billion when he took in 2011. These are not small figures, the differential revenues are even bigger than the consolidated gross revenues of many of the world's finest companies. It clearly shows that what he can do to the business of Microsoft and the faith that their top management kept on him. This is an opportunity for us to learn a small tip from his leadership qualities.

Innovation

If you ask me one word from his whole mail, I would summarize it as "Innovation". Microsoft already proved to the world what they are capable of doing things in building the platforms and ecosystems for the future generations. But, they are not enough. The technology is changing extremely fast. Nobody is going to appreciate the tradition, the only Mantra for any Organisation to sustain and lead the future is the "Innovation". This rule is not an exception to the individuals. Even individuals can only sustain with innovative thinking, whatever we have learned in our past is just a history. What we are going to prove to our Clients is to show our innovative thinking and solutions, that is what really matters.

Learning

I cannot remind enough the emphasis that he has put on continuous learning. Every sentence of his interview is somehow connected to the learning new things. All his professors say in their interview that "Satya use to ask so many questions". This shows the enthusiasm as an individual that he has throughout his life. Following are the excerpts taken from his interview "I used to fly to Chicago Friday nights, attend classes Saturdays and come back to Redmond to work during the week". He also says, "Always wanted to build things. I'm a learner. I think the thing that I realized is, what excites me is that I'm learning something... I fundamentally believe that if you are not learning new things, you stop doing great and useful things". As per Forbes magazine, he is also enjoys online courses. It does not really matter whether you go to class room or online courses. The only thing that matters is whether we are learning new things or not. I sincerely hope that all our SCN members would learn something from his continuous learning.

Team work

Satya is an avid fan of cricket. He played for his school team "Hyderabad Public School" and still enjoys cricket a lot. Do not imagine that I am going to ask you to learn playing cricket. :wink: He shares his love on cricket and says "I think playing cricket taught me more about working in teams and leadership that has stayed with me throughout my career". It clearly shows why it is important to be part of teams, working in team and working along with them. No individual can drive this whole world. It is always to be a team. Therefore, the importance of team work cannot be neglected. Being an SAP professional, we need to understand the importance of team work in our lives and careers.

Opportunities

Ordinary people go behind opportunities. However, extraordinary people will make every hurdle as their opportunity and prove the world what they are capable of doing. If you go through Satya's life journey, where he started a humble beginning of life and achieved an unimaginable success. I can understand it is not an easy journey to reach such a great position, it is all because of his excellence and sheer hard work. His life is a great learning example for all us to know how impossible things can be made easier with the hard work. If we believe in luck, at most we may click once in a life time, however, if we believe hard work, will see the opportunities throughout our lives, knocking the doors. I cannot get any better inspiration than his success story. Kudos !!!

Vision

Small minds only think about themselves, average minds can think about people around them and great minds inspire people across globe and generations to come. Great visionaries change the way we live our lives like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Probably, we cannot see another persons like them, they are one and the only on the history of this universe. Their fame will ever be shined like Sun. It is almost impossible to fill shoes like those people and change the world. But, I am very hopeful with Satya's dedicated 22 years of journey and experience, he brings a lot of new dimensions to Microsoft in future. Probably, his able leadership and guidance may change the way we live, create new platforms and ecosystems, who knows it may even impact our careers and day to day activities. Let us all watch with hope.

Excellence

There is no second thought that what Satya has achieved, it is pure brilliance and sheer excellence. To become a third CEO of a great company is anybody's life time dream. He has already created history. Whenever, I heard a word "Excellence" I would remember none other than legendary Shri JRD Tata. It is a great honour for me to remind his golden words "One must strive for excellence of even perfection, in any task, however small, and never be satisfied with the second best". - JRD Tata, 1965. I hope and wish Satya would continue the same excellence to bring a positive change to this world. Let us all cherish these great moments to inspire ourselves by reminding his wonderful story.

If knowingly or unknowingly, I give any disrespect or hard feeling to anybody on this blog, it is only because of my limited knowledge, nothing else. I dedicate my blog to Satya Sir, wholeheartedly, I wish him a great success in all his future efforts and endeavours. On behalf of our SCN Community, please let us all join with me to wish him a great success to bring wonderful laurels to this beautiful world.