Leadership: Diagnosing the Problems in Microsoft

Analyzing a case
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Analyzing a case
Question 1
Nadella's diagnosing of Microsoft's problems began by identifying the various challenges that the company was facing. The company met issues with leadership, management, general performance, and teamwork. According to the employees, Inertia, Internal knives, and bickering characterized the work environment. The work environment did not have a teamwork environment because every employee worked their level best to succeed while failing other employees. There was a limited level of internal competition, which prevented the company from exploiting market opportunities. Nadella's diagnosis of the company shows that its productivity started to reduce when Steve Ballmer took over in 2000. The crushing of the stock market shows such a reduction in productivity. It is also shown by a management team that incited the employees to work against each other. Nadella had the challenge of eliminating these issues before they could lead to the company's ultimate failure.
Lencioni's areas of dysfunction exhibited in the case study are the absence of trust, lack of commitment, the fear of conflicts, lack of teamwork and accountability, and employees who ignore the organizational objectives. The lack of accountability and teamwork played an important role in escalating internal conflicts. The stack ranking process implemented by the CEO encouraged internal competition, which further escalated the conflicts and discouraged innovation. The ranking process reduced the employees' accountability levels (Ibarra, Rattan & Johnston, 2018). Performance was focused on an individual instead of teams, and therefore, employees would work to compromise each other's success.
Nadella's efforts to transform the organization were focused on transforming the organization's processes and procedures. The initial steps to transforming the company were by partnering with big players in the market, such as Apple. The partnership involved Microsoft making Office available for iOS devices. Nadella also changed the company's leadership, a factor that was among Microsoft's challenges. The chosen leaders would be productive, learn from other people's mistakes, and encourage open communication. These strategies would encourage accountability among employees' thus enhancing the production process. Nadella also planned to change the organization's culture to ensure employees focused on learning new things, thus fostering innovation. This approach played a major role in enabling the company to identify its weaknesses, opportunities, strengths, and threats. These factors led to Microsoft becoming one of the big players and highly competitive companies in the industry.
Question 2
According to Daniel Goleman's leadership, Nadella expresses the pacesetting leadership styles. This type of leadership focuses on high quality and results. This is the kind of focus that Nadella had regarding Microsoft. His leadership was focused on choosing leaders focused on productivity and accountability. Accountability and teamwork would play a major role in facilitating the organization's success and overcoming its challenges. Nad...