Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella described the communications shake-up as a response to a media environment
Shaw announced earlier this month that he would leave Microsoft at the end of the year after more than two decades with the company. Shaw described the latest development as the formalisation of the plan that had already been announced.
The company is moving its communications team out of its marketing organisation and into the corporate, external and legal affairs group led by Vice Chair and President Brad Smith, according to internal memos from Smith and CEO Satya Nadella . Nadella said the company wants engineers, sellers, partners and other employees who are close to its products and customers to play a bigger role in telling Microsoft’s story. “We will likely have more employees and executives acting as part of Microsoft’s public voice, including on social media,” Smith wrote in his memo. “In many ways, the people closest to the work have the best opportunity to shape how Microsoft is understood,” Nadella wrote. He said Microsoft wants engineers, sellers, partners and others “closest to our products and customers” to become “an even bigger part of how we tell our story, all connected by a shared strategy and set of principles. Microsoft said Shaw will remain with the company through the end of the year.
Microsoft is changing how it communicates with the outside world. The bigger change, however, may be how Microsoft employees speak for the company. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella described the communications shake-up as a response to a media environment that has become “increasingly fragmented and noisier than ever. Instead of relying mainly on a central communications team to shape Microsoft’s public messaging, the CEO wants people closer to the company’s work to have a greater role. The restructuring also changes the role of longtime Microsoft communications chief Frank X. Shaw. He will now step away from his current responsibilities and serve as an adviser to Smith and interim communications leader Brent Colburn during the transition.