Leadership In Tech Companies

Poor leadership doesn’t just hurt morale. It drains everything — energy, trust, and potential. People don’t quit overnight. They disengage quietly first. They stop caring. Then they stop trying. ⚠️ Productivity drops. ⚠️ Innovation stalls. ⚠️ Your best people leave — and your culture goes with them. The real cost of poor leadership isn’t measured in dollars. It’s measured in lost potential and silent exits. Here’s how great leaders prevent that: 1) Take radical ownership. Admit when you’re wrong and learn faster than you fail. 2) Listen with intent. Feedback isn’t criticism — it’s direction. 3) Lead with clarity. Confusion is the enemy of trust. 4) Develop others. The best leaders grow leaders, not followers. 5) Show empathy daily. People give more when they feel seen and valued. Leadership isn’t a title — it’s a daily decision to serve better.

How has Schell Games managed to avoid any layoffs since its establishment 22 years ago? I took away 8 points from this GamesIndustry.Biz interview, with Jesse Schell himself, as to why games organizations don't have to accept layoffs as inevitable. I encourage other games leaders who have not had to issue any layoffs to offer their guidance too in the comments. https://lnkd.in/e438pPhW 1. Prioritize People Over Profits: Focus on creating a stable workplace culture where employees feel valued and secure. This builds trust and loyalty, leading to better performance and retention. 2. Efficient Decision-Making: Adopting agile development allows adjustments based on ongoing project insights and changes, ensuring the team stays on track without overburdening. 3. Long-Term Relationships and Retention: Investing in a desirable workplace environment helps retain employees, who, over time, build stronger team dynamics and improve overall performance. 4. Outsourcing Caution: Being cautious with outsourcing to avoid hindering communication and innovation within the team. Building long-term relationships with in-house staff is preferred. 5. Risk Management and Financial Prudence: Always having backup plans and balancing work-for-hire and own IP projects helps manage financial risks and maintain job security. 6. Transparent Communication: Honesty about financial challenges and pragmatic decision-making helps maintain stability and trust within the team. 7. Strategic Growth: Avoiding rapid expansion that could lead to miscommunication and inefficiencies. Growth is strategic and thoughtful. 8. Proactive Management: Regularly reassessing and adjusting strategies allows staying ahead of potential financial challenges and avoiding layoffs. Most of all, this portion stuck with me. Must we accept this, at all levels, as necessary and inevitable? "[Studio executives] go into it saying, 'Look, we're gonna get this money, we're gonna make this game. If the game is a success, then great – if the game's not, then we're gonna have to lay people off'. That's just how it is," Schell says. "I've always found it to be really toxic. I've been at companies where I've seen it happen. And you see how everybody lives in fear of what will happen next."

Speed is a Leadership Decision I was just listening to an HBR IdeaCast podcast interview between Andy Jassy (CEO of Amazon) and Adi Ignatius (Editor at Large, Harvard Business Review) on the challenges of maintaining speed as organizations scale. This is something I address with my CEO clients every single day. Andy nailed it perfectly when he said, "Speed is a Leadership Decision!". His goal is for Amazon (which has almost 2 million employees!!) to operate like the "largest startup in the world". Speed isn’t just a cultural trait — it’s a system design choice. ⚡️ Speed Is a Strategy — Especially at Scale In fast-moving markets, slow decisions are often more dangerous than wrong ones. Yet as organizations grow, speed tends to slip — buried under layers of process, approvals, and politics. But it doesn't have to. Some of the most successful companies in the world have found ways to institutionalize speed at scale — without sacrificing quality: 📌 Amazon uses “single-threaded leadership” to keep ownership and velocity high. When something matters, it’s not buried in a matrix — it gets a dedicated leader and a focused team. 📌 Google runs an annual “bureaucracy busters” exercise, where employees flag process blockers. The best ideas are implemented within weeks — cutting red tape, not adding to it. 📌 Stripe uses “rigorous, lightweight decision-making frameworks” to avoid slow-by-default consensus and instead enable aligned autonomy. 📌 Netflix has a “Freedom with Responsibility” culture giving employees wide decision-making latitude within clear guardrails. 📌 Apple uses a Functional Org Structure (vs. product-based or matrix) where experts in each area (e.g., hardware, software, design) make decisions quickly and cohesively within their domain. 📌 Spotify has a famed "squad model" where small, cross-functional teams own full slices of the product, enabling faster decision-making without constant central coordination. 🎯 What fast organizations do differently: - Clarify ownership – decisions need a who, not just a what - Default to action – especially when risks are reversible - Design smart escalation paths – so speed doesn’t equal sloppiness - Regularly audit process debt – not every new policy earns its keep - Celebrate fast, high-quality decisions – not just outcomes The paradox? As your company grows, speed must be engineered. It won’t happen by accident. How are you keeping your organization fast where it counts? Could you use a "bureaucracy buster" exercize? #Leadership #DecisionMaking #HighPerformance #SpeedAtScale #Amazon #Google #Innovation #Execution #OrgDesign #CLeadership #Strategy

⚡ When the world’s largest retailer becomes the world’s leading media platform globally, the rules of #advertising —and modern #media— are bound to change forever. Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon, was named Media Person of the Year last night at Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity 2025. In an inspiring fireside chat with Marc Pritchard, Chief Brand Officer of Procter & Gamble, he gave us a powerful reminder: "Leadership is not about #technology—it’s about relentlessly solving #customer problems" 📌 Sassy on the “Why Culture" at #Amazon: 🔹 They hire people with a high "Why-IQ": “they behave like owners of the business, not renters, and they challenge the status quo” 🔹 Decisions begin (and end) with "why"—what customer need are we solving? Over 400 internal processes were eliminated or simplified last year by asking this 🔹 Every initiative—ads, logistics, even AI—must pass the “usefulness” test 🔹 “You don’t build companies around tech,” Jassy said. “You build them around problems” Meanwhile, Amazon’s retail media engine keeps booming: 🔺 Ad revenue is expected to hit $60.6B in 2025 (not including spend with Amazon-owned properties such as Prime Video and Twith)—with strong growth forecasted into 2026, according to WARC 🔺 Advertising accounts for just 9.2% of Amazon’s total revenue, yet it outpaces Amazon’s overall growth (+17.7% YoY in Q1) 🔺 Amazon is now the #3 global ad player (after Google and Meta), and 56% of global marketers plan to increase their Amazon ad spend this year, according to WARC 🔺 This growth is spurred by the 2.5 billion monthly visitors it gets and by the fact that “ads on Amazon are seen as among the most relevant by consumers” 📌 Here's my take on Andy Jassy: 1️⃣ Quiet intensity and clarity—he leads by simplifying complexity, not amplifying noise 2️⃣ His obsession with customer-first problem solving drives a culture of purposeful speed. “Speed matters disproportionately in today’s world and it is a leadership decision” 3️⃣ His biggest watch-out? Avoid the complacency and conservatism that come with success. “The world is changing very fast for all of us; we need to keep reinventing ourselves and keep taking risks” 4️⃣ Jassy’s presence at #CannesLions2025 was one of the highlights of the festival and it sent a clear message to the industry: "Retail media is no longer the future of media—it’s the now!"

Amazon was a closed system under Bezos, but is Jassy opening it up? Amazon is now empowering brands with more data and services than ever. It helps to understand Jassy's background. He led AWS for years. AWS was all about opening up Amazon's massive storage and computing infrastructure as an underlying service for basically the entire Internet ecosystem. Under Jassy's leadership, Buy With Prime is taking a similar approach to eCommerce fulfillment and delivery. Andy saw the huge opportunity here, just like how AWS unlocked additional revenue beyond Amazon's core retail business. Buy With Prime can capture more of the DTC eComm pie that's largely eluded Amazon so far. The other side of Buy With Prime is the mounting scrutiny and accusations of monopolistic practices from regulators. The ability to open up more takes a little bit of the pressure off. Amazon can say, "Look, our Prime logistics are an open service for anyone!" This openness and data-sharing are Jassy's overarching philosophy. We're seeing Amazon release details it previously kept under tight wraps—search volumes, click shares, conversion data, etc. It represents a total 180-degree turn from the past mentality of, "Data is our competitive advantage; we can't share that!" There's a clear method to this openness. Andy Jassy understands that being more open and transparent empowers sellers and vendors to succeed more on Amazon, which nets them higher commission revenues. #Amazon #BWP

Yesterday, Eugene Kim reported that Amazon had formalized the inclusion of an employee's adherence to the company's famed Leadership Principles as an input in employee performance reviews (link in comments). The move codifies and formalizes what was previously implied: that Amazon employees should be evaluated in part on how well their actions live up to the company’s 16 LPs – corporate totems or values like “Bias for Action,” “Customer Obsession, and “Frugality” that are supposed to guide behavior, decision-making, and new-idea development inside the tech behemoth. For me, this was a significant move because it’s Andy Jassy's latest salvo in his years-long crusade to strengthen, and in some corners of the organization, resuscitate, the company DNA. What Jassy is seeking to do doesn’t have many examples to model after: to transform the 1.5-million person company into the “world’s largest startup,” as he’s said is his goal. But he and his leadership team have been consistently taking action (5-day RTO, video tutorials on the LPs, etc.) that they believe gives them a fighting chance to do so, as I wrote in the piece below for Fortune yesterday. If you're a former or current Amazon employee, what's your opinion? Very interested in your feedback, so I welcome you to either comment below or message me privately if you'd rather. https://lnkd.in/eKnkHH2M

The 2024 letter to shareholders by Amazon CEO Andy Jassy offers a window into just how profoundly AI is continually reshaping the operations of one of the world's most important tech players. #GenAI has taken us into an era of #Discontinuity, where old strategic playbooks are obsolete. Here's how Amazon is navigating Discontinuity: 1️⃣ Jassy highlighted that generative AI is poised to reinvent nearly every customer experience, from shopping and entertainment to healthcare and smart home devices. Amazon is developing over 1,000 generative AI applications across its businesses. 2️⃣ To support AI advancements, Amazon is investing heavily in its infrastructure. This includes the development of custom AI chips like Trainium2, which offer improved price-performance over traditional GPUs. These investments aim to make AI more accessible and cost-effective for both Amazon and its customers. 3️⃣ Amazon has completed a $4 billion investment in AI startup Anthropic, integrating its Claude AI models into Amazon Web Services (AWS) offerings. This partnership enhances AWS's generative AI capabilities, providing customers with advanced tools for AI application development. 4️⃣ Jassy underscored the importance of in-person collaboration for fostering innovation, particularly in AI development. He noted that Amazon's return-to-office mandate is intended to facilitate the teamwork necessary for breakthrough advancements in AI. Overall, Jassy's letter positions AI not just as a technological tool but as a foundational element of Amazon's strategy to enhance customer experiences and maintain competitive advantage. Will it be enough?

Games don’t accidentally become engaging, they are meticulously designed to keep players invested, motivated, and eager to improve. They create clarity, progression, challenge, autonomy, and fairness, ensuring people don’t just play but care deeply about the experience. If you want people to care about their work the way they care about games, here are five leadership principles you can apply right away. 1. Make Goals Clear In every great game, players know exactly how to win. They aren’t guessing what matters, they have clear objectives, measurable progress, and immediate feedback. At work, people need the same. Unclear goals create uncertainty, confusion, and disengagement. If you want your team to care, make the mission crystal clear. 2. Make Progress Visible Players don’t wait for an annual review to see if they are getting better. Every level-up, every achievement, every progress bar reinforces momentum. In your team, progress should never be hidden. Small wins should be recognized, celebrated, and made visible so people feel their efforts translate into real impact. 3. Make Challenges Dynamic Games adapt to player skill. They push people just enough to stay in a state of flow, where the challenge is engaging but not overwhelming. At work, static challenges kill motivation. If a task is too easy, it’s boring. If it’s too hard, it’s frustrating. Great leaders adjust challenges based on skill levels, ensuring people always have room to grow without burning out. 4. Make Autonomy Real Nobody enjoys a game that plays itself for you. Players want control, choice, and agency. They want their decisions to shape the outcome. Yet in many workplaces, autonomy is fake. Leaders say, “We trust you,” but then micromanage every decision. Real autonomy means giving people ownership, trusting their judgment, and letting them drive their own success. 5. Make Fairness a Non-Negotiable In games, rules are fair. If the system is rigged, players quit. At work, unfairness destroys engagement. If promotions, recognition, and opportunities feel arbitrary, people stop giving their best. Great leaders set fair rules, ensure transparency, and reward contribution, not politics.

There are a lot of factors that go into making it as a narrative professional in games. Talent is one. Skill, which is distinct from talent, is another. Willpower, determination, the ability to keep going in the face of adversity - that's a third. And then there's opportunity, sometimes called luck, which is to say sometimes people get chances that they can either seize or fumble, depending on a whole raft of other factors. But one of the most important parts of navigating the success-fail minefield for narrative types comes from the people around them. If you are a senior, a team lead, a colleague or a director, there are things you can do that will actively help or harm a narrative designer's development and affect their career trajectory in ways that matter profoundly long after you're just another forgotten LinkedIn contact from the hazy before times. Make no mistake, there is something of a moral responsibility to be a positive effect on other people's careers, or at least not to be an actively negative one. Sure, maybe that junior isn't your responsibility and you're already spread thin like butter scraped over too much of whatever you scrape butter over. It's OK not to wring the last drop of blood from your turnip to help in a circumstance like that. What is not acceptable in any way, shape, or form is to maliciously damage someone else's career through bad direction, deliberately bad feedback, or bad professional advice. For starters, you will want to give consistent direction. If you tell a junior to go left one time and go right the next time they face that same situation, then you're undercutting their belief in their own decision making abilities. That means when they have to make a call, they're in a worse, less efficient position to do so. Be consistent in your messaging - and put it in writing so that both the youngling and yourself can refer to it to align purposes on a regular basis. For another thing, you will want to give feedback and direction in good faith, in order to give a junior the best possible chance to succeed at a task. Withholding critical task-specific information is dishonest and dangerous. Failure to explain clearly what the expectations are for a deliverable sets someone up for guaranteed failure, with the inevitable morale hit to follow. And if you don't clearly know what you want - or you know what you want but you can't define it clearly - make your lack of clarity itself clear. Otherwise it comes off as that classic pastime "I'm thinking of a feature, no, that's not it", and HR frowns on asking for demonstrations of psychic powers in on-site interviews. Or to boil it down, when you let people know what you want and expect from them, fairly and consistently, they stand a much better chance of delivering something good and usable. The positive feedback from that helps them grow and improve, which means everyone wins. And we all like that.

When I hear a senior game dev leader say (paraphrased), "I need a system that lets me to see what everyone is doing so I can make good decisions!" ...I immediately think, "Ah, here is someone who doesn't know what their role as a senior leader is and/or an organization that has a serious trust problem." What you want is a team that you trust to make good decisions, regardless of what you have visibility of. If you're living in the weeds, you're failing to take care of your organization. Your job is to create culture through modeling behavior, encouraging and discouraging the right (and wrong) actions, and building systems that give people what they need in terms of info and resources to do their job well. Some advice: Rather than trying to track every person and their work, or even every team and their work, think about a much shorter list of things that might help you understand if a team is succeeding or failing. Some examples: - What does the team think is the most important next several things to work on? - Roughly when do they expect to finish those things? (this is estimation, it will be wrong to some degree or another) - How engaged is the team? (could ask about burnout, morale, etc.) - What are the major risks that they see could trip them up on their way to accomplishing their goals? - What support does the team need from the layers above them to help them complete the work (at all or more quickly)? If you knew from all your teams what they considered important, when they thought they'd finish, how engaged they were, what they saw as the major risks, and the support that they feel they need, that would give you PLENTY of info to make good decisions. Whereas knowing that, "the run animation for enemy number 12 was estimated as a 4 hr task and Javier spent three days working on it so what went wrong" or that, "Feature Team X missed their sprint goal 3 of the last 8 iterations and we should probably look into that" is way more likely to pull you down a bunch of useless paths. #gameproduction #gamedevelopment #gameindustry #worksystem