Nadella gobbles up comms while Bayer Rosmarin gets the stuffing knocked out of her

Like preparing a thanksgiving turkey, surviving a corporate crisis is all about strategy. Microsoft’s comms boss Frank Shaw reveals his recipe for success.

Microsoft boss Satya Nadella and former Optus chief executive Kelly Bayer Rosmarin were both tested in a corporate crisis this month.

As Kelly Bayer Rosmarin was packing up her desk at Optus last Monday, Microsoft boss Satya Nadella emerged the unlikely winner of a boardroom stoush that had risked the tech giant’s $13bn ($19.8bn) investment in Open AI.

The reason for Bayer Rosmarin’s downfall and Nadella’s success are the same: communications. Or more precisely empathy.

For Nadella, it is a skill that he has honed for the past 30 years and admits didn’t come naturally. But that self awareness is something all corporate leaders can learn from – it may even save their jobs.

Bayer Rosmarin is well regarded for her intellect – less so for ability to read a room. This was on full display in the days following Optus’s massive outage that cut off more than 10 million Australians from phone and internet services, with some not able to dial triple-0, and it ultimately cost her job.

Ironically, Nadella says, a lack of empathy almost also cost him the chance to join Microsoft in 1992. Engineering leaders tested his “fortitude and intellectual chops” in a day full of interviews, but one manager, Richard Tait, taught him his biggest and most valuable lesson.

“Richard didn’t give me an engineering problem to solve on the whiteboard or a complex coding scenario to talk through,” Nadella writes in his book Hit Refresh.

“He had one simple question. ‘Imagine you see a baby in the street and the baby is crying. What do you do’?

“You call 911, I replied without much forethought.” Tait walked Nadella out of his office and put an arm around him. “You need some empathy, man. If a baby is laying on a street crying, pick up the baby”.

In the Open AI crisis Nadella showcased his skills brilliantly. He was key to restoring Open AI’s ousted chief executive Sam Altman, protecting Microsoft’s $US13bn investment and saving the company from what could have been an embarrassing setback.

So what can other leaders learn from him when faced with a crisis and how does it compare with Optus’s response? Fortunately, Microsoft’s comms boss Frank Shaw has imparted some wisdom – albeit in the tongue-in-cheek guise of preparing a thanksgiving dinner.

Empathy is a learned behaviour for Microsoft boss Satya Nadella.

Value relationships

Early in the Optus outage Communications Minister Michelle Rowland felt the need to fill the communications void. Australians wanted answers and all they had from Optus was a two sentence statement. This frustrated Rowland and Optus lost control of the narrative, with politicians framing it instead.

Nadella’s masterstroke was nurturing a relationship with Altman during the past five years. He received little notice about Altman’s ousting but responded quickly. He and offered Altman a job at Microsoft heading an new AI division, with anything he needed – even Apple computers. It sounded so good that hundreds of Open AI staff threatened to leave the company and join Altman at Microsoft.

What does Shaw say? (Remember, he is talking about thanksgiving).

“We’re bringing a bunch of new people together. Some of them we know really well. Someone we may not know well,” Shaw said on a LinkedIn video.

“If it’s family you’re spending time with, you fall back into old patterns. You really have to think ahead, you know who is going to do what, how do you sort of have an off ramp if there’s conflict, what are the safe topics to talk about? If people are getting stressed, who takes the dog for a walk? Plan that in advance so you don’t have to worry about it in the moment.

Satya Nadella nurtured a relationship with Open AI CEO Sam Altman (pictured above).

Don’t confuse tactics with objectives

Bayer Rosmarin said she took seven hours to front the media after the outage because she wanted to focus on restoring Optus’s network. But that fuelled perceptions that she was out of touch with the telco’s customers, obscuring her objective. It also didn’t help that it was Optus’s second reputational crisis after last year’s cyber attack.

For Nadella, his ideal outcome was restoring Altman as Open AI’s CEO. But by offering him a job at Microsoft, it increased the tech giant’s leverage.

Shaw says too often people confuse tactics with the desired outcome.

“I find this happens a lot, especially if you’re really good at tactic. You just want to jump in and start executing.

“I have made this mistake in the past and you know, I’ve thought about the turkey as the objective as opposed to the tactic. The objective, of course, is, you know, you’re gonna have a bunch of people together … and have a good time. I find myself consumed by this idea. Of a perfect turkey. But all that focus on the turkey has prevented me sometimes from really enjoying the companionship that really is available on that day.”

Have a plan

This was Bayer Rosmarin’s biggest mistake. Optus didn’t plan for a national outage and as result it was left scrambling. Bayer Rosmarin said it was too technical to explain – while its messaging was clouded by denials and clarifications, prompting a rebuke from Senator Sarah Hanson-Young to “get your story straight”.

Nadella kept his messaging clear and consistent, providing regular updates in interviews, social media and Microsoft’s own platforms.

Shaw says: “Always have to have something that you know, is reliable and is and is going to work”.

“The sense of having a ‘go to’ if things are tough, for me it’s just super clear. You’ve got to do the gravy in advance. Gravy fixes everything. You know, hot gravy over cold potatoes is great. Hot gravy over dry stuffing is great. Hot gravy over any other kind of thing is also great.

“You don’t want to spend your last few minutes before dinner desperately hunched over the stove, trying to whip the flour in, making sure you don’t add too much salt and then wondering, are you going to have enough. so people make the gravy in advance.”

It doesn’t pay to obsess over the perfect turkey, according to Microsoft chief communications officer Frank Shaw.