Hit Refresh: The Quest to Rediscover Microsoft's Soul and Imagine a Better Future for Everyone

by Satya Nadella

“the future enters into us, in order to transform

itself in us, long before it happens.”

Pace comes when you do your thing.

So long as you enjoy it, do it mindfully and well, and have an honest purpose behind it, life won’t fail you.

The first principle is to compete vigorously and with passion in the face of uncertainty and intimidation.

you must always have respect for your competitor, but don’t be in awe. Go and compete.

second principle is simply the importance of putting your team first, ahead of your personal statistics and recognition.

leader must see the external opportunities and the internal capability and culture—and all of the connections among them—and respond to them before they become obvious parts of the conventional wisdom.

It would be only too easy to continue to live off our past successes.

Kidder teaches us that technology is nothing more than the collective soul of those who build it. The technology is fascinating, but even more fascinating is the profound obsession of its designers.

envy is negative and outer-directed, not driven from within, and so I knew that it wouldn’t carry us very far down the path to true renewal. We could also motivate ourselves through competitive zeal.

lead with a sense of purpose and pride in what we do, not envy or combativeness.

We should only be in the phone business when we have something that is really differentiated.

Intelligence is an amazing force multiplier. To be successful amid the explosion of data, people need analytics, services, and agents that use intelligence to help them manage their scarcest resource—time.

“The view you adopt for yourself profoundly affects the way you lead your life.”

Empathy, we learned, was indivisible and was a universal value. And we learned that empathy is essential to deal with problems everywhere, whether at Microsoft or at home; here in the United States or globally. That is also a mindset, a culture.

It is about a dynamic learning culture.

every one of us having that attitude—that mindset—of being able to overcome any constraint, stand up to any challenge, making it possible for us to grow

It’s a way of being.

We had to get out of the mode of thinking in which we assume that others have more power over us than we do.

The fundamental source of resistance to change is fear of the unknown.

not to climb the ladder, but to do important work.

“To be a leader in this company, your job is to find the rose petals in a field of shit.”

Leaders take internal and external noise and synthesize a message from it, recognizing the true signal within a lot of noise.

openness is the best way to get things done and to ensure all parties feel terrific about the outcome.

“He who has a ‘why’ to live for can bear almost any ‘how.’”

“Trust but verify.”

“Consistency over time is trust.”