The Play Advantage: 4 Real Examples of How Leaders Turn New Lenses Into Growth and Success

In the first article, we saw that humans don’t just experience reality through senses, but through stories. Those stories shape everything from money and status to what a conflict “means” at work. They help us function and collaborate, but they also become dangerous when we forget they are stories and start treating them as reality itself. That’s when fixations form and options shrink, like the manager who assumed disengagement instead of discovering an overwhelming project and a need for clarity and psychological safety. The invitation was simple: notice the story, loosen it, test a small alternative. Now let’s zoom out and see what happens when leaders and companies do the same at scale.

Here are four real (and famous) examples for successful companies, that succeeded through playing with reality:

Microsoft

Microsoft once carried a familiar story: protect what we know, work in silos, win by being aggressive and arrogant. Satya Nadella changed the lens. He pushed a “learn-it-all” culture grounded in curiosity and empathy, he cultivated collaboration instead of silos, he started collaborations with outside companies etc.

Such shifts in perspective, and many other changes that Nadella led in their "operating system", got Microsoft to grow from 300 Billion dollars in 2014 (when he became CEO), to 4 trilion USD in 2026, making it one of the most successful companies in the world.

Same company with different perspectives brought up a different reality.

Dyson

James Dyson began his company with a perspective that many people accept as fact: if you fail enough times, it means you are not good enough. But  Dyson (as well as Thomas Edison, or Elon Musk) played with that story. After many years and thousands of failing prototypes, the first bagless vacuum was born. The first Dyson vacuum was sold in Japan as the G-Force, priced like a status symbol, and it won a design prize there before it conquered mainstream markets and disrupting an entire industry. Then the same mindset expanded into new categories, including hand dryers, hair tools etc.

He played with failure and treated it for what it really is – an important step in the learning process, not an identity.

Patagonia

Patagonia chose a story that sounds risky in a consumer economy: take care of employees, tell customers the truth and help them "use their products until they are falling apart", and actively taking care of the company's main stake holder  - planet earthThey backed it with customer policies, work routines that include freedom as a basic trait of the job, donating most of their profits into environmental activism and much more. 

The results – Patagonia's sales are increasing every year, they are one of the most reputable brands in the US with highly loyal customers, their employees engagement rates are skyrocketing and much more. It even brought the company's founder, Yvon Chouinard, to give up his company for the sake of continuing preserving the planet and "use business as a tool to reduce harm in the world".

Different story about what business is for. Different kind of success.

Chobani

Chobani is another case of rewriting the CEO story. Founder Hamdi Ulukaya calls for an “anti-CEO” approach built around dignity, belonging, and shared upside. He granted ownership stakes to about 2,000 full-time employees (from his own shares), he pays his employees the double than the industry standards, he invests most of the revenue in the community and so on.

Operationally, Chobani transformed from a small dairy plant that was close to bankruptcy, into one of the biggest dairy manufacturers in the U.S. (around $20B worth in 2025).

A different story about leadership did not weaken Chobani's performance. It strengthened it.

And the examples could go on and on, but the principle is simple: in business, like in life, we all face the same world or business circumstances, but if we use different lenses and play with our perspective, we can create outstanding results.

So here is a small invitation. Pick one work situation that feels stuck right now, and write down the story you are currently believing. Then ask yourself three questions:

1. What else could be true, that is just as reasonable?
2. What am I treating as a fact, that is actually an interpretation?
3. If I held a slightly different story for the next 24 hours, what small experiment would I run to test it?

Try it and see what changes.

This is not only personal. It is strategic. In today’s world, where markets shift fast and certainty expires quickly, the winners are often the ones who can change the story and act from a wider reality.