While Asha Sharma’s appointment as the CEO of Xbox has led to many controversial decisions being made for the company, like the mass layoffs in July, a new profile of Sharma by the Wall Street Journal has noted that one of the key parts of her leadership is transparency. Among those discussing this aspect of Sharma is Bethesda’s Todd Howard, who praised her communication abilities.
“She’s uniquely effective at cutting through and communicating clearly, ‘Here’s what the issues are and here’s where the opportunities are,’” he said. Host and founder of the podcast Post Games, Chris Plante, even noted how Sharma’s approach to communication and leadership differs from the previous boss of Xbox, Phil Spencer.
“Phil made such an effort to be everyone’s best friend. It’s jarring to have someone perform the role the opposite way,” said Plante, noting that Spencer even played games during meetings.
When it came to her taking on the role of CEO for Xbox, Sharma said that the decision came down to her own beliefs that she could add “unique value” to the division as a whole. “It wasn’t, ‘Do I want to do this?’ but, ‘Do I believe the theory of the case that I can add unique value?’” She described her general ambitions in life as revolving more about exploring her own capabilities rather than chasing after a specific role.
“I had no idea what I wanted to become. I was just more drawn to the things I could do.”
As part of her long-term plans at Xbox, Sharma spoke about wanting divisions across Xbox to be more open about their successes and failures. “Great companies are incredibly comfortable sharing successes and sharing wins,” she said during a town hall meeting at the offices of Minecraft developer Mojang. “Every company needs to be better at sharing hard things and clear realities.” This ties into her general mantra of “Clarity is kindness.”
Sharma’s tendency to be open about sharing any potential bad news could be seen from reports earlier this year. As one from July noted, she spoke about the future of Xbox in an internal memo, noting that the company needs to focus on its “four Cs”: core, content, creation, and connection.
“In FY28 and FY29, our Four C’s and roadmap must move into businesses producing meaningful player value and revenue acceleration,” she reportedly said in the memo. Each one of the Cs is further split up into a number of stages, and among these is to “scale what works”. By 2030, Sharma noted that she wanted “to be halfway to our long-term daily-player goal with sustained double-digit growth in players and engagement and industry-leading margins.”
The statement came in light of mass layoffs across Xbox that led to approximately 1,600 job cuts, with Sharma confirming that 1,600 more cuts were planned for a total of around 3,200 layoffs by the end of the fiscal year. Following these layoffs, Sharma also spoke about how “we simply spread ourselves too thin,” with the company not focusing on its core business and instead making “a bunch of bets” that didn’t pay off.
