-: Brad, thanks so much for being with us today.
-: Thanks, thanks for having me.
-: As you know, the Business Roundtable has recently come out
with a new statement on the Purpose of a Corporation.
What's your view and Microsoft's view on that statement
and the whole notion of multi-stakeholder capitalism?
-: Well, at Microsoft, we're very supportive
of the Business Roundtable or BRT Statement.
We're not actually a member of the BRT,
but we had the opportunity to work
and talk with them as they put it together.
And, I think, in some ways it really is a clarion call
to business for our time. It obviously asks businesses
to think not about shareholders alone,
but about all the stakeholders that we serve.
One of the things I find fascinating is people debate,
well, is that really the right thing to do?
And, I will argue emphatically over the longterm,
the best way to serve shareholders is
to think about all of the stakeholders a business has.
-: Of all the industries in the economy,
tech is arguably having some of the most impact
on society as a whole, how do you feel about the notion
of an expansive view of purpose of a company applying
in the tech industry specifically?
-: Well, I think it is perhaps more important
for tech companies to be driven by a sense of purpose
than perhaps even companies in many other industries.
I think it's helpful to think about context.
I think artificial intelligence, or AI, is going
to reshape the economy between, say, now and the year 2050
much the same way the combustion engine did a century ago.
So, if you start with that as your premise,
you better think about the purpose that you bring to work.
You better think about the broad societal impact you're
going to have and you really need to think hard about how
to have the most positive impact that you can.
-: Let's turn to discussing how you make important
and sometimes challenging decisions.
I can imagine that inside of Microsoft
there are sometimes quite different opinions on some
of the more sensitive decisions that you need to make,
how do you and the leadership team work
through those challenging issues, especially when you can
have legitimate disagreements inside the company?
-: I think the first thing I've learned is, let's start by
agreeing on what the problem is that we're trying to solve.
Build a common understanding of the problem
so that if we're debating solutions,
we're at least debating solutions to solve the same problem.
I think the second thing I've learned is,
learn more about the problem through the power of data.
We have a data science team and it really contributes
invaluably to helping us understand
the problem we're trying to solve.
I think then the third thing I've learned,
and this really came from working with Satya, is,
let's see if we can take a principled approach.
Can we define a set of principles
that will then lead us to be consistent
in addressing this issue on an ongoing basis?
I think the fourth thing I've learned is,
that we have to execute. Principles are the starting point,
but you actually then have to operationalize them
in an effective way, and then the last thing I've learned
is, you just have to communicate everyday.
You have to communicate with your employees,
with your customers, with all your stakeholders.
Somebody once said to me that 80%
of leadership is communications.
I don't know what the exact number is,
but I do know that without it,
none of the rest really pays off the way it needs to.
-: You have principles around how you make the products
that you build. Do you also have principles around where
and how you'll sell those products?
-: It's one thing to say, "We don't want our technology
to be used to facilitate mass surveillance,"
or surveillance that would sort
of violate fundamental principles
of due process in the rule of law.
It's one thing to say, "We don't want our system
to be used in ways that would result
in bias or unlawful discrimination."
It's another to make sure it doesn't happen.
And so, we absolutely have had to put
in place processes so people can identify deals,
transactions, that might be problematic,
but what we've all come to conclude is
that if you are principled, but never say no to a deal,
then in truth the only principle you're really committed
to is doing every deal you can.
That's not the principles we're setting for ourselves.
And I very much hope we'll see this embraced
by the rest of our industry, by some of our competitors.
-: In the past, you've commented that some of Microsoft's
biggest lessons from your antitrust experience
was the importance of understanding
how others perceive you, not just how you
perceive yourself. What lessons can other
tech firms learn from that experience?
-: So, I often say to other folks in the tech sector
learn from the mistakes we made in the 1990s
because we made more than our fair share.
It's easy for people to forget today that Microsoft
is really the only company in our lifetime
that had a court order issued against it to break it up.
-: We obviously, therefore, were really at loggerheads
with our own government and fundamentally to me,
the lesson I've always taken away is that
in the world of technology or perhaps
any fast-growing business, you're so excited about
what you're doing, you're so committed to the goodness
in what you're doing, that you can miss
what other people are seeing in you.
You have to learn to look in the mirror,
and see not the person that you want to see,
but the person that others see as well.
And, let's face it, it's always a little less positive
than what we see when we look at the mirror ourselves,
but that is the beginning of understanding.
If you can understand how other people are thinking
about you, you can understand the
problems they may be concerned about,
you can start to acknowledge them,
you can start to take steps to address them.
-: Brad, thank you very much. -: Thank you.