Happy tenth anniversary, to Satya Nadella – a transformational decade as CEO of Microsoft.
The actual anniversary was February 4th. Don’t feel too bad if you forgot to send a card, we’re still waiting for Satya’s card congratulating Stoneseed on our 15th anniversary – also 2024!
Neither event should pass uncelebrated though, and they dovetail nicely, as it happens.
In 15 years Stoneseed has revolutionised the project-resource-on-demand market with our Project Management as a Service (PMaaS) resourcing model and our P3MO platform (which appropriately leans heavily into Microsoft’s project tools that are, arguably, direct results of Nadella’s change of culture).
Meanwhile, in his decade at the helm, Satya has transformed Microsoft from a place where spontaneity and creativity were stalling and stock value was falling – into a driving force for innovation and a business that is, once again, thriving.
One of the many things that Microsoft and Stoneseed have in common is a growth mindset!
THE GROWTH MINDSET
The story goes that the catalyst for Microsoft’s turnaround was a book that Nadella’s wife, Anupama had used to help with their children’s development. She passed the book to her husband as she thought it might help with his new company role! Indeed, Satya Nadella credits Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck’s book “Mindset” as the inspiration for the company’s culture change.
Nadella spent much of his first year listening to Microsoft employees, at every level, and learning from them. Among the issues he discovered, was that the organisation’s infamous “stack ranking” performance management system, which pitted employees against each other, had created an “everyone for themselves” culture, a culture of stagnation, not innovation, and a far cry from the Microsoft of the late 90s and early 2000s.
“Each employee had to prove to everyone that he or she was the smartest person in the room. Accountability—delivering on time and hitting numbers—trumped everything,” Justin Bariso observed, writing for Inc.com.
“The meetings were formal. If a senior leader wanted to tap the energy and creativity of someone lower down in the organization, she or he needed to invite that person’s boss, and so on. Hierarchy and pecking order had taken control, and spontaneity and creativity had suffered.”
Talking to Caixin Media, Nadella himself said, “You need new ideas and you need new capabilities, but the only way you’re going to get those new ideas and new capabilities is if you have a culture that allows you to grow those.”
By 2015 Microsoft had a new mission and a learning culture that was based on the “growth mindset”. Stack-ranking was replaced by continual feedback and coaching, innovation was encouraged, and Microsoft moved away from its Windows-centric fixed mindset to lead the way in cloud computing, he migrated revenue from software sales to user subscriptions, and tapped into emerging AI capabilities.
He’s also returned Microsoft into a magnet for the best tech talent, as he told Cnet, “You join here, not to be cool, but to make others cool.”
REMEMBER WHAT MADE YOU GREAT – AND GROW IT!
Microsoft is reinvigorated.
“One of the things that happens when you’re super successful is you sort of sometimes lose touch with what made you successful in the first place,” Nadella added in his Cnet interview.
“I wanted to go back to the very genesis of this company: What is that sense of purpose and drive that made us successful? What was the culture that may have been there in the very beginning or in the times when we were able to achieve that success? How do we really capture it?”
You capture it, it would seem, by embracing a growth mindset culture.
As an IT project manager, you’ll encounter many obstacles and challenges, but viewing them as opportunities to learn and grow rather than insurmountable hurdles can have a meaningful impact on your project outcomes, your team’s motivation, and your mental health – not to mention your personal career prospects!
3 Steps to a growth mindset in IT project Management
Stepping out of your comfort zone, volunteering for tasks and projects that test and stretch your capabilities, and encouraging colleagues and team members to similarly embrace challenges are central planks when developing a growth mindset, here are three other hacks (and a bonus) that you might want to consider.
1 – How over who – Praise the person’s process!
Interestingly, when coaching, I think many of us instinctively praise the talent – and not their process.
If an IT Project succeeded because of brilliant business analysis from a particular BA, or the dogged determination of a project manager, it’s counter-intuitive to not praise this talent to the rafters – “you’re so smart”; “you’re a genius”; “you’re a rock star!”
Studies show though, that the real growth (that survives the hardest times) comes when you praise the “how” and not the “who”.
When you praise someone’s talent, you are praising something over which they have no control (their natural talent and ability), and you can inadvertently create a fixed mindset, i.e. “I AM a rock star”.
The problem comes when the next challenge emerges and your “rock star” doesn’t have the capability or experience to overcome it. This can lead to feelings of helplessness and can actually decrease achievement as talent becomes discouraged from stepping out of their comfort zone!
When you praise how your talent did what they did, you reinforce their faith in their ability to think up new processes and ways to get around challenges.
In a recent webinar on growth mindset, Dr Maria Toledo-Rodriguez, Associate Professor in Neurosciences at The University of Nottingham explains that when you praise the process and the effort, you are praising something that the person has control over. “I can put more effort in, if I want, I can change my strategies, I can look for somebody who knows how to solve this problem,” she says.
Maria adds that the research shows that the how-over-who approach leads to “mastery-oriented reaction to difficulties”, installs the growth mindset and increases achievement as your talent is unafraid to take on more challenging tasks (with greater rewards).
2 – Always mark yourself at 1 out of 10
Instinctively, do you think that having a growth mindset means you should always rate yourself 9 or 10 out of 10?
This is quite common: growth mindset = positive thinking – right?
Caixin Global interviewed Microsoft’s Satya Nadella back in 2018 and asked, “Suppose this is the midterm review and on a scale of one to 10, where is Microsoft right now in this journey of transformation?” His response, I think, is a growth mindset masterclass:
” It’s at one, always.” He said. “It’s a tricky question. You should never answer that question and say you’re at nine or 10, because then there’s nothing more to do. And anytime you say you’re in the middle, that means it’s neither good nor bad. It’s best to say we’re at the start of something new and at the beginning, always.”
With a growth mindset you don’t rest on your laurels, allow success to make you complacent, but neither do you let past experiences become a stick with which to beat yourself up!
Satya told Caixin, “What has happened in the past has happened. The way I’m going to be measured going forward and the way I should measure myself going forward is, What exactly am I going to do tomorrow and the day after? In the tech businesses, it’s probably even harsher. And so, the posture that I think at least we want to have is we’re proud of what we have done, but leave that aside. And now focus on what are all the new things that we will have to do and learn from the past.”
3 – Learn Continuously And Create Feedback Loops!
Continuous learning is a pillar of a growth mindset. In IT project management, staying on top of the latest methodologies, industry trends and tech advances is a must, and keep an open mind to trying new ways and ideas!
As well as personal professional development through courses, workshops and certifications, feedback is a powerful tool when developing a growth mindset. Seek it out, it’s everywhere. As an IT project manager, constructive criticism from colleagues, peers, line managers, mentors, end-users and stakeholders.
Don’t be afraid of what you perceive as negative feedback, this can be a launchpad for improvement. Actively listen, and act on and implement feedback!
Also, remember that feedback doesn’t just come from people, indeed your project is feeding back to you all the time, as is every decision you make and every action you take.
In Dr Maria Toledo-Rodriguez’s webinar, she explains the value of the learning spiral to a growth mindset: Decide; Plan; Try; Learn And Evaluate. Paying more attention to learning and evaluating can be a springboard for growth.
And then there’s all that data!! Most project teams that are nailing the growth mindset are also nailing the harvesting and interpretation of their project’s abundant data. Stoneseed’s P3MO platform has taken data-driven insight to the next level.
Bonus – Celebrate Your Growth
Recognising and celebrating your developing growth mindset is a powerful part of the process. Consider the Learn and Evaluate part of the “Learning Spiral” and set aside time to reflect on your progress and your achievements, personally and as a team. Actively celebrate the milestones – crack open the champagne or give yourselves a Friday afternoon early finish!!
Remember too that milestones are not just restricted to things like completing that challenging project. You should identify and celebrate growth wherever you can, from trying Project Management as a Service (PMaaS) to resource your portfolio for the first time, to experimenting with employing a Business Analyst (who revolutionises your processes and saves your organisation a fortune, to adopting a new platform (like Stoneseed’s P3MO) that streamlines everything you do and gives you the data to turn on the rocket-boosters of your growth! Positive reinforcement can boost confidence and motivate you and your team to continue pushing those boundaries!
In 2020, Soo Jeoung Han and Vicki Stieha explored growth mindset in the workplace in their paper “Growth Mindset for Human Resource Development: A Scoping Review of the Literature with Recommended Interventions” – they identified three categories of positive workplace outcomes of growth mindsets:
(a) individual level (e.g., work engagement, creativity, task performance, job satisfaction);
(b) dyadic level (e.g., supervisor-employee relationship and conflict resolution);
(c) organisational level (e.g., organisational behaviours and organisational growth mindset).
As these elements are pretty much the recipe for IT Project success, developing a “growth mindset” feels like a no-brainer!
It worked for Microsoft.
It worked for us at Stoneseed.
I’d love to hear how a Growth Mindset is working for you!
More about Project Management as a Service from Stoneseed
Sources:
Caixin Media: https://www.caixinglobal.com/2018-11-25/satya-nadella-reinventing-microsoft-101351661.html
https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/features/this-is-not-your-fathers-microsoft
https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/alumni/how-to-grow-your-growth-mindset