To combat complacency, Supercell's CEO opened an all-hands meeting by showing an animated slide of their declining global ranking year-by-year. This act of transparent and painful self-critique from the top created the psychological safety and urgency needed to rally the team around a new strategy.
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The founder received harsh 360 feedback, with colleagues labeling him 'Hurricane Ben' for his disruptive behavior. Instead of being defensive, he recognized the feedback as a critical inflection point, forcing him to fundamentally change his leadership style to effectively scale with the company.
Supercell avoids emotional decision-making by being radically transparent with data. A daily email with key metrics for every game is sent to the entire company. This ensures everyone understands the performance criteria and accepts the rigorous, data-driven decisions to kill projects that don't meet specific thresholds.
Calling a "code red" is a strategic leadership move used to shock the system. Beyond solving an urgent issue, it serves as a loyalty test to identify the most committed team members, build collective confidence through rapid problem-solving, and rally everyone against competitive threats.
Innovation requires psychological safety. When employees are afraid to speak up or make mistakes, they become "armored" and growth stagnates. To unlock potential, leaders must create environments where the joy of creation and contribution outweighs the fear of failure.
Jensen Huang rejects "praise publicly, criticize privately." He criticizes publicly so the entire organization can learn from one person's mistake, optimizing for company-wide learning over individual comfort and avoiding political infighting.
When driving major organizational change, a data-driven approach from the start is crucial for overcoming emotional resistance to established ways of working. Building a strong business case based on financial and market metrics can depersonalize the discussion and align stakeholders more quickly than relying on vision alone.
When presenting their rebrand strategy, Ford's CEO encouraged his team to transparently share challenges they hadn't yet solved. This demonstrated deep, critical thinking and built more confidence with the board than a perfectly polished presentation would have.
When hypergrowth causes you to fail internal stakeholders (like Operations), apologies are insufficient. Rebuild trust by going to the CEO and board *together* with the slighted team to advocate for a drastic roadmap pivot that prioritizes their needs, demonstrating true commitment to their success.
Supercell's culture redefines failure. Instead of punishing unsuccessful projects, they are treated as learning experiments. The company literally celebrates killing a game with champagne, reinforcing that learning from a false hypothesis is a valuable outcome.
To combat complacency, Dell manufactures a crisis. He instructs his company to imagine a new, faster, more efficient competitor will put them out of business in five years. Their only path to survival is to proactively become that company first.
