Book Review: Hit Refresh - Satya Nadella

When I first heard that Satya Nadella had a book out, I was somewhat surprised as at the time, he had just taken over running Microsoft. Usually you don’t see books from CEOs until they’ve been in the role for quite a while and have become philosophical about things.

But given the impact I could see he would have, I was fascinated to read his book Hit Refresh.

It was actually quite a bit more than I expected. I really enjoyed the tales of his life and how it led up to his current role.

He shared a great deal about his family situation, and you can see that he’s really been through some hard times, and you can also see a love of his family shining through.

On any measure, Microsoft is a far superior company today than when we took the reins. I think people forget just how grim many things were looking at the time.

It’s really interesting now to see Microsoft being seen as such an innovator, compared to say Apple. The jokes about Apple’s biggest contributions lately being about removing headphone sockets off phones are only partially in jest. By comparison, they seem to have lost their mojo.

If you ever wonder if some of these CEOs are worth what they get paid, you only need to compare Microsoft today with Apple to get a idea of the impact that the right one can have.

What can I say? I really enjoyed the book.

Greg’s rating: 9 out of 10

2018-07-27