The making of a Microsoft CEO: Layoffs and lip service

If you assign colors to Microsoft CEOs, I suppose Bill Gates would be green, which I’m hoping has something to do with confidence and competence. Then there’s Steve Ballmer, who’d look good in purple, but all I know about that color is it made Oprah famous and Prince cry. I guess we make him red because it has some relation to volatility.

Finally, we get to Satya Nadella. Based on last week I’m going to have to designate him the lackluster beige that results from the mix of MBA schooling and long years of big, corporate culture.

So far, Nadella is following the business school new boss playbook exactly:

1. Announce your intention to stay the supposedly successful course of your predecessor while hinting the guy was an underperforming moron who thinks AA meetings are really open mic nights for amateur comedians.
2. When describing the future direction you intend to take, use long-winded and vague language with as many buzzwords as possible to obscure, even obliterate any specific meaning or intention while trying to sound decisive and knowledgeable. Be sure to refer to your underlings as a big happy family. Maybe add a GIF of a smiling teddy bear with the company logo.
3. Wait an appropriate amount of time (at least three months) and announce what sound like massive changes to the supposedly successful course of your predecessor but make sure to describe those changes in hugely broad terms that could mean anything. Keep referring to your underlings as a big, happy family. Definitely add the teddy bear. Maybe have it hug a kitten.
4. Use more long-winded and vague language to describe this new course in “more detail” without committing to anything in case sudden reversals are required and you need to pick a quick patsy or two to take the fall. Keep several teddy bears in your desk drawer to hand out as post-firing mementos.
5. Wait two more months, then screw over as many members of your big, happy family as possible in order to establish yourself as a fearsome, decisive leader and to look like you’ve cut spending because that’ll kick off a short-term stock increase at the end of the fiscal year and ensure your juicy performance bonus.

Nice work — right on target, to boot.

X gets the ax at Microsoft

I get dumping the Xbox entertainment division. Microsoft is having enough trouble competing in other consumer spaces like phones, phablets, and search engines, so there’s no reason to try and compete with Netflix and Roku right now. Fix what you have, then see if you can win somewhere new. It’s smart and safe, if a tad obvious and gutless.

I get dumping the Android-based Nokia X, too. Whatever silver-tongued devil got that thing this far should either be promoted for his or her gift of gab — or be forced to shave Kevin Turner’s back. I suspect the latter. But the supersexy multicarrier next-gen Windows Phone, code-named McLaren and due in the fall, also got dropped. I’m not sure what’s good about freezing your product line while every other mobile phone maker is throwing out shiny new rectangles quicker than a 10-year-old Pez dispenser. But what do I know?

I’m scratching my head at the rest of this power play. A “cloud-first and mobile-first company”? A “productivity and platform company for the mobile and cloud world”? What does that even mean? When you think about it, he can’t make any changes without taking personal responsibility, and you know that’s not going to happen. That kind of unequivocal John Wayne move makes the average MBA stain his Underoos and break out in hives. And frankly, what are his options?

If Satya messes with multi-billion-dollar Windows, the board will have him cast into a lake of fire. That has to stay a cash cow. And the real reason Windows remains a cash cow is because of Office, so you can’t mess with that either, not to mention that it’s most of your so-called cloud services play. Windows Azure is obviously immune, and since Windows Server is the other half of that foggy hybrid cloud/cloud OS message you won’t shut up about, that’s off limits, too.

There’s SQL Server, but that’s a growing multi-billion-dollar business today and it’s another huge part of your cloud service and hybrid cloud mantra, so fingers off. Visual Studio is the only way you can get developers to implement this stuff, and MSL is the only way they can learn how — no big changes there. Xbox is making bank and you’ve gone and tied Phone inextricably to Windows, so backing out of either doesn’t make much sense. What’s left?

One step forward, two steps back

Oh yeah, cut employees while expecting increased “innovation” and faster release cycles. Then throw an inscrutable monkey wrench into the “contingent staff” machine to make moving forward that much harder. In case you can’t translate, “contingent staff” refers to consulting and other outside vendor companies that do much of the actual work at Microsoft, especially around marketing and customer relations, along with some engineering. That’s because under Bonnie Ballmer, Microsoft went from a tech-talented marketing and sales culture to an MBA marketing and sales culture — and I mean pure MBA.

If you’ve had to sit through as many mano-a-product manager briefings as I have, you’ll have noticed a significant shift in their level of knowledge over the years. From 1995 to 2005, if you ask a deep question, the product reps — who, for the most part, weren’t MBAs — waded in and discussed the issue in detail. Set it up, tear it down, operate whatever it was, they did it all.

Ask an even slightly complex question after 2005 or, God forbid, ask them to use whatever it is they’re pitching, and the product rep grows wide-eyed because that isn’t covered in the script issued by the consultant. Or if it is, the rep won’t bother to read that far on the plane because, apparently, a Colgate MBA confers the ability to wing anything. Caught flat-footed, the rep gets flustered, tries a flat joke, and stammers something about having to look into that and get right back to you. With reps like that doing marketing, PR, and sales, you bet your bootie they need outside consultants to actually “do” while the Microsoftees cover what MBAs are good at: manage.

But now Satya’s made it difficult for consulting companies to keep working with Microsoft, and it’s inscrutable both why and how. According to the weird memo, every contingent staffer loses building and network access after 18 months and has to take a six-month break … but only from access. They can keep working for Microsoft during those six months, but can’t get to any of the resources they need to do that work.

What?

I’ve read the memo half a dozen times and I still don’t see how that plan adds any value. Supposedly it’s about protecting intellectual property, which I assume means leaks, but since I’ve never gotten a scoop from one of Microsoft’s consultants, only its partners and internal employees, that’s bogus. I can’t fathom what the real reason might be, except that Nadella wants to emphasize his “because I said so” prerogative.

The sound and the fury

Overall, this whole matter wasn’t terribly meaningful, and I remain — surprise, surprise — entirely unimpressed. Sure, cutting 18,000 people is steep, but it’s over six months and most are coming out of Nokia, which those folks had to have seen coming. The rest are worldwide sales and marketing, which means Microsoft will have a harder time talking to customers. What else is new?

I’m not worried about most of those people since many are stock millionaires from the old days, and Amazon and Google will snap up the rest as cafeteria and daycare workers or subjects of “Don’t let this happen to you” seminars. Two weird and underperforming divisions were shut down, and a series of annoyingly long memos were leaked that had little or no real information, direction, or content but had all the strong adjectives and buzzwords to make the CEO look like he knows what he’s doing without actually saying what he’s doing.  

Congrats, Satya. You’re far more boring than Steve, and after almost six months, you still haven’t done anything tangible or even provided evidence of a pulse — exactly the CEO that Microsoft needs.

This article, “The making of a Microsoft CEO: Layoffs and lip service,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com.