As Target orchestrates its highly anticipated CEO transition from Brian Cornell to Michael Fiddelke, questions swirl about whether evolutionary tweaks can spark the next chapter for this storied retailer. The contrast with Electronic Arts’ (EA) dramatic performance turnaround under Andrew Wilson provides strategic leaders a cautionary tale—and a model for what true point-of-inflection leadership looks like.
The Safe Handoff: Target’s Playbook
Following a series of disastrously poor moves that alienated its customers, Target is betting on the steady hand of 20-year veteran Michael Fiddelke to succeed Brian Cornell in February 2026. Fiddelke’s rise from finance to COO and now CEO is a study in operational discipline. His three-part strategy: refresh Target’s retail image as differentiator, drive operational consistency, and unleash technology-driven efficiency.
These pillars align with Target’s historic strengths—style-first merchandising, curated in-store experiences, and omnichannel innovation. However, Fiddelke’s approach is decidedly evolutionary, not revolutionary. The Enterprise Acceleration Office he founded drove $2B in cost savings and streamlined operations, yet the 2025 numbers paint a sobering picture: 2.8% decline in sales, 3.8% drop in comps, and a stock price down 27% for the year.
Despite these headwinds, Fiddelke’s “customer focus” is more about process and efficiency than reimagining the relationship between Target and its core guests. Analysts praise the digital sales bump and cost wins, but the store experience—messy aisles and out-of-stocks—highlights the risk: incremental change can steady a ship but rarely alters its course. In Fiddelke’s own words, success means “operational precision”—not a call to build emotional connection with customers.
A Blueprint for Change: EA’s Players-First Transformation
Contrast this with Electronic Arts a decade ago. When Andrew Wilson took the reins in 2013, EA was reeling from internal missteps and declining gamer trust. Instead of business-as-usual, Wilson launched an organizational rewiring: prioritizing a single, galvanizing mantra – “Players First.”
As one EA employee at the time told me, “Andrew’s brilliance was in following that bold choice with a clear, bold signal of change internally. “Players First” was an internal mantra – never a consumer facing branding effort. It was a way of working that created an immediate vernacular inside the company and a clear lens for decision making that put the player at the center of every move we made. It sometimes meant forgoing short term revenue opportunities for what has obviously been significant long term value creation.”
What did this look like in practice?
- Community-Centric Development: EA empowered users to shape experiences through continuous feedback loops, developer transparency, and co-creation on new titles.
- Live Services & Regular Content: Shifting the business from one-off launches to ongoing, evolving live services (the “games as a platform” model) increased retention, engagement, and recurring revenue.
- Innovation & Responsiveness: Wilson’s EA moved rapidly to address gamer grievances, improve content cadence, and iterate based on Net Promoter Score (NPS) and satisfaction data. Under his oversight, games like FIFA and Madden recovered brand trust and became global digital communities.
The Results: Sustainable Value Creation
Skeptics questioned whether “Players First” was just rebranding. The metrics say otherwise:
- Company Value: When Wilson took over in 2013, EA’s market value was $7.1B. Today, it is about $40B, with major analyst price targets comparing favorably to industry leaders, despite market fluctuations.
- Franchise Performance: Title net bookings hit double-digit growth on major franchises like FC, The Sims, and Madden, with live services revenues consistently outpacing expectations.
- Employee Engagement: Internal engagement surveys show 83% of employees reported being happy at EA in 2024, with 89% feeling recognized by managers and 87% believing their opinions matter on their team. EA is consistently ranked in the top 20% of peers for CEO rating and inclusion progress.
- Game Ratings: Player-facing Net Promoter Scores improved by over 30 points on key franchises under Wilson, reflecting genuine community buy-in.
Why Point-of-Inflection Leadership Wins
The lesson for Target? Cost discipline and operational excellence can protect margins, but material, cultural, player/customer-centric shifts drive new growth curves.
Michael Fiddelke’s Target will surely be nimbler and more efficient, but as he polishes the apple, he may miss the deeper transformation needed to make the retailer burn bright in customers’ hearts and minds. Andrew Wilson’s EA demonstrates that a bold refocus on the end-user—not merely incremental optimization—can reinvigorate an organization, set off a cultural reset, and drive exceptional results.
The future, for both brands, remains unwritten—but if Target hopes to engineer an inflection as EA did, it will take more than tweaks. It will take putting the customer—not just processes—first.
Leading through a point of inflection requires inspiring, enabling, and empowering others to reset strategies, operations, and the organization all at the same time. If that requires a cultural change as well, that has to be driven by the CEO and a compelling new mantra like “Players First.”
John Hall
Connect
