CEO Satya Nadella considers diversity and inclusion as key to Microsoft’s success

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US President Donald Trump may believe America doesn’t stand for immigrants anymore, but tech giant Microsoft will not stand for such rhetoric as Indian-born CEO Satya Nadella indicated during an interaction with students and faculty at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering and the Stern School of Business earlier this week.

Nadella emphasised that in times like these, Microsoft has to “look like everyone and every organisation of the world”. He harped on the importance of “diversity and inclusion” despite the sense of divisiveness gripping the US currently.

“Diversity and inclusion is huge. It obviously starts by having a workforce that is diverse but inclusion is a cultural piece that we all have to work on every day. Inclusion shows up in every meeting, starting with me” Nadella said during the interaction.

"Am I able to actually conduct a meeting where everyone is able to contribute their best because we all come with different styles, we have different cultural upbringings, what makes us tick is different. So you got to have leaders who are in-tuned with that," he said.

While Nadella admitted that Microsoft has not excelled in the department of diversity and inclusivity, he said “we are going to, every day of the week, push to get better and better at creating that more inclusive culture. It starts with each mindset.”

Once an individual takes responsibility for his culture, Nadella said, he can use that to represent himself and what he does in an organisation. And the more empowered one feels, the more responsibility he takes for his culture and subsequently be able to change the culture instead of being stuck in some culture one doesn’t like.

Nadella’s comments come as a backlash to the devastating anti-immigrant stance taken by Donald Trump. Almost immediately after taking office, Trump signed an executive order banning entry of immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries in the US.

His move resulted in major protests by people on the streets along with seeing the tech industry lining up together to fight the ban. Nadella, himself from Hyderabad, India addressed his staff on the immigration ban saying there is no place for bias or bigotry in any society, saying that it was America’s erstwhile immigrant-friendly stance that helped the company achieve tremendous professional success.