When he joined Microsoft at the age of 22, Satya Nadella had no plans to take over as CEO. However, he had a positive outlook and clear thinking, which prepared him for success.
In an interview with the CEO of LinkedIn, Ryan Roslansky, Nadella stated that he had always genuinely believed the job at hand was the most important.
“There was never a time where I thought the job I was doing, all through my 30 years of Microsoft, that somehow I was doing that as a way to some other job,” to Roslansky, Nadella said.
While he was a Microsoft employee, Nadella stated that becoming the company’s CEO “wasn’t even a thought.” Whatever his role, he gave it his all.
“Don’t wait for your next job to do your best work,” “When asked what lesson he had learned the most throughout his 30 years at Microsoft, Nadella responded.”You cannot grow if you don’t think your growth comes because of what you’re doing.”
That attitude worked Nadella well. He spent 22 years steadily climbing up the corporate ladder until becoming Microsoft’s third CEO in 2014.
Nadella acknowledges that his role as a leader is a privilege that he works hard to earn every day.
“It’s not like the day before I was CEO somebody said, ‘You’re gonna be CEO.’ At some point things happen. You are the CEO and the question is, have you prepared all your life to be there?” Nadella stated.
For Nadella, learning is a continuous process. This growth attitude helped him develop well-rounded skills, learn how to lead with empathy, and adapt to the fast changing market conditions.
He gave his parents credit for giving him the freedom to explore his passions.“My parents played a massive role in who I am today,” stated the CEO of Microsoft. “My father was a civil servant, an economist, and my mother was a Sanskrit professor. They were exact opposites of each other in some sense, they could not agree on anything, except giving me lots of room and a lot of confidence to become my own person, pursue my own passions.”
Nadella stated he never had an interest in studying and instead liked to play cricket. But he can remember his very first computer experience.
“Growing up middle class in India, that sort of sometimes is challenging. But one of the interesting things I distinctly remember is American technology. I remember the first I started using a computer,” he stated, continuing it was the “malleability of software” that got his attention.