Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on Empathy

Source: Wikipedia

In this interview with IESE Business School, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella describes the importance of empathy as a company tries to innovate and evolve. Empathy means more than asking customers what they want, as Nadella explains. It means truly trying to understand their pain points, frustrations, and unmet needs. Empathy means digging deep to understand the latent needs that may not be articulated by your customers when you ask them questions or conduct surveys and focus groups. It means stopping yourself from assuming that you know what the custonmer wants. Nadella, interestingly, connects empathy with a growth mindset. Here's an excerpt from this terrific interview with Nadella: 

My success depends on my customers’ success. That’s the essence of business. If we’re successful, it means we’ve somehow been able to meet the needs of customers, even their unarticulated needs. But where does that inspiration for being able to be in touch with that unmet, unarticulated need come from? It comes from empathy — that deep sense of understanding the real needs out there. It’s not, “Oh, I talked to 10 customers and I’m doing exactly what they told me to do.” It’s going deeper to understand what’s behind those words.

How does one invoke empathy? You can’t just go to work and hit the empathy button every morning: “Now I’m going to be empathetic.” Your entire life has to involve constantly pushing yourself to develop a deeper sense of empathy with those around you, recognizing that that journey never ends.

At Microsoft we’ve been trying to develop what we describe as a learning culture. Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck wrote a famous book called Mindset, which shares a simple concept. Take two schoolchildren: one has great innate capability but is a know-it-all; the other has less innate capability but is a learn-it-all. You know how the story ends: the learn-it-all does better than the know-it-all. And that applies to CEOs, to companies and to company cultures.

The goal is to adopt that growth mindset and use it to develop a deeper sense of empathy, so that you can create those products and services that meet the unmet, unarticulated needs of your customers.