Xbox Head Phil Spencer: We Were In A Tough Spot Five Years Ago

Xbox head Phil Spencer recently appeared on the Talking Games With Reggie and Harold podcast with former Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aimé and author/journalist Harold Goldberg.

In a question regarding the biggest challenge he's faced during his career, Spencer highlighted the period when he took on the Head of Xbox job in 2014 as a proud, but tough time:

"The most challenging for me is when I actually did take this job, and just the emotion of the team at that time, when I took the Head of Xbox job five [sic] years ago. And frankly, just from our product standpoint we were in a pretty tough spot both competitively as well as kind of the foundation that we had to build on. The team had lost trust in the leadership - not just individuals, I don't want to make it about people - it was really just the leadership capability and the commitment of the company to this category and our decision-making, and rebuilding that inside the company was important and takes time."

Spencer went on to talk about how he finds patience a challenge, admitting "you want things to fast-forward, you want to be able to fix things faster, you want to be able to launch things faster." And again, he referred back to the difficulties of managing through that difficult period when he took the job six years ago:

"I had people who were visibly emotional. They would come up - 'are we doing the wrong thing?' with tears in their eyes, because this is the kind of industry that we work in. That was a challenge. Again, going back, I wasn't really trained to manage through that, but getting the team back on the belief side, getting them to believe in themselves and where we were going was a good challenge, but it was definitely the biggest challenge I've had in my career."

What do make of Phil Spencer's comments? Give us your thoughts down below.

[source soundcloud.com]