Even if they have the exact skills that I’m looking for, it’s better not to try to fit a round peg into a square hole. Each of us ought to be working in an environment that we love with the people who share our passions. And if along the way we realize that we’re meant to do something else, let’s celebrate that instead of seeing it as a failure.

What does a CEO get to do?’ he [Nadella] asked in 2016. ‘You’ve got to pass judgment on an uncertain future and curate culture. For both, I feel, I learn a lot from these trips.

Our mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.’ - Nadella

When you get too caught up in showing your prowess—“Look at what we can do!”—you’re losing focus on the only thing that matters, which is what will make your customer happy.

Maybe people don’t notice every single individual detail, but in aggregate, they’re powerful. In any great business, most of the details you closely attend to are ones that only a tiny, tiny percentage of people will notice. But if I could institute a system that demanded that the entire team think carefully about even the most rudimentary of tasks, I was creating a world in which intention was the standard, and our guests could feel it.