Microsoft Leadership Principles

Satya Nadella

“The number one thing you have to do as a leader: to bolster the confidence of the people you lead.” — Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO

The Microsoft Leadership Principles guide the leadership across Microsoft.

I’m always fascinated by the tools, the words, and the ways that orgs use to create their culture, inspire their leaders, and guide their leadership practices.

The Microsoft Leadership Principles are just 3 principles for a total of six words.

Let’s walk through them…

What are the Microsoft Leadership Principles?

Satya Nadella introduced the Microsoft Leadership Principles in his book, Hit Refresh.

Microsoft leadership principles are a set of six words that guide the leadership of the company to achieve its vision and goals.

The Microsoft Leadership Principles are:

Create Clarity
Generate Energy
Deliver Success

These are the 3 leadership principles that Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella outlined in his book, Hit Refresh.

These principles emphasize inspiring a growth mindset, creating a diverse and inclusive environment, and driving innovation and accountability.

Here are the core principles explained:

#1. Create Clarity

Leaders are expected to communicate clear goals and priorities, providing a shared understanding of objectives.

This involves simplifying complex issues, making sense of ambiguity, and aligning the team around common goals.

From Hit Refresh:

In order to bring clarity, you’ve got to synthesize the complex.
Leaders take internal and external noise and synthesize a message from it, recognizing the true signal within a lot of noise.

#2. Generate Energy

Leaders should inspire and motivate their teams, creating an environment where people feel engaged and empowered.

This means leading with passion, encouraging collaboration, and inspiring a positive, energetic workplace.

From Hit Refresh:

Leaders generate energy, not only on their own teams but across the company.
It’s insufficient to focus exclusively on your own unit.
Leaders need to inspire optimism, creativity, shared commitment, and growth through times good and bad.
Leaders create an environment where everyone can do his or her best work.
Leaders build organizations and teams that are stronger tomorrow than today.

#3. Deliver Success

Leaders are accountable for driving outcomes and achieving results.

They focus on delivering value to customers and stakeholders.

This includes setting high standards, measuring performance, and continuously seeking ways to improve and innovate.

From Hit Refresh:

Leaders find a way to deliver success, to make things happen.
This means driving innovations that people love and are inspired to work on.
Leaders find balance between long-term success and short-term wins.
Leaders are boundary-less and globally minded in seeking solutions.

Satya Nadella on the Microsoft Leadership Principles

I think this quote from Satya says a lot about his philosophy and approach:

“I love these three leadership principles.
The heart of my message: Changing the culture of Microsoft doesn’t depend on me,
or even on the handful of top leaders I work most closely with.
It depends on everyone in the company.”
— Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO

My Take on the Microsoft Leadership Principles

I think the beauty of the Microsoft Leadership Principles is their simplicity.

They are easy enough to remember and remind yourself every day of how to operate at a higher level.

The good news is that if you have read and follow my book, Getting Results the Agile Way, you basically live the principles.

Agile Results is effectively a system for creating clarity, generating energy, and delivering success.

In fact, the tagline is: “Better Energy, Better Results.”