Do it with heart, 2023

Since I started taking on leadership roles at Microsoft, I have added a single value to our company's very strong values: “Do it with Heart.” I add this one on because it reflects my personal values and is therefore reflected in my leadership style. It basically means - wherever possible (which is more frequently than you might assume), whatever you do - try to do it with warmth and humanity.

“Do it with Heart” also led me to create a personal tradition that means a lot to me. For the past 10-12 years, I have handwritten Valentine’s Day cards to my team at work. The tradition evolved from sending out primary-school type valentines, to today’s card featured in the picture. I handwrite these messages whether my teams have a few people or hundreds, or any size in between. I picked Valentine’s Day for my card-writing holiday because I believe strongly in our human capacity for love, care, and warmth, even in our workday and professional lives. When I sit at home writing cards, I’m taking the time to think about each person and feel grateful for what they bring. 

Two years ago, on Valentine’s Day, besides writing these cards, I started writing articles here on LinkedIn. Most recently, I have been publishing a 20-part series on the learnings from my 20 years at Microsoft. This “Do it with Heart” blog, which is also my fifth blog for my 20-part series, officially kicks off year three of sharing and learning from this audience. And there's no question that one of the most important things that I have learned, and do my best to widely teach, is that you truly can incorporate "do it with heart" into even the most intense periods of your professioanl life.

“Do it with Heart” part three comes at a time when we are all experiencing a very uncertain business climate. As a leader, “Do it with Heart” in this environment means guiding my team through this time of ambiguity.  So, today I want to share a few principles that I’ve shared with my teams.

Focus on what you can control. When we have more change and less certainty, we could slip into spending more time worrying or talking about what might happen than spending time in valuable ways (at work as well as in personal time). The more you focus and put your time and attention to what can control, the more you will be able to see a direct link between your time and the results. For my team, we worked together to update our OKRs to reflect the changed environment, resourcing and priorities and are continuing to keep our objectives front and center.

As a leader, modeling a culture of thriving in ambiguity means thinking about and eagerly adapting to changing priorities, strategic shifts, new types of complex customer engagements, and pivotal company moments with a growth mindset, curiosity, and empathy. We increased the importance of this in my team by setting an Objective focused on this - it means each part of the team is thinking about and acting on how to improve our ability to thrive in ambiguity.

For me, thriving in ambiguity means doing my best work, focusing on our values, and paying attention to what the company needs right now. I’m personally focusing on work I can control, behavior I can control, and adjusting the time horizons for our work as appropriate. And no matter what, being transparent with the team.

Look and re-evaluate your personal north star. Something else that remains in our control is preparing for the future. I find that creating a personal north star is essential for this process.

What else do you think is important to thrive in ambiguity?

20 things I learned in 20 years  

1. Power of the network  
2. Getting sponsors 
3. Growing trust, even in hard times
4. The best advice I didn’t take, and why
5. Do it with heart, 2023 Edition