Wake Up! Your Team Is On Fire

1. Wake Up!Your Team Is On Fire Why Your Real Problems Are Cultural and How To Change Them

2. Goals • State of the nation • Systems thinking • Real-world practices • Case studies • Your homework

3. Where Are We Now?

6. Heroes

7. Imaginary vs. Real

8. External vs. Internal

9. Immediate vs. Long Term

10. Cancer

11. calmly reflectyour team needs you Why Your Real Problems Are Cultural and How To Change Them

12. Systems Thinking

13. Reductionism

15. Physical Science

16. Life Science

17. Language

18. Finance

19. Management

20. Management

22. The fundamental natureof the universe lies in interconnectednessmore than individual pieces.

23. Feedback Loops

24. Filling A Glass of Water

25. From the systems perspective, the human actor is part of the feedback process, not standing apart from it.

26. Filling A Glass of Water

27. Filling A Glass of Water

28. Terrorism

29. Terrorism

30. Terrorism

31. Familiar Examples

32. Crunch

33. Implied Crunch

34. What Game Are We Making?

35. Dysfunctional Leadership

36. Functional Leadership

37. Real-World Practices

39. Build Transparency • Build a visual workspace • Allow the hard questions in public • Fight against closed doors (take hard conversations off-site) • Communicate five times in five different ways • Monthly retrospectives (start doing, stop doing, continue doing) • Encourage self-organization

40. Leverage Size • Large company… reach out. Three degrees of separation. • People love talking about their projects and problems. • Form monthly discussion calls • World-wide communities

41. Be a Teacher • Best teachers are also students • Present new ideas • Create workshops for your team • Always challenge people for growth through 1:1s • Company • Team • Yourself

43. Build Culture • First, lead yourself • Second, lead your supervisors • Third, lead your peers • All else is trivia

44. Real-World Case Studies

45. 1:1s and As and Os • Cultural issue • Disconnected expectations • Lack of shared vision • Proposed cultural change • Every person having a 1:1 every two weeks • Every person has a living achievements and objectives document • Make this a top priority for the team • But how? Everyone thinks I’m being “corporate”

46. 1:1s and As and Os • Culture from all levels pushed back (studio, leads, etc…) • Understand that most have never experienced this • Never a “good time”… just do it • Begin teaching my leads – they learn how to run a valuable 1:1 by experiencing it from me • Grow outward from that core

47. 1:1s and As and Os • Result • New communication pathway for aligning vision, expectations and performance • Design team… 8 of 10 people initially requested to be moved off the team. By the end, all eight had retracted this ask. • Team transition results… 93% spoke highly of process and requested to go to a team that would implement it. • Leaders from team took the process and implemented it on their own on their next project.

48. Technology Sharing • Cultural issue • Technology sharing is grinding metal • People are visibly depressed • Proposed cultural change • The city-state model is failing in some circumstances • Sometimes you just need to reevaluate who you are trying to share with • Empower the team by having them pick a new technology to share… no “let’s start over from scratch” • But how? It will never be allowed by management

49. Technology Sharing • First solution • Ninja Weekend • Second solution • I have learned from that experience… I am ninja • Lead myself, my supervisors and my peers • Go and see • Slowly approach technology options

50. Technology Sharing • Result (1st) • Medal of Honor Airborne switched to Unreal (Epic) • Result (2nd) • Mercenaries 3 has switched to Frostbite (DICE) • Overall productivity increased