Thoughtfully Ruthless

Chapter 1Thoughtful and Ruthless

The Trigger Points for Thoughtfully Ruthless

My first realization about thoughtfully ruthless leadership occurred when Microsoft took a $1 billion write-off in 2007 for the red-ring-of-death quality problems with Xbox. I was part of the Xbox leadership team, and we were in danger of becoming irrelevant unless we broke away from our strict focus on 16 to 22-year-old men in North America who liked shooting and racing games.

Don Mattrick became the new CEO of Xbox, and he epitomized a thoughtfully ruthless leader. In my first meeting with him, he said, “Val, what are your top ten priorities?” I rattled off five, but then he interrupted me and said, “Here are mine, and here are five more for you that you need to add to your list.” Every morning Don thought of the three biggest issues that prevented him growing his business and focused on those that day. He monopolized meetings to drive his agenda, which frustrated everyone around him, but he focused on the goals of the business, ruthlessly and relentlessly. We learned how to make meetings more effective by building Don time into the agenda wherein he could share his thoughts and ideas, but the team could still cover the topics that needed to get decided as a group. He knew how to not get sucked into the tactical day-to-day execution and stay focused on long-term strategy.

When I shared some of my views on the leadership team and the changes that needed to happen for us to turn around the business, ...