Microsoft COO Kevin Turner is leaving after 11 years in the role. He won’t be replaced.
Employees learned of the move Thursday in an email message from CEO Satya Nadella, in which he outlined his plans for reorganizing the company’s senior leadership team.
Nadella highlighted the importance of having “one feedback loop” across the company to reinforce customer value and satisfaction. To achieve this, he said, he will more deeply integrate the sales, marketing and services group with the rest of the company, under a single senior leadership team.
That means the COO role will be divided among five senior executives.
Judson Althoff will head up Microsoft’s Worldwide Commercial Business, focusing on the Enterprise and Partner Group, Public Sector, Small and Midmarket Solutions and Partners, the Developer Experience team, and services.
Jean-Philippe Courtois, after years in charge of Microsoft’s international business, will now take on responsibility for North American sales and marketing too, as head of Global Sales, Marketing and Operations.
As Chief Marketing Officer, Chris Capossela will take on responsibility for the Worldwide Marketing and Consumer Business, including the consumer channels group he previously ran, along with Microsoft Retail and the company’s relationships with OEMs.
Kurt DelBene adds responsibility for IT and Operations to his role, alongside corporate strategy.
Finally, CFO Amy Hood will lead the sales, marketing and services finance team as well as the central finance team she already heads, and take control of worldwide licensing and pricing.
Althoff and Courtois will join the senior leadership team, reporting directly to Nadella. They have yet to figure out how the Worldwide Marketing and Operations team will report, given that they will share responsibility for it in future.
Nadella hinted that Microsoft’s subsidiaries around the world might be granted more autonomy in the way they do business.
The world wants solutions that are local in nature, and so Microsoft must trust local teams’ insight into what their customers need while giving those teams world-class, global support, he wrote.
Subsidiaries will remain financially accountable for their objectives, and will be given new capabilities and the flexibility to innovate and optimize locally in search of long-term growth, he said, inviting employees to attend a company-wide Q&A session at 8.30 a.m. Pacific Time.
As for Turner, he has landed a job as CEO of financial trader Citadel Securities, and will leave Microsoft on July 31. Many had expected him to move on after being passed over the CEO role.
Nadella credited Turner with doubling Microsoft’s revenue as head of the sales team, and with driving customer satisfaction scores to “the highest in company history.”