Hit Refresh

said that we needed to rediscover the soul of Microsoft, our reason for being

The mystical Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke once wrote that “the future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens.”

No one leader, no one group, and no one CEO would be the hero of Microsoft’s renewal. If there was to be a renewal, it would take all of us and all parts of each of us. Cultural transformation would be slow and trying before it would be rewarding.

However, things are always changing. If you could understand impermanence deeply, you would develop more equanimity. You would not get too excited about either the ups or downs of life. And only then would you be ready to develop that deeper sense of empathy and compassion for everything around you

. I learned that only through living life’s ups and downs can you develop empathy; that in order not to suffer, or at least not to suffer so much, one must become comfortable with impermanence.

“You need some empathy, man. If a baby is laying on a street crying, pick up the baby.”

“Imagine you see a baby lying in the street, and the baby is crying. What do you do?” he asked.

I told them that we spend far too much time at work for it not to have deep meaning

I listened, I realized that in all of my years at Microsoft this was the first time I’d heard my colleagues talk about themselves, not exclusively about business matters.

extraordinary individual experience.