This archive report was first published on 30 November 2019.
The Zune's Failure: A Cautionary Tale for Business Leaders ¶
Published on November 30, 2019, by SUNNY BINDRA
Do you remember the Zune, a MP3 music player released by Microsoft in the early 2000s? The Zune was a superior product, with an elegant design and simple user interface. Despite its advantages, the Zune failed miserably and was discontinued just a couple of years after its launch.
Simon Sinek, a renowned author and speaker, tells the story of the Zune's failure in his new book, The Infinite Game. Sinek spoke at a Microsoft event, where he was given a Zune as a gift, and found it to be a great product. However, he eventually gave it away because he couldn't connect it to iTunes, which housed most of his music collection.
After speaking at an Apple event a few months later, Sinek shared a taxi with a senior Apple executive and couldn't resist telling him about the Zune's superiority. The executive's response was a smile and a single sentence: 'I have no doubt.'
Sinek's reflections on that response led him to write his excellent new book, which explores the importance of considering the broader implications of business decisions. In it, he asks questions such as: What game are you in? Does your leader ever talk about cause and purpose, or just whip everyone into a fear-filled and greed-driven frenzy about targets and deliverables? Are your meetings fixated on benchmarking and catching up with your competitors, or on your own unique plays? Does everything change when the CEO changes, or are CEOs selected to continue the distinctive values and timeless ethos of the organisation?
