From: Satya Nadella
To: All Employees
Date: July 17, 2014
at 5:00 am PT
Subject: Starting to
Evolve Our Organization and Culture
Last
week in my email to you, I synthesized our strategic direction as a
productivity and platform company. Having a clear focus is the start of the
journey, not the end. The more difficult steps are creating the organization
and culture to bring our ambitions to life.
Today
I'll share more on how we're moving forward. On July 22, during our public
earnings call, I'll share further specifics on where we are focusing our
innovation investments.
The
first step to building the right organization for our ambitions is to realign
our workforce.
With
this in mind, we will begin to reduce the size of our overall workforce by up
to 18,000 jobs in the next year. Of that total, our work toward synergies and
strategic alignment on Nokia Devices and Services is expected to account for
about 12,500 jobs, comprising both professional and factory workers.
We
are moving now to start reducing the first 13,000 positions, and the vast
majority of employees whose jobs will be eliminated will be notified over the
next six months. It's important to note that while we are eliminating roles in
some areas, we are adding roles in certain other strategic areas.
My
promise to you is that we will go through this process in the most thoughtful
and transparent way possible. We will offer severance to all employees impacted
by these changes, as well as job transition help in many locations, and
everyone can expect to be treated with the respect they deserve for their
contributions to this company.
Later
today, your senior leadership team member will share more on what to expect in
your organization. Our workforce reductions are mainly driven by two outcomes:
work simplification as well as Nokia Devices and Services integration synergies
and strategic alignment.
First,
we will simplify the way we work to drive greater accountability, become more
agile and move faster. As part of modernizing our engineering processes the
expectations we have from each of our disciplines will change.
In
addition, we plan to have fewer layers of management, both top down and
sideways, to accelerate the flow of information and decision making. This
includes flattening organizations and increasing the span of control of people
managers. In addition, our business processes and support models will be more
lean and efficient with greater trust between teams.
The
overall result of these changes will be more productive, impactful teams across
Microsoft. These changes will affect both the Microsoft workforce and our
vendor staff. Each organization is starting at different points and moving at
different paces.
Second,
we are working to integrate the Nokia Devices and Services teams into
Microsoft. We will realize the synergies to which we committed when we
announced the acquisition last September. The first-party phone portfolio will
align to Microsoft's strategic direction.
To
win in the higher price tiers, we will focus on breakthrough innovation that
expresses and enlivens Microsoft's digital work and digital life experiences.
In
addition, we plan to shift select Nokia X product designs to become Lumia products
running Windows. This builds on our success in the affordable smartphone space
and aligns with our focus on Windows Universal Apps.
Making
these decisions to change is difficult, but necessary. I want to invite you to
my monthly Q&A event tomorrow. I hope you can join, and I hope you will ask
any question that's on your mind. Thank you for your support as we start to
take steps forward in evolving our organization and culture.
......Satya
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