It's lunchtime, and this is Brad Anderson's lunch break. Here in Redmond we're visited by some of the smartest people on the planet, pretty much every day. And every chance I get, I meet up with them for lunch. (upbeat cheery music) Today I am meeting up with Microsoft veteran and industry icon Kurt DelBene, the Executive Vice-President of Strategy and Operations at Microsoft. (light jazz piano music) I know you're a big car guy, you build cars, - [Kurt] I am a big car guy. - [Brad] You raise cars, - [Kurt] I do. - I don't know why I'm driving, I should have you drive. - Well, you should. - [Brad] So do you drive something like this every day to work? - [Kurt] I gotta tell ya, I drive a Prius. (both laugh) - I don't know if everyone knows this, but we all know you, my kids know your last name because they have seen all the commercials of your wife, you know, who's one of our Congresswomen. - [Kurt] Hey, it was my name first, that's what I tell people. You know the benefit of that is now people know how to pronounce it. - [Brad] Yeah, you know, your wife is obviously in the game but you're no stranger to politics either, I'm sure you're probably too humble to say this but what was it like to get that phone call that says, 'hey you know Kurt we need to come and save healthcare.gov'. - [Kurt] It came actually at the breakfast room table. I saw the New York Times article kind of going through the issues and I said to Suzan, this looks all completely preventable. And she then asked the magic question: 'well would you be willing to help?' And I said, well... - That's where the question came? - That's where the question came originally. And then literally just a couple of weeks later I'm sitting in the Oval Office and the President said 'I unabashedly beg you to do this' and I learned later you don't even go into the Oval Office unless you are planning on saying yes, so I guess I gave the right answer but it was an incredibly rewarding experience. I love building software but the ability to kind of get people healthcare and know that the system that you're building is helping people in that direct way was just, it was great. - [Brad] You know, so you've had Obama as a boss and you know you have Satya as a boss right now, who was better at playing basketball? - Oh that's an easy one. I don't know, I thought you were going to ask me a tougher question than that one, that's got to be President Obama. - Who's better at cricket? - Well that's got to be Satya I suppose. I don't know, the styles of those two leaders is different, I mean I briefed the President about every week when I was doing the work, - [Brad] Wow. - [Kurt] He's a funny guy, and probably one of the biggest differentiators, obviously Satya's highly deeply technical and the President was learning. He kind of got a crash course with healthcare.gov, no pun intended. But I was sitting in the Roosevelt Room, we're getting ready for the final push, and I'm describing to him how we're looking at dashboards every day, we're looking at all the indicators, seeing when they'll tip over, and he says 'oh so Kurt, it's just like Star Trek isn't it, we need more power'. And he actually says it, and I didn't know what to say, I finally just said 'Yup Mr. President, it's just like that.' (Brad laughs) Yeah, it was a fantastic experience. The thing that's amazing about him is one: after this, and I think it's true of government forevermore, these IT systems are going to be absolutely critical to the success of their agendas and that this was a turning point in our industry where that got learned. - [Kurt] And I said, you know Nathan it seems that people don't want a fax machine with a touch screen on it they just want to hit ten digits and hit send. And his response was, well at Microsoft we don't look at market research, we just know. - And contrast that now... - Yeah contrast that deeply now, we have come a long way since those points.
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