Culture built on values is key to the success of an organisation: Srikanth Karnakota, Country Head, Microsoft Azure

A few months after taking up the reins of Microsoft, CEO Satya Nadella shot off a long letter to his employees saying that he and his 'lieutenants' were taking important steps to visibly change their company's culture. “The culture created inside the walls of any company isn't just important; it's everything,” the letter said.

At TechSparks organised by YourStory on Friday, Srikantk Karnakota, Country Head, Microsoft Azure, India, talked about the importance and need for deep values and culture in any company. Microsoft Azure is a cloud-computing platform and infrastructure for building, deploying and managing applications and services through a global network of Microsoft-managed and Microsoft partner hosted datacentres.

Srikanth says, “Values are the building blocks of culture. The object of values is to build the right culture. And the characteristics of the right culture vest in how you live your life on day-to-day basis. The culture at Microsoft aims to build growth mindset comprising key values such as customer obsession, inclusion, creation of a unified Microsoft and making a difference.”

The culture of an organisation built on values is intact throughout, both within and outside the organisation. Srikanth adds that one shouldn’t be scared of competition and we need to be open about it. “We show this openness on our platform. Azure supports the broadest selection of operating systems, programming languages, frameworks, tools, databases and devices. Some cloud providers make you choose between your datacentre and the cloud. We don't do that with Azure, which easily integrates with your existing IT environment through the largest network of secure private connections, hybrid database, storage solutions, data residency and encryption features. So your assets stay right where you need them. Our mission is to empower every person and organisation,” he explains.

Leadership is another key area with respect to building the culture in an organisation. Recently, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Satya Nadella had said, "The senior leadership team of any company [has] got to stay on the same page. Any organisation can easily devolve into a bunch of silos."

Talking on similar lines, Srikanth says the first step in this area is hiring. Ease of adaptability, living on values and demonstrating and demanding excellence are some of the key factors which should be taken into account while hiring talent. These traits will enable the much-needed culture in an organisation, he adds.

Srikanth concluded with Satya’s quote: “Culture is everything.”