In the mid-1990s, Nvidia was behind on a contract to develop hardware for Sega gaming systems. Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, knew the company was in serious trouble and on track towards bankruptcy and dissolving as a company.
Pressure
Integrity is easy when the consequence is small and the stakes are low.
“Hey boss, I won’t have that report done in time but I’ll have it by the end of the week.”
“Sorry coach, I overslept and missed workouts because I forgot to set my alarm.”
Doing the right thing in moments like these matters, but it rarely defines us. The real test of integrity comes when the costs are high.
For Nvidia, the stakes were enormous. It wasn’t just Jensen who would suffer, but the hundreds of employees and their families. Rooted in integrity, Jensen went to a senior executive at Sega, Shoichiro Irimajiri, and told him the truth: they could not fulfill the contract. If they kept going, it would be a waste of money. That was integrity under pressure.
Future Thinking
What happened next reveals a deeper form of integrity that often goes unnoticed. Even after admitting failure, Jensen still asked Irimajiri to continue to invest in them so they could go back, start over, and figure it out. This wasn’t short-sighted integrity. It was future-oriented integrity.
Integrity isn’t just about doing what is right in the moment. It’s about choosing the path that protects trust, relationships, and purpose over time. Jensen understood that misleading Sega might buy short-term survival, but it would destroy his reputation, relationships, and any long term-chance of success.
Integrity is easy when the consequences are minimum.
Integrity is hardest when the stakes are high.
Integrity for the future requires us to tell the truth early, even when it threatens what we want right now.
Irimajiri, maybe moved by Jensen’s honesty and conviction, chose to invest. For Nvidia, the rest is history.
