My Kindle highlights from the book “Hit Refresh”
“He raised smart questions about our strategy. And he worked well with the hard-core engineers.”
“We needed to build deeper empathy for our customers and their unarticulated and unmet needs. It was time to hit refresh.”
“This is a book about transformation — one that is taking place today inside me and inside of our company, driven by a sense of empathy and a desire”
“The first principle is to compete vigorously and with passion in the face of uncertainty and intimidation.”
“On reflection, a second principle is simply the importance of putting your team first, ahead of your personal statistics and recognition.”
“But it is impossible to be an empathetic leader sitting in an office behind a computer screen all day. An empathetic leader needs to be out in the world, meeting people where they live and seeing how the technology we create affects their daily activities.”
“The CEO is the Curator of an Organizational culture. Everything is possible for a company when its culture is about listening, learning, and harnessing individual passions and talents to the company mission”
“In business school I had read Young Men and Fire, a book by Norman Maclean (best known for A River Runs Through It). It tells the story of a tragic forest fire that killed thirteen “smokejumpers” (parachuting firefighters) in 1949 and the investigation that followed. What I remembered was the lesson that went unheeded: the urgent need to build shared context, trust, and credibility with your team. The lead firefighter, who ultimately escaped the blaze, knew that he had to build a small fire in order to escape the bigger fire. But no one would follow him. He had the skills to get his men out of harm’s way, but he hadn’t built the shared context needed to make his leadership effective. His team paid the ultimate price.”
“Why do I exist?” “Why does our institution exist?” “What is the role of a multinational corporation in our world? “What is the role of a leader in digital technology, especially as the world turns to tech as such a crucial input to drive growth?” These questions haunt me, and they motivated me to write Hit Refresh.”
“journey to discover what I uniquely can contribute to society and how to rediscover the soul of Microsoft, to define our role as a global company. They guide me daily in the pursuit to bring empathy together with big ideas in order to make a real difference. Hopefully the stories and lessons along the course of my journey have produced something useful to you in your own life and work.”
“One where builders, makers, and creators achieve great things.”
“But, equally important, one where every individual can be their best self, where diversity of skin color, gender, religion, and sexual orientation is understood and celebrated.”
