Outfit7

Samo and Iza Login established Outfit7 in 2010. This software developer was founded with a mission to "bring fun and entertainment to all." To support this mission, Samo and Iza consciously created a workplace culture characterized by fun, respect, and collaboration. In June 2010, Outfit7 launched Talking Tom, a smartphone app featuring an interactive animated cat that repeats everything a user says. Talking Tom was an immediate hit, achieving a record 300 million downloads within 19 months.​

Hypergrowth Straining Cultural Foundations

By early 2013, with the success of Talking Tom and the rest of the "Talking Friends" franchise, Outfit7 had grown from its original 8 employees to 45 employees scattered across offices in Cyprus, England, Slovenia, South Korea, and the United States. This growth, though undeniably exciting, also strained the young company's cultural foundations. With more expansion on the horizon, Samo and Iza were worried about losing the special culture that had created their success in the first place.​

"We're so incredibly busy. Things work at a very fast pace at Outfit7," Cassie explained about the pressure of rapid growth. The speed created friction. "At some point it just seemed to be piling up. That they're just being unreasonable with the amount of requests. We have a lot of other things to do," Igor recalled about mounting tensions.​

People Treated as Obstacles, Not Colleagues

As the company expanded, employees began seeing each other as impediments rather than collaborators. "I'm doing everything that I can, so why is she not understanding or why is she not helping?" Ines questioned about strained relationships. Vanja felt excluded from critical information: "How come they didn't notify me if I'm the... basically almost the only person in the company that should know that difference?"​

Rok, Vice President of Product Development, described his dismissive approach to colleagues: "They're just complicating my work and it's not helping the users, it's not helping me, it's not helping our company, it's not...I thought it was not helping anyone except themselves." He admitted he would "brush off what he deemed as 'obscure requests coming from obscure departments,'" assuming that whatever he was doing had to be more important than what others were asking of him.​

"All too often you do see a colleague as a means to an end or as a way to get from A to B," Cassie observed about the dehumanizing dynamic. Marko noted: "There's always some coworkers who won't be seeing eye-to-eye with and won't get along so well because people are so different. That's the time where something like Arbinger helps you to go past that and to focus on work again."​

Knowing the Culture But Unable to Scale It

Despite intuitively knowing what they wanted internal company dynamics to look like, the pair struggled to articulate it in a way that would allow them to effectively scale. "We just didn't know how to tell it in a simple way," Iza admitted about their inability to transfer the culture they'd built with 8 people to 45+ employees across continents. The founders recognized the stakes: "If they have no interest and are not performing, we still need to let them go," Samo noted about maintaining standards during growth. 

Leadership and Self-Deception as Cultural Framework

As they grappled with this challenge, Samo and Iza came across Arbinger's Leadership and Self-Deception. The book convinced them that Arbinger's framework could foster the workplace culture they were seeking. "Actually, it's not something that would be new to you but sometimes it opens a different perspective of how you look at things," Samo reflected about discovering the framework.​

Outfit7 brought in an Arbinger facilitator to conduct a two-day workshop with its leadership team. Many members of the team were initially skeptical about the need to work differently. However, the session helped them realize ways that an inward mindset was contributing to the growing cracks within the company culture.​

"Because sometimes it's just my understanding, my perception, that's wrong. And when I discuss and I'm open to discussion, I see that it's maybe not the way I thought it was," Iza explained about the breakthrough. During the workshop, several team members were able to resolve lingering disagreements, thereby laying the groundwork for more collaborative work going forward.​

Implementation Training and Practical Tools

The team was enthusiastic about the results of the initial workshop and wanted to ensure they could successfully embed an outward mindset in their day-to-day work. They also wanted to spread this way of working throughout the company. An Arbinger facilitator returned two months after the initial workshop to lead the team through a series of half-day implementation training sessions.​

These sessions provided team members with tools for planning, executing, and evaluating their work. The widespread adoption of these tools helped to institutionalize an outward mindset approach and make its implementation more tangible and sustainable. "Getting on the right path, it's much easier," Samo noted about how the tools simplified collaboration.​

Five Internal Facilitators for Company-Wide Deployment

In addition, Arbinger trained five members of the leadership team to be internal facilitators. These internal facilitators were equipped to support fellow leadership team members and to train the rest of the company's employees, helping them work with heightened levels of collaboration and accountability.​

Each of Outfit7's 200 employees participated in Arbinger's workshops and implementation training. Outfit7's own internal facilitators have trained over 90% of these employees. "Outfit7 is one of those companies that actually is very keen to foster a culture throughout its organization and to have the same process undertaken by everybody in the company, I think is really valuable," Cassie observed about the comprehensive deployment.​

Outfit7's leaders report having an increased capacity to listen to one another more objectively. They are more willing to reevaluate their perceptions and conclusions, which allows them to see issues differently, overcome their differences with each other, and focus on results.​

From Solo Tasks to Helping Culture

According to Iza, Outfit7 employees previously tended to focus solely on their own tasks and didn't think about how their work was affecting others. However, after working with Arbinger to establish an outward mindset, employees across the company regularly look for opportunities to help their colleagues. "People started to look around them and to see if somebody needs help. Before, maybe it was just my tasks," Iza described the cultural shift.​

"The biggest impact that Arbinger has on us is that we are colleagues, not just coworkers," Ines emphasized about the transformation in relationships. Vanja discovered reciprocity: "When I help others they are more prepared to help me as well." This created an environment where "the culture now at the company is that people are not afraid to ask for help," Vanja noted.​

From Dismissive to Going the Extra Mile

Rok Zorko, Vice President of Product Development, exemplified the personal transformation. He described his previous attitude: "A request comes from what I would've previously said, an obscure department, you know, an obscure request about this and that. And before I would just brush it off. I would say, this is not important. Why are you bothering me? You know...I'm here making our next product. Can't you see this is more important?"​

His mindset completely changed: "Now I don't see it like this anymore. I see, okay, these guys obviously want to get something done, you know, something valuable for the company. Maybe it's not as important as I think my work is, but it's obviously important to them, so I'll do the extra mile today. I'll do this. The time that I was previously using for getting upset about it is usually the time that it takes to get it done."​

Spectacular Business Results

This accelerated collaboration allowed Outfit7 to strengthen its workplace culture even as its workforce more than doubled since Arbinger started working with the company. The business results were spectacular. By October 2015, 2.5 years after the organization started applying the Arbinger approach, Outfit7's Talking Friends had generated over 3 billion app downloads, were attracting more than 250 million active users each month and were generating more than 3.5 billion views of its videos on YouTube.​

"Getting to a result is more efficient. In turn, we do more things," Igor summarized the productivity gains. Igor Lautar, Vice President of Technology, believes that the company is achieving results more efficiently than ever before. Iza elaborated: "On a long term, people are more effective. People are more responsible. People also develop themselves. It's good for them as well as for the company."​

Permanent Mindset Shift

Outfit7 believes this change in how they work is permanent. "The eye-opener was that... you don't treat people as objects, you treat them as people. Once you have this knowledge, you can never unthink it," Rok emphasized about the irreversible nature of the transformation. The company successfully articulated and scaled the culture that had been intuitive at 8 employees to 200 employees across multiple continents—without losing what made them special in the first place.​

Outfit7 proved that hypergrowth doesn't have to destroy startup culture—but founders need more than intuition to scale what made them special. When Talking Tom's success exploded the company from 8 to 45 employees across five countries in three years, the collaborative culture that created their success began cracking. Employees dismissed colleagues' requests as "obscure," saw each other as obstacles, and focused solely on individual tasks. Founders knew the culture they wanted but couldn't articulate it in a way that would scale. By implementing Arbinger's framework through leadership workshops, half-day implementation training, and training five internal facilitators who deployed to all 200 employees, Outfit7 transformed from dismissive silos to a help-seeking culture. The result: 3 billion app downloads, 250 million monthly active users, and a permanent mindset shift that employees "can never unthink." The lesson: you can't scale collaborative culture through hiring alone when rapid growth creates competing priorities and geographic dispersion. Give employees a framework for seeing colleagues as people with objectives to support, not obstacles to their own work, and collaboration scales with headcount.