About 10 days ago, Satya Nadella sent a 1,500 word email to all staff to tell them about Microsoft ’s new mission statement. A reader duly forwarded the message to me with a note saying: sometimes your job is too easy. I glanced at the email, and agreed. With material like this, my job is too easy. I sat back and waited for someone else to take the memo to pieces. Only no one did. That could be because no one could get through it. At 1,500 words it is about twice the length of this column, and while I am trying quite hard to encourage you to read on, Mr Nadella made no such effort. His was the usual mishmash of “platforms”, “drivers”, “ecosystems”, “aligns”, “DNAs” and “going forwards” — as well as some more ambitious combinations such as “extend our experience footprint”. Yet what he came up with was unreadable, largely meaningless hyperbole — and no one turned a hair. Many readers will have failed to get past the first word. “Team,” the memo begins. “Every great company has an enduring mission.” Mr Nadella goes on. This sounds good, only it is not true. In the early days of Microsoft, Bill Gates came up with a vastly better mission: a computer on every desk and in every home. Best of all, it was precise. The main problem with the new mission is not its grandiosity but its emptiness. Achieve more what? On this vital question, Mr Nadella is silent. Not content with announcing his new mission, Mr Nadella empowers himself to achieve still more: “___________________________________________” In turn he explains each element. Culture, he explains, “is about where everyone is bringing their A game and finding deep meaning in their work”. This is all very well, but spelling it out will do no good. By simply telling your underlings to bring their A games to work, all you do is alienate people who do not like sporting metaphors. Equally, everyone wants meaning at work, but hardly any white-collar workers ever find it. Mr Nadella has so overexcited himself that he has decreed mere meaning is no longer enough: it has to be deep, or else it does not count. By thus raising the bar so impossibly high, he has ensured no employee has a hope of clearing it. Having dropped this bombshell, Mr Nadella swiftly reverts to upbeat for his closing rallying cry: “I really do believe that we can achieve magical things when we come together as one team and focus.” I, on the other hand, really do believe that magic is best left to Harry Potter and coming together as one team of 120,000 is impossible, especially when planning to take an axe to part of it.