How to use the Armchair CEO Forum!

[James Falconer]

We created the Armchair CEO forum to provide everyone with a place to enter their thoughts, suggestions and opinions on what Microsoft should do next. What would you do if you were in charge!? Share your thoughts, plans and opinions right here!

Please: Keep all threads productive, respectful and on-topic to the original post!

 

[hwangeruk]

Fire Satya Nadella
Dqy 2, start a huge investment programme for Windows Mobile.
Day 3, find out why UWP apps are woefully under developed around libraries and APIs and commit to a UWP only tooling for UWP
make Visual Studio a UWP app (and I’d we can’t fi d out why the UWP platform isn’t sufficient and make it work)
Day 4. Fire the entire marketing team.
Day 5. Promote Panos Panay
Day 6. Give the Xbox team a bonus and give them all 30 year life contracts.
Day 7. Fire the licensing team
Day 8. Find out where my gawd darn Windows Mobile platform / Surface phone is. And tell the team they have 12 more days ??????

simple really.
Can I have my £6 billion in shares now bill ??????

 

[reomw]

Acquire Adobe and Atlassian.

 

[Tayhuwaniwanga]

I think the answer is pretty clear. I'do go globalise the products and services.

 

[dlls]

Drop the "refresh" mentality while there are still some people left who don't think that my company is a complete joke.
I would also probably realize that the cloud services era won't last forever, and with no consumer and enterprise products to fall back to, the company I run would be pretty much history.

 

[Rahul Dhakne]

Dont know what I would do but these are the things i would certainly NOT do:
Fire lumia staff
Discontinue lumia production
Not let the Nokia people make their marvelous hardware like before.
Remove all the presence from market so showing we ourself don't support the platform, sending bad message to devs discouraging the whole UWP thing.

 

[Shareonline]

@hwangaruk
Harsh but in reality the absolute best solution..
I would however also keep investing big time in windows 10 and azure. But your points are very valid!

 

[ulfvar]

First thing I would do was to start focusing more on UWP and the store, I would create a specific store team and make it a standard that all apps created by Microsoft should be in the store.

Second I would overhaul the design team in most places. Focus more on minimalist, clean design and have a high standard so that over time people would start connecting Microsoft with clean, good design in their minds.

Third would be marketing, I would either fire the current marketing team or hire new people on the team and add to it. I

Fourth thing would I would do is to improve the relationship with developers and attempt to prove that Microsoft was all in on UWP and that it is the future.


For the most part, I like the direction that Microsoft has taken under Satya. There are of course more things I would like to change.

 

[SunToucher]

If the various Teams are not working well together, fire the road blockers, impress upon all concerned how important Team work and following through on projects are a necessity not just for clients, but also developers.

 

[Azurus]

first things first. I would apologize to the entire world for the disaster that happened with Windows 10 Mobile. and promise to be fully committed to the next version of Windows on mobile.

2. reintroduce windows to the mobile market with a refreshed windows experience along with a premium built phone such as a surface phone. iteration s can be added such as a foldable version and whatnot

3. withdraw ALL Microsoft apps from Apple and Android application stores. this is to make a statement. to show consumers that if they really want Microsoft services they need to commit to the platform

4. to counteract people's response "there is no developer support", Microsoft should really push developers (money, threats, etc to make the damn apps. yeah I'm talking to you Google and Snapchat.
5. Marketing marketing marketing. Microsoft already has a great established name with the surface branding. people would drool over a phone of the same build quality

6. Cortana should be updated. I used Google assistant for the first time for a week and I'm blown away. come one Microsoft you could do better

 

[xfatalx zero]

Removing apps from another platform is just shooting yourself in the foot instead. Create a better mobile presence and all apps across all devices get treated differently and the only exclusives are limits to each OS but nothing ground breaking except on Win Mobile.

 

[randyoaks187]

Start Panos and the Surface team working on the Surface Time Machine so I could go back in time and fix the mobile strategy from the beginning. Windows mobile free to handset manufacturers from day 1, portion of app revenue to handset manufacturers, no carrier exclusives. I could go on for longer but that's where I would start.

 

[Mar_kis]

- Put emphasis on getting back into the mobile arena ASAP.
- Combine Skype, GroupMe, and Microsoft Teams into one app
- Improve and expand upon UWP apps
- Improve communication to the public
- Bring more PC games to the windows store

 

[bogascorp]

I would split Microsoft in two. A Consumer facing Microsoft and an Enterprise facing Microsoft.
The enterprise Microsoft would create services and devices targeted to the company side. Such as surface with added security and toughness, Azure, Office 365 and so on.


The consumer Microsoft would create devices and a reliable and powerful ecosystem.
Devices such as tablets, computers and phones, AI (cortana), APIs for consumer electronics to use (like apple's home kit).


Microsoft needs an ecosystem that it can rely on and build upon. Only this way, they can have control over the devices and system to better create experiences. Great Experiences.


There's a lot of potential inside de company to create devices and services. The problem has been marketing them properly, globalisation of products and services and connecting the products and services in a seamless way.


I would reshape the company to work on a shared vision were teams work together to create a bigger picture were all devices and products are inter connected and work together to create "magic".

 

[meincranbourne]

Firstly, end the attitude that Microsoft can abandon users completely, legacy hardware is not one or two years old to the average user. Keep working toward a Microsoft ecosystem it has been proven to work for other brands.

 

[brunoadduarte]

I'd leak something. Not even joking. We're waaay too much in the dark regarding new products.

 

[DL1794]

Secure and Solid OS

We created the Armchair CEO forum to provide everyone with a place to enter their thoughts, suggestions and opinions on what Microsoft should do next. What would you do if you were in charge!? Share your thoughts, plans and opinions right here!

Please: Keep all threads productive, respectful and on-topic to the original post!

If I were the CEO, I’d focus on ensuring that Windows 10 is solid, operates extremely well & reliably, and that it’s bulletproof in today’s risky, cybersecurity environment. Thoroughly think about and test all OS updates before pushing them to customers/consumers. Minimize major changes to the OS unless they are truly necessary and worth pursuing.

 

[editguy]

Retire with my golden parachute.

 

[AesonAus]

Keep going on the Enterprise side, but push the Dynamics team harder and get more information out about it to counter Salesforce.
Build a sweet looking desktop PC and "normal" size laptop say 15" or even 17" both spec'd out to crazy town and badged as Xbox PCs -targetting the gamer market so now Xbox means gaming whether it's on console or PC.
Go all in on a Microsoft phone powered by Android (as a Windows Mobile / Phone user for over 10 years who recently switched - it's time to let Windows on Phone die a respectable death it has earned). Skin the heck out of the Android to give it the icons, fonts etc feel of Windows 10 though - and use the resources available to always be the first vendor to update the phone to the newest version of Android (hell even call it something else like "Andromeda OS" like Amazon did with Fire OS even though it's really just Android underneath).
Release another Microsoft Band - 2 variants - a "lower end" Microsoft Band and a "higher end" Surface Band, different designs different quality of materials etc reinforcing that the Surface brand is high end stuff better than Apple gear etc.
Either fire the marketing team, or give them an excessively large budget for 12 months. I'd want to see Microsoft references everywhere so mindshare increases amongst consumers.
Companies to acquire out of the gate - Spotify, Adobe, Citrix.

 

[dav75]

One of the first things I would do is to bring back the Microsoft Band and start taking a more risks with such devices, with the Band I think I would drop the name 'Microsoft Band' and maybe just call it 'The Band' or something else. With Windows on ARM devices, maybe bring to the market a phone version that costs less than $1,000 or bring the Courier to the market with design changes. Basically take more risks, create a fund to help create these devices so if they don't make money they still have funding to continue development. Microsoft gambled with XBox and Bing, they didn't make money for many years and nothing can be a hit straight off the bat.

Thanks to companies like Apple, Google and others they have helped to create a bad smell with anything with the word Microsoft within the Devices' Name so drop that from it's devices and maybe something will gain ground. I would also lower cost of certain subscriptions like with Office/Microsoft 365, doing so just may bring more customers on-board. Just ideas that will no doubt never happen.