How Managers Become Leaders Artwork: Adam Ekberg, Country Road, 2005, ink-jet print Harald (not his real name) is a high-potential leader with 15 years of experience at a leading European chemical company. He started as an assistant product manager in the plastics unit and was quickly transferred to Hong Kong to help set up the unit’s new Asian business center. As sales there soared, he soon won a promotion to sales manager. Three years later he returned to Europe as the marketing and sales director for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, overseeing a group of 80 professionals. Continuing his string of successes, he was promoted to vice president of marketing and sales for the polyethylene division, responsible for several lines of products, related services, and a staff of nearly 200. All of Harald’s hard work culminated in his appointment as the head of the company’s plastic resins unit, a business with more than 3,000 employees worldwide. Specialist to Generalist What is “enough”?
Don't let popular opinion get in the way of your vision Simon Flesser and Magnus Gardeback of mobile game studio Simogo urged developers at GDC Europe today to "base [design and business] decisions on what feels right instead of what is considered right." With the studio's first game, 2010's Kosmo Spin for iOS, the two-man team created the game following all the rules you're "meant" to follow -- 99 cent price, small file size, lots of updates and a very casual setting. These are the elements they had read would make their game sell. Simogo's second game Bumpy Road also attempted to incorporate a number of these "popular" mobile game elements, with lots of updates released post-launch and cut-price sales from time to time. However, the game was priced higher than 99 cents, and yet still managed to sell solidly, making the development pair question whether there really was a set way to sell mobile games. Nor is the team planning to port the game to other platforms such as Android, even though the Unity engine allows for fairly simple porting.
How to Get Feedback When You're the Boss - Amy Gallo - Best Practices The higher up in the organization you get, the less likely you’ll receive constructive feedback on your ideas, performance, or strategy. No one wants to offend the boss, right? But without input, your development will suffer, you may become isolated, and you’re likely to miss out on hearing some great ideas. So, what can you do to get people to tell you what you may not want to hear? What the Experts Say Most people have good reasons for keeping their opinions from higher ups. Acknowledge the fear As the boss, you have to set the stage so people feel comfortable, says Hill. At the same time, you should recognize how hard it might be to hear this tough feedback. Ask for it, constantly Ask for feedback on a regular basis, not just at review time. Request examples In the same way that you want to give concrete examples when giving feedback, you should also request them when you are receiving it. Read between the lines Of course, you may not get honest feedback all the time. Do: Don’t:
The keys to a company culture that works In a heartfelt talk at GDC Europe, Harald Riegler, co-founder of Sproing, frankly discussed the challenges and advantages of shaping a company culture that leads to respect and success. "The right company culture will bring really good things out of people where you didn't expect they existed," says Riegler, who manages a company of 65 that works on free-to-play and console games in Austria. Unfortunately, he says, forging the right company culture is a challenge -- but it's crucial to shape it, and that every team member understand it. "That culture will largely decide the success of the studio or team," says Riegler. While "the latest million-selling management style" books offer advice, Riegler was dismissive of trends and tricks. "A good company culture is built on some lasting principles -- principles, to me, means more than a set of rules, it's a foundation on how you live and how you act," he says. Here are his principles: "This is where it gets really tricky," says Riegler.
6 Habits of True Strategic Thinkers In the beginning, there was just you and your partners. You did every job. You coded, you met with investors, you emptied the trash and phoned in the midnight pizza. Now you have others to do all that and it's time for you to "be strategic." Whatever that means. If you find yourself resisting "being strategic," because it sounds like a fast track to irrelevance, or vaguely like an excuse to slack off, you're not alone. This is a tough job, make no mistake. After two decades of advising organizations large and small, my colleagues and I have formed a clear idea of what's required of you in this role. Anticipate Most of the focus at most companies is on what’s directly ahead. Look for game-changing information at the periphery of your industrySearch beyond the current boundaries of your businessBuild wide external networks to help you scan the horizon better Think Critically “Conventional wisdom” opens you to fewer raised eyebrows and second guessing. Interpret Ambiguity is unsettling. Decide
EA's Core Strategy: Tech, Teams, Brands At Electronic Arts' EA Games label, Patrick Soderlund runs the show. It's within his business that the publisher creates its high-budget games that are targeted towards the dedicated "core" game player. These franchises include , , , and other major series. So how does Soderlund's label foster innovation, when fans of these long-running franchises have built up years of expectations? That's not the only challenge within EA Games -- the label is also in charge of EA's Play4Free business, which is based on the free-to-play, microtransactions-based model. The core games market is changing, and between new tech, business models and high-budget sequels, Soderlund is trying to leave little to chance. Patrick Soderlund: I think Frank Gibeau -- who's my boss and continues to be my boss, and ran the EA Games label before me -- was instrumental in a turnaround for the games label. I think Frank really set the direction for where we needed to go in order to be successful in going forward.
What's Your Influencing Style? - Chris Musselwhite and Tammie Plouffe by Chris Musselwhite and Tammie Plouffe | 2:45 PM January 13, 2012 Effective leadership today relies more than ever on influencing others — impacting their ideas, opinions, and actions. While influence has always been a valuable managerial skill, today’s highly collaborative organizations make it essential. Consider how often you have to influence people who don’t even report to you in order to accomplish your objectives. Success depends on your ability to effectively influence both your direct reports and the people over whom you have no direct authority. Have you ever thought about how you influence others? It is these preferred tactics that define our influencing style. You may have an idea what your style is just from hearing these labels, but the most accurate way to identify your style is with an influence style indicator — a self-scoring assessment that classifies your style based on answers to questions about preferred influencing tactics. What’s your influencing style?
Leading Change - An Excerpt from Beyond Critical [How do you really motivate your development team to change its methods? In this excerpt from his book Beyond Critical: Improving Leadership in Game Development, producer Keith Fuller blends personal experience and literature to explain how you can steer your team.] Okay, so you'll need to do something differently at some point. How? Being a leader doesn't automatically mean people will happily accept any given change you attempt to institute. If the primary SKU is the 360, we should make sure programmers and artists are developing the game with the appropriate input device, right? Clearly there are wrong ways to induce change. I've mentioned that getting people to do something different or think in a new way is not only an uphill slog in and of itself but also tends to induce negative results before you see anything positive come of it. In fact, numerous times I've stated my preference for continuous improvement, something that requires ongoing changes.
The Magic of Doing One Thing at a Time - Tony Schwartz by Tony Schwartz | 8:53 AM March 14, 2012 Why is it that between 25% and 50% of people report feeling overwhelmed or burned out at work? It’s not just the number of hours we’re working, but also the fact that we spend too many continuous hours juggling too many things at the same time. What we’ve lost, above all, are stopping points, finish lines and boundaries. Technology has blurred them beyond recognition. Wherever we go, our work follows us, on our digital devices, ever insistent and intrusive. Tell the truth: Do you answer email during conference calls (and sometimes even during calls with one other person)? The biggest cost — assuming you don’t crash — is to your productivity. But most insidiously, it’s because if you’re always doing something, you’re relentlessly burning down your available reservoir of energy over the course of every day, so you have less available with every passing hour. I know this from my own experience. 1. 2. 3. 1. 2. 3.
Why Innovators Love Constraints - Whitney Johnson by Whitney Johnson | 12:00 PM February 4, 2013 While dreaming and disrupting has unfettered me in many ways, it has shackled me in others. One of the most unexpected was losing a part of my identity. Once the rush of leaving a name-brand corporation wore off, it began to seep in that I could no longer call someone and say “Whitney Johnson, Merrill Lynch.” It was just Whitney Johnson. I also became reacquainted with the immediate concern of putting food on the table whilst on an entrepreneurial thrill ride to zero cash flow. There’s a good dose of cosmic payback in all this. Fewer resources produce proximity; proximity drives innovation. Workplace proximity can be equally productive. A sense of collaboration and immediacy often happens as people who are cash poor or without needed resources (e.g. young professional, entrepreneur, non-profit), are required to barter, to figure out what they have to bring to the table. Constraints lead to faster feedback.
s Most Popular Blog Posts of 2011 - Katherine Bell by Katherine Bell | 10:49 AM December 27, 2011 As 2011 comes to a close, the editors of HBR.org are taking a look back at the most popular blog posts of the year to find out what most preoccupied you, our readers. These 11 posts all hit a common nerve and went viral; it’s no surprise that most of them contain advice about how to succeed and be happy at work. We can’t resist including another 11 posts, a hard-to-agree-upon sampling of the ideas we were proudest to publish and discussions we most enjoyed hosting this year. If you have some free time during the holidays to catch up on your reading, we hope you’ll find this list a good place to start. HBR’s 11 Most Popular Blog Posts of 2011 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. And, in No Particular Order, Our Editor’s Picks Was Marx Right? Great People Are Overrated by Bill Taylor Would you rather hire one genius or 100 pretty good people? Better Time Management Is Not the Answer by Linda Hill and Kent Lineback Management is chaotic by nature.