David McKillips - CEO of TopGolf

  What CEC Entertainment taught me about leading a company when the ground underneath you disappears. I was honored and excited to start my first CEO position at CEC Entertainment — the parent company of Chuck E. Cheese and Peter Piper Pizza — on January 20, 2020.   Six weeks later, the world stopped. By mid-March, every one of our locations across North America and around the world was forced to close for inside dining. Not a soft close. Not a temporary reduced-hours situation. No guests, no kids enjoying the games and prizes. Empty parking lots. Nearly 12,000 employees at home, uncertain when — or if — they'd have jobs to come back to. If you'd asked me during the interview process what my first six months would look like, I could have told you. I'd have laid out a hundred-day plan I was proud of. A brand-refresh strategy. Investment in the guest experience. A modernization roadmap. Not one of those things happened. Instead, we worked as Team to brainstorm our survival....

  Three decades of building experiences the world lines up for taught me the same lesson every time. I've spent more than thirty years building brands people don't just visit — they line up for them. SeaWorld. Warner Bros. Six Flags. Chuck E. Cheese. Now Topgolf. Every one of those companies looks different on paper. Different industries. Different customers. Different eras. But every one of them, when I look back, taught me the same lesson. The best experiences in the world are never designed by people who aim for good enough. That's not a slogan. It's the operating principle behind every meaningful thing I've watched a team build — and behind every failure I've watched a company walk into. Let me tell you why I believe it, and why I think it matters more today than it ever has. The moment a good day becomes an unforgettable one Early in my career, I worked on the front lines of family destinations — SeaWorld, Sesame Place — where you can see, in real t...