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>> Welcome, everyone.
I'm Glenda McNeal, President of
Enterprise Strategic Partnerships at
American Express.
I'm thrilled to continue the In
Partnership with Series with Satya
Nadella, Chairman and CEO of Microsoft.
Satya, thanks so much for talking with
me today.
>> Thank you so much, Glenda, for the
opportunity. It's a real pleasure to be
with you.
>> Excellent. I want to start out with a
couple of rapid-fire questions that Bing
Chat suggested I ask you.
Can you share a recent book that has
influenced your thinking?
>> I recently reread, Glenda, a book called
Bootstrapping written by Thierry
Bardini. I think if I get the author's
name right. It was written in the early
2000s.
I reread it recently because it's a book
about computing and in particular about
the work of Douglas Engelbart, who is
sort of very well known for the person
who first came up with the mouse, the
keyboard, the graphical user interface.
So, a big sort of contributor to
personal computing. And he's the one who
really conceptualized this
human-computer sort of symbiosis, if you
will,
to create,
you know, augment human capability. And
I felt like, you know, in given the age
of co-pilots,
it is good to go back
to that first computer age and say,
"Well, essentially now this new
generation of AI is really helping us
take that vision to the next step." And
so, that's the book that at least I
would say has influenced a lot of my you
know, thinking in in the recent times.
>> Would you recommend that for a layman?
>> Absolutely. It's actually a beautiful
book. It's not nothing to do with sort
of any technology. It's a human story of
a person. In fact, it's sort of one of
the most inspiring parts is why did he
choose his life's work, right? So, he
went on this quest of saying, "I want to
make a choice." He was I think
an electrical engineer by training. He
had many different options, and he chose
this particular field of human-computer
interaction because he felt that
humanity needed new tools to deal with
what was sort of a lot more, you know,
critical issues with urgency. And so, he
chose this. And so, I think it's as much
of a human story as a technical story.
>> That's great. Well, it sounds
interesting. Um a lot of Microsoft
products out there. Do you have a
favorite one?
>> That's always the hard one.
I mean, I must say this Copilot. Like
even, you know, uh we now have something
called Microsoft Copilot. It's kind of
like my AI agent. Um and I use it for,
as I always say, you know, for my travel
and for my meeting prep. It's the one
tool for anything. Copilot has become my
go-to for lots and lots of tasks every
day.
>> Well, it sounds as though it's getting a
lot of attention. I know we talk about
it here at American Express. So, we
appreciate all the work and all the
products. As you know, we are a big
Microsoft customer. So, thank you very
much for all the hard work that you and
your team do together. So, let's talk a
little bit about leadership. You started
at Microsoft in 1992 as a software
engineer, and you became CEO in 2014.
When you took on the role, you focused
on company culture.
You said the team needed to rediscover
the soul of Microsoft, your reason for
being. What did you see at that time as
the big opportunities, and what did you
do to make people believe they could
achieve the level of success that you
have today?
>> I think a lot about what keeps
organizations like American Express or
Microsoft or anyone
relevant into the future because in some
sense all of us, what happened in the
past is in the past, and the question
really is
how do you renew yourself and stay
relevant for our customers. And that I
think comes from two sources, at least
in my mind. One is a sense of purpose
and mission.
Uh which helps with your company's
ability and the people's ability to pick
on things that add value. Uh right? So,
for example, in our case, we talk about
our mission to empower every person and
every organization on the planet to
achieve more. And I feel that that has a
lot to do with how we even we chose this
design concept of Copilot. I don't think
this Copilot as a product would have
gotten created if we didn't have the
mission we have, if you will. So,
therefore, one is going back constantly
to your mission, reinterpreting that
mission for today and tomorrow, not for
the past. Obviously, technologies come
and go. So, therefore, to be able to
keep your mission constant, but
technology and its expression in
products and services fresh, I think is
one side of it. The other side of it is
culture, to your point, which is in
order for us to do that, you have to
have a learning culture.
Right? It's very hard to manage change
and change in technology, change in
business models, change in everything,
pretty much. Uh if you don't have a
learning culture. And so, we emphasized
uh internally this cultural meme, which
has been very, very helpful to us, of
growth mindset. In other words, you
know, going from being the know-it-alls
to learn-it-alls. Uh and quite frankly,
right now, again, back in this age of
AI, I must say what happened in the
cloud over a 15-year period, it seems to
be happening now in a 5-year period. So,
therefore, we now need to be the best
learn-it-alls we can ever be.
Uh and so, yeah. So, these would be the
two things, Glenda, I would say, sense
of purpose and mission, and reimagining
that uh for what is possible today with
new technology and new products and
services, and then using our culture to
give us that ability to sort of pursue
the mission.
>> One of the things I loved in going
through your book, Hit Refresh, um at
the beginning you talk about empathy.
And uh how empathy played a key role in
how you brought the team on board. And I
think everything that you said
um kind of shrouded in this notion of
being empathetic and understanding the
the reason for your being has been quite
powerful. Um
and you guys have achieved incredible
success financially. You're on the
cutting edge of tech advancements. And
so clearly
the path you set and the way you're
leading today uh has made a huge
difference. And so that's exciting to to
know and to understand. So thank you for
that.
>> No, absolutely. And I think sometimes
people think of empathy as some sort of
a soft skill that's nice to have, but
it's not a critical skill. I The way I
think about it is it's sort of a a very
important design skill that every
business leader needs to have. Because
at the end of the day we all have
inherently as humans empathy for
different things. Collectively we need
to harness it to be able to have a
better insight, for example, into the
unmet unarticulated needs of customers,
for example. That's at the end of the
day American Express or Microsoft will
be successful if we have that insight.
Uh some people may call it design
insight and skills. And I would submit
that it comes from a deep sense of
empathy
uh for customer issues and customer
opportunities. And so therefore I think
it's a not just a soft skill, but it's
probably the hardest skill to learn and
exercise in order to be able to be
successful in business.
>> I completely agree. I think it's a
critical leadership skill. So we agree
on that. Um you changed Microsoft's
mission, as you just said, um to empower
every person and every organization on
the planet to achieve more. One of the
ways you do that is through
partnerships. And I can easily say that
you and I have have shared belief that
partnerships power success and American
Express and Microsoft have a very long
history of leveraging each other's
products and partnering to innovate.
When you think about Microsoft's mission
to achieve more, what attributes
differentiate your most successful
partners? What do you look for?
>> So, first of all, it's I'm so glad you
brought up this
entire thing about partnerships because
I think about its core
to our, I'll call it, sense of purpose
and mission of empowering every person
and every organization. Right there,
you know, is the definition of
partnerships because in some sense, we
will only be successful if our
technology output can be parlayed by our
partners into more higher value for
their customers, right? That when I we
work with American Express, it's that's
why I like that that touchless expense
or touch-free expense management system
you build with some input from us, but
you're you're building your own
platforms, your own technology, right?
Same thing in fact, we're already it's
fascinating to see how Bing Chat is
being used, I think, in your customer
service in order to be able to do better
customer service responses and what have
you. So, to me, that ability to take
some output of ours to help our
customers realize value in terms of them
creating more value on top of our
platform, right? So, one of one of the
things I always think about a platform
company is a platform company only if
the value above the platform is more
than in the platform. I mean, that's as
simple as that. Otherwise, the platform
is unstable. Uh and so, that's the
approach uh we take when it comes to
partnerships. And so, being able to have
not just the technology, but the
business model and a culture that
reinforce it, I think, is sort of one of
the things that we seek to sort of
understand. Somebody said this to me,
you can't say one thing and do something
else, right? It has to be all congruous
uh in how value gets created. And so,
that's the approach we've taken.
>> Well, that's fantastic. And I think you
know, I lead the strategic partnership
relationships at American Express and I
think the amount of alignment around
values, the ability to create trust
between organizations and see the
possibilities that you can work together
to create incremental value in the
marketplace can only be done through
partnerships. And so, we value very much
the relationship that we have with
Microsoft and the alignment that we have
on the value of partnerships is real.
So, thank you for that.
>> Yeah, it's a very interesting
as I've been studying a little bit about
even different companies. I mean,
different companies are successful.
Sometimes companies are successful by
saying we only think about customers,
customers. It's It makes sense. You
know, if I think about Microsoft, we're
we're a little more I think we think of
our customers as our partners. That's
how I think we're a much more
partner-focused, right? How do you
construct more win-win? Don't think of
everything as zero-sum, you know?
Otherwise, sometimes what happens is you
have customers and suppliers.
I think of, you know, everybody is a
customer and a supplier, so therefore
they're a partner. And when you think
that, then it becomes a very different
approach.
>> I definitely agree. So, let's talk a
little bit about technology, which I
know is a
a real passion of yours. Microsoft is
leading the way for what is shaping up
to be one of the most significant waves
of change in the history of the tech
industry with the rise of generative AI.
I don't know if when you first started
to think about that, did you really
believe that there would be all of this
that's happening today?
Would love to understand the role you
think generative AI will play in shaping
the future of business
and how you see it shaping humanity
because I think it has an impact on
humanity and people aren't always
talking about that.
>> No, you're absolutely right, Glenda.
There's obviously a lot going on in
terms of generative AI. I would say the
first time I was able to get a real
sense of what the shift is with GitHub
Copilot, right? When we started seeing
our software engineers start using
GPT-3.5 and inside of their coding
workflow see the productivity gains, see
even their ability to stay in the flow
of their work.
That's when I felt there was something
new and big. And I would say there are
two really new things that are
happening. One is a much more natural
user interface,
which starts with language but goes
beyond that. It can take images, it can
take speech input, and also output
images and speech. So there's going to
be a much more natural user interface
that will change pretty much every
software category out there. And then
the second thing is a new reasoning
engine. Just like databases back in the
day helped us
with digital information, this new AI
neural engine, if you will, will help us
make sense, like summarizations or
continuation. So these are the two
technological foundations. And they're
being deployed like even as we talked
about even on American Express in
customer service, in
in expense management, and in broadly
every software category is going to be
changed. And I think one way to go about
this perhaps for every organization is
to get it broadly deployed. If I It
reminds me a little bit like in the late
'80s when the PCs first showed up. They
changed workflow, right? We all remember
before a word processor and after a word
processor, before a spreadsheet and
after a spreadsheet perhaps for those of
us who were there at that time working.
And so I think that's the same thing
that's going to happen now, which is
fundamental knowledge work workflow will
change across every function and every
business process, whether it's in
marketing, sales, support, finance.
And so that's an exciting time.
>> Well, what we've seen is that when
technology
advances and it's used appropriately,
right? The world just changes, and I
think to the point around how people um
and how this affects humanity, it's all
around how this actually gets embraced
and rolled out. And it sounds as though
um there's an opportunity to really have
some fascinating opportunities going
forward. So,
looking forward to learning more.
>> That's right. And then I think your
point about the humanity part, right?
Which is that's why I love to describe
even this age is the age of co-pilots.
Um it's about humans having more agency
and more capability with computers. It's
not about autopilot. Uh it's really
about sort of ultimately human judgment,
human agency matters, and giving more
tools.
>> You know, I was listening to um a
podcast recently, and it there was a
conversation around how quickly
generative AI is accelerating. And it
was
uh fascinating to hear
there are two sides to it, right? It's
It's
it's being accelerated because companies
are investing in it because they see the
possibilities,
and humans are embracing it because
they're excited about what this the
change this can have. And so, um I think
there's more for us to learn and more
for us to see, and the important thing
is to be responsible around it. So,
looking forward to seeing what happens
next. Um
I have We talked about empathy as kind
of an under-served
leadership skill.
The other one is curiosity uh in my
opinion. And so, you have had all your
life a passion for information and
curiosity, specifically when it comes to
technology and the impact it has on the
world. It's been a through-line
throughout your life.
We both know curiosity is powerful. For
me, it's all about wonder and
questioning. So, as an agent for change,
what do you consider as you continue to
challenge what's possible? Because
you've done that so much, and it's
fascinating to watch. Uh so, tell me a
little bit about that.
>> It's a great way to phrase it. I mean,
curiosity,
um you know, our CTO, Kevin Scott, you
know,
uh you know, recently said something
which has stuck with me, right? He talks
about whenever there are these new
possibilities or new paradigm shifts, uh
in our case with some new technology,
it's when, you know, something hard is
possible now. That's very exciting.
That's fantastic.
But, when what was something that we
sort of considered impossible is
possible, that's magical, right? That's
sort of
uh I think what you should be curious
about. What was something that was
impossible
that now can be made possible
uh because of some new input, some or
new human ingenuity.
Uh so, one of the areas I'm thinking a
lot about with the all this generative
AI capability is um
take something like chemistry, right?
When I think about energy and energy
transition,
fundamentally, what we are talking about
is taking 250 years of chemistry and try
to compress it in perhaps into 25 years,
right? Because we've got to synthesize
some new new compounds, new molecules,
uh new materials, what have you. And so,
if you sort of take that as the
challenge, then how do you apply both
human ingenuity, curiosity, and this new
tool and technology to go after that
sort of impossibility and turning it
into something that uh is possible.
>> You know, one of my favorite quotes is a
quote by Nelson Mandela,
and he said, "It is impossible until it
is done."
And so, I think you and the work that
you and your team are doing is a perfect
example of that. There's a lot of really
um
great things to kind of stand on the
sideline or be involved in as generative
AI and technology continues to change
the world.
Thank you so much for a great
conversation. I can't wait to see where
Microsoft goes and where our
partnerships go from here. It's been a
real pleasure having this conversation
with you, Satya.
>> Thank you so much, Glenda, for the
opportunity. It was a real pleasure and
thank you so much for the partnership as
well.
>> Absolutely. Have a great day.