Читать книгу The Exponential Era - David Espindola - Страница 13

As we will explore throughout the book, technology investments alone are not sufficient to achieve a successful adaptation to the speed and scale of change. The most challenging aspect of getting companies ready for the fast changes that characterize the Exponential Era is transforming the culture.

As Lou Gerstner said in Who Says Elephants Can't Dance? “Successful institutions almost always develop strong cultures that reinforce those elements that make the institution great… When that environment shifts, it is very hard for the culture to change. In fact, it becomes an enormous impediment to the institution's ability to adapt.”⁴

Sometimes the only way to achieve a change in culture is by making a change at the CEO level, as was the case with the successful turn‐around experienced by Microsoft. Before Satya Nadella, Microsoft's culture was often characterized as internally competitive and hostile. It prized showing that you were smart, even at the cost of creating hostility and preventing teamwork.

Microsoft was unable to keep up with the fast beat to which it was expected to dance. The company's prospects were quite dire for a while. It lost the mobile operating system war and almost failed to get traction in the cloud. It took bringing in a CEO that understood and emphasized culture to completely turn the company around. “There is something only a CEO uniquely can do, which is set that tone, which can then capture the soul of the collective. And its culture,” said Nadella.⁵