Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, the CEO of the world’s most valued company and Fortune’s businessmen of the year

• Initially, many thought Nadella couldn’t be the kind of CEO Bill Gates or Steve Ballmer were.
• But Satya Nadella’s entry turned out to be an unexpected game changer.
• Microsoft became the world’s most valued company under his leadership.
  
• And it comes as no surprise that he was named the Fortune’s Businessperson of the Year in 2019 -- the very organisation that questioned his abilities earlier.
  

When Satya Nadella became Microsoft CEO on March 27, 2014, the company was losing its steam. Microsoft 8 was a sore disappointment, attrition was high, operations were haywire and more importantly-- it was losing consumer trust. It was the first time in the history of the company that no founding member was running it.

But Satya Nadella’s entry turned out to be an unexpected game changer. According to Fortune, he overcame the challenge of assembling the right team — sorting out the dog-eat-dog culture in a company of 130,000.

Soon after he did that, everything else fell into place. “I don’t know of any other software company in the history of technology that fell onto hard times and has recovered so well,” says Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix Inc.

Here’s how Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around: