Microsoft Chairman: Microsoft's corporate culture must change

John Thompson, Microsoft's new chairman, recently spoke to the US magazine about recent changes in Microsoft and said the company's corporate culture must be Thompson. As a veteran of the software industry, Thompson has been a director of Microsoft since 2012 and presided over the selection of Microsoft's new CEO, and eventually his lead committee chose Satya Nadella, the company's insider, to take over Ballmer (Steve Ballmer), Cetea Nadra. Become the new head of the company. Thompson, who is also the CEO of Virtual Limited, a business technology start-up company, has talked about the importance of corporate culture and why Microsoft's CEO selection is unusually high-profile in the latest foreign magazines. Q: How important is corporate culture? Can you explain it through your work experience at IBM? Thompson: The leaders of every company need to hold on to two things. First of all, as the company grows, it needs to consider the adjustment of the company's management structure to the market, resources and funds. Second, the corporate culture needs to change as the company changes. One of my feelings at IBM is that when IBM loses its monopoly and has to face competition from many small, flexible companies, they need to adjust the pace and pace of change. When Gerstner (Lougerstner) took over IBM, he brought this sense of urgency, something that IBM lacked at the time. The situation at the time was that the former monopoly had ceased to exist, with competition from new rivals in almost every business area. At this time, there is a need for a leader to stand up and decisively point out what to do, what not to do, what to reward, and what to do. Over time, these actions have changed IBM's culture. You can't change the culture of a business overnight. Cultural change is more about influence, permanence and the foresight of these influences. Under the influence of these factors, the change of small behavior is what we call the change of corporate culture. Q: Does Microsoft's corporate culture need to change? Thompson: This question is better to ask Cetea. What I would say, however, is that Microsoft is now facing a situation that looks much like what IBM experienced in the 90 's. The monopoly of Windows is now under attack, so we should rethink and adjust the management system and related culture. Q: Why is Microsoft's CEO selection so high-profile? Thompson: First of all, we are one of the largest and most respected companies in the world. In fact, our very open selection of CEOs is both responsible for investors and others. We need to evaluate the candidate's various circumstances to ensure that the CEO can create real value for investors in the long term. Microsoft is the industry leader, with a high profile worldwide, is one of the world's largest companies in market capitalisation, we have madeA major choice cannot be made in a vacuum or in a test tube, and we have to make it public. To tell the truth, there is a big part of the story about the media hype, they think there is no need to base on the truth. They copied it from the east, copied it west and pieced it together. I would say that most of them are not true. It is not true that some people have been interviewed for a Microsoft CEO job or who has rejected the position. The media hype has made Microsoft CEO selection an interesting topic. It was a step that I could not have anticipated. Although I hope this event is open to the public, I have never wanted it to be such a topic of concern. At Microsoft's request, I accepted the Wall Street Journal interview, which is limited to this. We also made public the progress of our work through official blogs last December, that's all. That's the only two things I've done on the public platform. But I seem to be in the grip of someone else. As a matter of fact, I'm just doing my job in earnest, like the other directors who work as CEO screening. Although I am the chairman of the Committee, I have been asked to comment that I am everywhere and that one person in the screening exercise can be counted. This is completely untrue. Also, many of our investors were of the view that CEO appointments were best finalised at the end of last year, and we have the same aspirations. However, the progress has not been achieved as planned, and we think the easiest way to do that is through the official blog to tell you that the new CEO will be appointed in 2014. And then someone came out and saw Thompson reporting again. Frankly, some people really think more.