Satya Nadella rallies Microsoft employees with 3000-word memo

REDMOND, Wash., July 10 (UPI) -- Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella sent employees a 3000-word memo asking them to increase their focus on productivity and platforms, not devices and services.

The memo comes days before Microsoft is scheduled to release its earnings report on July 22. Nadella sent employees an email that all but guts former CEO Steve Ballmer's focus on devices, instead asking employees to work hard on improving their productivity and platforms.

"While the devices and services description was helpful in starting our transformation, we now need to hone in on our unique strategy," Nadella said. "At our core, Microsoft is the productivity and platform company for the mobile-first and cloud-first world. We will reinvent productivity to empower every person and every organization on the planet to do more and achieve more."

Nadella wants to shake up Microsoft's work culture, which has been known to be prone to infighting and cutthroat office politics. Microsoft's chief executive wants to empower every employee to effect the change they want. At the same he wants to modernize the company's engineering processes and focus on the customer's needs.

"We will reinvent productivity to empower every person and every organization on the planet to do more and achieve more," Nadella states in the email.

Nadella made special mention of the Xbox console highlighting its importance to the company.

"We are fortunate to have Xbox in our family to go after this opportunity with unique and bold innovation," Nadella said. "Bottom line, we will continue to innovate and grow our fan base with Xbox while also creating additive business value for Microsoft."

He also said that developing new hardware ecosystems for Windows software like the Surface tablet shows how the company can build new categories of hardware and responsibly market it.

He did admit that the company's future was challenging and that the way to move forward was by adopting a "customer-obsessed, data-driven, speed-oriented and quality-focused" company. He said that nothing was off the table when it came to fostering in this new culture and helping deliver on their core strategy.

"Microsoft has a unique ability to harmonize the world's devices, apps, docs, data and social networks in digital work and life experiences so that people are at the center and are empowered to do more and achieve more with what is becoming an increasingly scarce commodity -- time!" said Nadella.