The Turn: Microsoft's Big HR Bet

And why you probably shouldn't be copying their homework on this one

Welcome back to The Turn. Today, we’re talking about everyone’s favorite work technology company, Microsoft.

I say that semi-jokingly and semi-lovingly. My provincialism for the PNW extends to the folks up in Redmond. Seattle’s journey as a major tech hub looks very different without them. Creating 12,000 (or more) millionaires concentrated in one place will do that.

There have been many phases of Microsoft but they may be entering their most interesting one. As I wrote in Reworked last week, CEO Satya Nadella inherited a company infamous for internal politicking and frequent re-orgs under different fiefdoms more than a decade ago.

Now, under new-ish CPO Amy Coleman, the tech behemoth’s HR function is going through a consequential re-org of its own. No more chief diversity officer. People analytics moves directly under the HR org. And a newly named Workforce Acceleration team tries to capture the momentum of a stampede of AI usage across its sprawling global workforce.

They are also losing multi-decade HR leaders in talent acquisition, total rewards, HR business partnerships, and diversity. A century and a half of combined leadership will be gone.

One of those changes is big enough on its own. All together? It’s a lot. Maybe too much. But as Coleman wrote in her internal memo:

We're no longer being asked to scale for stability; we need to scale for adaptability.

Stability has been the name of the game for Nadella’s turn at CEO. That has resulted in generally warm reviews from the investor class. But since last summer, the stock has been in a relative free fall (though the stock is still 9x what it was since Nadella took over in 2014).

And with how reactive the market is and how quickly AI is impacting SaaS software, it really is a “what have you done for me lately?” sort of environment. Thanks for those long term gains and the dividends. Now, show us more growth, more innovation, and, yes, probably more AI.

Will it all work out? Microsoft can afford to take some swings and misses in the service of getting closer to the bleeding edge. The risk of looking complacent (regardless of reality) is a probably the bigger risk.

But I don’t think this playbook is for everyone. I explain why in my column.

HR tech providers: Are you doing agentic AI for real?

I am writing a report on it and would love to get stories of real life use cases and outcomes rather than AI washing. If you have 30 minutes this month to walk me through what you’re doing, fill out the short form here:

What I’m reading

I haven’t done this for awhile but I am LONG overdue to recommend some folks to follow across LinkedIn and Substack because I do an absolutely awful job of crediting for keeping me informed and inspired. To write a lot, you have to read a lot. Who am I missing on my reading list?

• Laurie Ruettimann is an OG who has been telling HR the truth about itself since before the industry was ready to hear it. You can read Punk Rock HR on LinkedIn and her newsletter on Substack.

• Steve Smith monitors the workplace technology market so you can stay current without having to read every vendor press release and funding announcement yourself, which is either a service or a calling. You can read Work Tech Weekly on LinkedIn.

• John Vlastelica named his newsletter after the thing he’s most tired of hearing from leaders, which tells you everything about his relationship with corporate pep talks and nothing about why we keep giving them. You can read Try Harder Is Not A Strategy on LinkedIn.

• Jess Von Bank writes at the intersection of work, technology, and humanity, which is the intersection where most organizations install a stop sign and call it strategy. You can read her newsletter on Substack.

• Katrina Kibben has spent years trying to get companies to write job descriptions that don’t immediately disqualify the people who could actually do the job, which is both noble and the world’s most patient Sisyphean project depending on your employer. You can read Rewrite Recruiting on LinkedIn.

• Dan Schawbel has been tracking workplace trends so consistently for so long, I’m convinced that future historians will cite him when trying to understand what people work was like right now. You can read Workplace Intelligence Weekly on LinkedIn.

• Madison Butler is documenting the corporate experience with the honesty that most companies’ engagement surveys are specifically designed to suppress. You can read The Corporate Crash Out on LinkedIn.

• Brian Fink has appointed himself the chief advocate for an industry that doesn’t always advocate for itself, which either makes him noble or means he has a very specific kind of energy. You can read The Talent Architects on LinkedIn.

• David Manaster has been covering talent acquisition longer than most of today’s recruiting platforms have been in business, giving him the rare perspective of knowing what this industry looked like before it got a rebrand. You can read ERE Weekly on LinkedIn.

• Hung Lee manually curates recruiting content every week from sources most people aren’t reading, which in an era of AI-generated everything is a principled stance (and maybe some pure stubbornness). You can read Recruiting Brainfood on Substack.

• Mervyn Dinnen is still making the case that HR is actually a business function, which is apparently a necessary argument in any organization where the people team is still fighting for a seat at the table. You can read HR Means Business on LinkedIn.

• Mike Wood reads all the HR tech news every week so you don’t have to, and in an industry that produces this volume of announcements and rebrandings, that is genuinely a public service. You can read The Wrap on LinkedIn.

• Jennifer McClure is still using “disrupt” without apology, which is a statement of conviction and proof that she really is the founder of DisruptHR. You can read Designed to Disrupt on LinkedIn.

• Donald Thompson releases his leadership insights monthly, which is a sensible pace for ideas that take longer than a quarter to actually implement. You can read Leadership Edge on LinkedIn.

• Joel Stupka gives us snackable content that, even if you aren’t 100% sure you like it, only lasts a few minutes (but that has always worked out for me). You can read HR Snacks on LinkedIn.

• Kyle Forrest is Deloitte’s Human Capital CMO moonlighting as a newsletter editor, which means you get the enterprise view on what HR should be thinking about, curated by someone whose firm has thought about it for longer in private. You can read Human Capital Insider on LinkedIn.

• Thomas Otter has been tracking HR technology long enough to have watched multiple generations of “revolutionary” platforms become legacy systems, which gives his reflections on work tech a certain earned quality. You can read Work in Progress on Substack.

• Jason Averbook has spent decades at the intersection of HR and technology, which means he has had a front row seat to every overpromised implementation and every genuinely transformative shift (and can apparently still tell the difference). You can read Now to Next on Substack.

• Anita Lettink has made it her mission to decode the EU Pay Transparency Directive before it decodes your organization’s entire compensation structure first. You can read Equal Pay on LinkedIn.

• Steven Hunt started as a mathematician and became an organizational psychologist, which is the most logical career arc for someone who eventually concluded that people are the hardest variable. You can read Talent Tectonics on Substack.

• John Sumser has been the HR tech industry’s resident skeptic long enough to have earned the right to say “I told you so” about several things that are now considered conventional wisdom. Heather Bussing continues to play the role of counselor (in all ways) for the industry. You can read HRExaminer on Substack.

• Josh Bersin covers the entire HR technology and talent landscape with a research operation that makes you wonder if he sleeps, or if the real Josh Bersin is actually a very well-trained AI model by now. You can read Josh Bersin Unleashed on Substack.

• Kevin Wheeler has been writing about the future of talent since the future was still largely theoretical, with both incredible foresight and a field that is just catching up to things he was saying years ago. You can read Future of Talent.

• Meg Bear and Amy Wilson decided two newsletter authors are better than one newsletter author (or one podcast host), which is either a sign of shared passion or a mutual inability to commit to a solo project. I like both of those. You can read Insight Loop on LinkedIn.

I am sure I missed some folks (or maybe you don’t post enough!) but I’ll share more inspiration on the reg.

That’s it for this week!