On Pressing F5

Hit Refresh

p.15. ( ) was a place where bureaucracy had replaced innovation, and office politics had taken the place of teamwork. We had fallen behind.

p.111 Most employees felt that ( ) was not headed in the right direction, and doubted whether it had the capacity to innovate. The company had grown sick. Employees felt fatigued and frustrated. They were fed up with falling behind the competition despite having grand plans and brilliant ideas.

Employees had joined ( ) with big dreams. But the actual work seemed to amount to little more than pleasing senior management, handling burdensome tasks, and arguing in conference rooms.

p.134 Talented, intellectually gifted people were just talking. Honestly, most of the conversation felt skewed toward finding holes in each other's arguments. I decided it was time to refresh — to start experimenting.

First question: What word goes in the blank?

1. Microsoft 2. My company 3. Someone else's company

If you work at a company that's "growing," you might have chosen option 3.

But as the one posing the question, I want to offer a hint: there are multiple correct answers.

Hit Refresh is the story of Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft — how this Indian-American CEO took the helm and transformed its organizational culture and direction. To cut to the conclusion: they changed the CEO, and Microsoft started doing remarkably well. (I don't usually enjoy this type of book, but certain passages kept overlapping with things I was living through, so I found myself writing about it.)

A brief look at Microsoft's press coverage at the time:

"In the 2010s, Microsoft was experiencing its darkest period. Its core business — the PC operating system — had become a liability. The mobile market exploded while the PC market contracted sharply. Apple dominated smartphones; Google's Android seized the mobile app processor space. The tablet Microsoft had pioneered was pushed aside by Apple and Samsung. Microsoft's market cap, which had once exceeded 700 trillion KRW, plummeted to 250 trillion KRW by 2010."

— Economic Review, book review by Joo Taesan

That was the situation. You probably pictured a Windows desktop and a PowerPoint presentation. Press ESC and come back to reality.

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For the past several years, the central theme for most news organizations has been "transformation." Some emphasized video, some experimented with new formats, others pushed digital. Setting aside the methods — why did this conversation arise in the first place? Drilling down to the root, the core was simple: "We'll collapse if things continue as they are."

During this period, I was working within a labor union, hearing endless talk about so-called "innovation" — and equally, the unfiltered reactions of the people inside those organizations. At times I understood the company's urgency, but more often I found myself nodding along with the staff's grievances. (To be clear: I was in the union.)

If I had to describe the emotional state of most people who came to the union at that time in a single word, it would be exhaustion. The company was cracking the whip, demanding the river be crossed, while employees couldn't bring themselves to take the first step. To borrow language from Hit Refresh: "The company was sick, and we felt we had fallen behind. Talented people were just talking — and most of the talking was focused on finding holes in each other's arguments." A heavy sense of cynicism pervaded everything: the feeling that "nothing we do will work anyway."

If you're reading this right now, there's a decent chance you recognize what I'm describing.

(Of course, if you don't — be grateful. You may be working somewhere better than you realize.)

One more quote:

What was most heartbreaking was that many employees believed the company had lost its soul.

I wasn't an owner, a CEO, an editor-in-chief, or even a team leader. But I felt exactly this at the time. Many people felt they were drifting away from the calling that had drawn them to the profession in the first place. Purpose and values had faded; what remained was only the work to be processed and the exhaustion of processing it. After all that effort, what usually came back was the public's insult of "hack journalist." In that environment, what were most people actually thinking?

Looking back now at most news organizations, they still haven't managed to Hit Refresh. They've certainly pressed F5 any number of times. Someone pressed it and exploded in impatience. Someone else hammered it until they gave up and returned to the old way. And now we're still pressing F5, watching the spinning cursor with growing anxiety. (Actually, "hit refresh" isn't just a simple page reload — it's closer to a full reset, a format, the kind of wipe-and-restart we mean when we say "start from scratch.")

That feeling, exactly.

Results haven't been zero. As the book notes, even Siddhartha's enlightenment began with the first step of perceiving reality — witnessing the Four Sufferings. Everyone recognizes the "crisis" and is trying to find role models, set a direction. Collecting user data, launching new services, bringing in outside consultants, writing internal innovation reports... And yet, why does the far shore of the river we need to cross remain invisible?

Honestly, I don't know the answer. (I'd like to believe it's a journey we're still on.)

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Hit Refresh finds its answers through a surprisingly romantic lens: the reason for existence and empathy. A reason for existence — the essential value a company pursues. (The book calls it "soul," which feels a bit much to me, but the intent is sound.)

Satya Nadella, who became CEO in early 2014, believed that Microsoft's essence wasn't its Windows operating system business but the original founding vision of "changing the world." As he defined it, Microsoft's core competitive strength was "empowering every person and organization on the planet to achieve more." (In plainer terms: let's provide the platforms and productivity tools that let people do real work.)

Smart people need justification and motivation. They need to explain to themselves why they're still here, and make that story coherent. Everyone working at Microsoft was presumably being headhunted by Google, Amazon, and Apple — and probably thinking, "What am I doing, stuck here?" Then a relatively unknown Indian-American CEO arrived and planted a new sense of purpose.

The first thing he did as CEO was to keep asking:

Why does Microsoft exist?

What are the people in this organization working toward?

p.124 My first instinct was to listen. Soon I was hearing from hundreds of employees, regardless of title or department. The answer to the first question — why does Microsoft exist — was clear. It was to empower people through our products.

The second thing Nadella did well was to pursue purpose and meaning while simultaneously emphasizing individual growth and development. He gave every employee autonomy to work independently — and that became the key to dismantling the pervasive cynicism, departmental protectionism, and bureaucracy. He didn't ask people to sacrifice for the organization. He said, "When you succeed, we succeed." (In a sense, zero-sum game theory and what people now call "token economies" ultimately pursue the same thing: designing a system where no one loses and everyone can win together.)

p.148. If every person grows in their role and in their life, we as an organization will also grow.

So, is Microsoft doing well?

For now, yes.

Since Nadella took office in 2014, Microsoft's stock price rose more than 60%, and its market cap exceeded $730 billion in Q1 2018. It climbed to the top in cloud services — the area Nadella had championed — and the outlook remains strong. More recently, GitHub — often called "Facebook for developers" — was acquired by Microsoft, which is really best understood as GitHub choosing Microsoft. Microsoft had become attractive again.

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Let's bring this back to our own situation. (By "our situation," I mean you — if you feel stuck and frustrated where you are.)

Are we asking ourselves again what our reason for existence is? What is our "soul"?

(Last year, one major outlet launched a brand campaign under the tagline "Put at the Center" with stated values around on-the-ground truth, integration, and growth. Honestly — it's all reasonable language, but it doesn't move me to save it to my heart.)

Is it a value we actually need to protect? One that makes our people nod in agreement?

Are we creating conditions for our people to learn, experience, grow, and move in a more creative direction?

But then... why am I the one asking these questions????

Right. Time to go back to work.