Gamasutra.com - Becoming a Stellar Games Industry Manager, Part 2: Growing the Team


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By Marc Mencher
[Author's Bio]
Gamasutra
November 7, 2006

Becoming a Stellar Games Industry Manager, Part 2: Growing the Team

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Becoming a Stellar Games Industry Manager, Part 2: Growing the Team

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Coming together is a beginning.
Keeping together is progress.
Working together is success.
-- Henry Ford

As a leader, you’re going to encounter potential team members with a variety of backgrounds. An ambitious applicant who has tested a couple of games may have impressed you in the interview by dressing upscale and dropping all the right names but you had to ask the tough questions to see how much genuine desire was under the bravado. An applicant with a ton of experience who couldn’t look you in the eye during the interview probably wasn’t the right person for the producer slot but might be a brilliant artist who is happy doing his thing 24/7 without complaining. The veteran female producer who said she’d like a chance to mentor others might turn out to be a great asset when newcomers are shell-shocked by crunch time. It’s all about learning to read a resume and conduct an interview where you, not the applicant, were in control. So you finally hired your team, had an awesome kick-off party and established who’s the best Halo player in the office. Now it’s time to work!

Define Your Management Style

There are lots of management styles but no matter which one(s) you use, success ultimately depends on your ability to adapt your style to the team’s changing needs. While you don’t need to be a tyrant about every single thing the team does, firm leadership is the foundation of collaborative, cooperative and efficient teamwork. The team needs to understand that no matter how much fun they thought making games would be, it’s hard work because it’s a business. Your team management tactics may vary form autocratic to liberal but even the most tolerant and sharing of leaders needs to be able to guide the team effectively.

Be Flexible

Working on even the best team under the most ideal circumstances can be very demanding. While each member of the team has an individual own role and responsibility, they should remain flexible and willing to adapt to change. Show flexibility by sharing aspects of your leadership role, and help team members by providing an assistant to share or take over some of their duties. As a team develops and progresses, look at individual roles, and modify them as and when the task requires it.

Delegate

Even the best leader can’t do it alone. Delegation is an important tool for conserving team resources, including yours. Unfortunately, those who volunteer aren’t always the right people for the task. A wise leader knows how to spot the best candidates for delegated tasks and avoid those whose work will impair the team’s progress. A good rule of thumb is never ask someone to do a job that you haven’t done or wouldn’t do.

Delegation has its pitfalls, so you need to be able to identify the best (and worst) people for a job:

HELIUM HAND	LADDER CLIMBER
The team member is always volunteering to help, regardless of workload. Some people can handle multiple tasks very well; others continue to volunteer eagerly but have time management issues that will negatively affect the schedule.	The team member volunteers but it’s apparent that the purpose is self-serving rather than team supporting. In cases where problems occur, this person is the one doing the finger pointing to insure promotion.
EAGER BUT UNABLE	RESISTANT
The team member can’t do the job but volunteers anyhow and then refuses all offers of assistance. The job either won’t get done or will be done so poorly that it requires re-assignment and results in conflict and a schedule hit.	The team member is happy to accept as much responsibility for a specific task as you will assign, will accept input from others and will follow through on all commitments.
UNTRAINED BUT WILLING	IDEAL
The team member doesn’t have the knowledge to do the task but is willing to try, and happy to be trained or mentored to succeed. While not your first choice, this person is better than one who refuses to try or has a bad track record.	The team member is happy to accept as much responsibility for a specific task as you will assign, will accept input from others and will follow through on all commitments.

Sometimes people are assigned to teams for “political” reasons. If you’re lucky, the person becomes a valuable member of the team; if not, you may have to monitor activity to be sure that the person doesn’t impede the group’s progress. As a rule, never assign “busy work” to a team member unless you have no other recourse; most of the time, that task doesn’t really need to be done anyhow and should be junked.

An important part of being on a team is learning to share (even the leader) – which means that you shouldn’t save the plum assignments for yourself!

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