The First Thing I Do When I Walk Into Any Organization

I had just joined IGT as SVP and Head of Global Studios.

At the time IGT was the world's leading slot machine manufacturer. Twelve studios. Every continent. Hundreds of artists, designers, and engineers building a global portfolio generating roughly two billion dollars in annual revenue.

It was also a company in trouble. Market share dropping. Ship share dropping. A dominant position built over decades quietly eroding. The people inside knew it. They watched the numbers. They felt it in the work. What they had not had was someone willing to sit down and ask them what they saw.

So that is what I did first.

Before any plan. Before any strategy. Before any announcement about what was going to change and why. I traveled to every studio on every continent and sat down with the people doing the work. Artists, designers, engineers. People inside the organization and people outside it. Small groups in conference rooms. Sometimes one on one.

Same three questions every time.

What is good here that if we changed it would be a significant loss? What is broken that needs to change, but not necessarily right now? And what is on fire — the thing that if we do not address immediately we are going to lose everything?

I call it the Good, Bad, Ugly.

What came back, across every studio, every continent, every conversation, was consistent in a way that was not surprising to me but should be to anyone who thinks a turnaround starts with a plan.

The good was always the people. Not the technology. Not the IP. Not the brand or the market position. The people. Every time, without exception, the thing people said they could not afford to lose was each other.

That tells you something important about what is actually at stake. And something important about what most incoming leaders get wrong.

The most common mistake I see in leaders entering a broken or declining organization is that they feel they have something to prove. They arrive with answers already written. They make assumptions without collecting data. They announce changes before they have felt the heartbeat of the organization. And the people, who have survived every previous leader who did exactly this, quietly wait for it to fail.

You cannot lead people you have not listened to. You cannot fix what you have not actually seen. And you cannot earn trust by demonstrating how much you know before you have shown that you care what they know.

After every Good, Bad, Ugly conversation I documented everything and sent it back. Every group. Every individual. Here is what I heard. Did I get it right?

That moment is not administrative. It is the whole point.

When someone receives those notes and reads their own words reflected back accurately, something shifts. They realize they were actually heard. Not managed. Not processed. Heard. The dialogue that opens from that point is different from anything a plan could have created.

What followed at IGT was a significant operational and creative transformation. On-time delivery improved by 400 percent. Output increased by 184 percent. The studios that had been quietly losing ground started winning again. I was promoted to Chief Creative Officer. The listening came first. Everything else followed from it.

None of that was possible without what came before the plan — hundreds of honest conversations with the people who already knew what needed to change.

The Good, Bad, Ugly has never failed me. Not at IGT. Not in any organization I have walked into since.

Because it is not a framework. It is a decision about who you are going to be when you walk in the door.

Are you the leader who comes in to be heard? Or the one who comes in to hear?

Everything follows from that answer.

This is how every Clearpath engagement begins. clearpath.partners