Effective talk: How to keep the team honest and improving.
Year of Talk: 2021
Focusing on resilience allows people to be better prepared in case of something drastically changing. Like having a pandemic or supply change issues. At the same time, it helps that people will be less likely to feel burnout after working on a specific feature or game for too long.
By keeping the team resilient and willing to learn/improve it also helps stave out the problem of having new games not have a good enough edge and allowing for the games to have a certain level of quality and expectation.
Layers of Resilience:
There are three main layers that resilience appears in; Individual, Team, and Organizational.
Individual resilience is principally sown through people's ability to adjust based on any challenges or unforeseen events. This type of person tends to be self-motivated or is motivated by a common purpose. A term used by the presenter who comes from a military background is called VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity). People who are VUCA tolerant tend to be people, who when faced with a changing problem can find a solution either alone or with the help of other team members. Someone who previously had job experiences that can attest to how VUCA tolerant they are can give good indicators on how overall resilient they are to future problems.
Trying to acquire people with diverse backgrounds. Not only means different genders or races but also where the people went to study, or their original degrees. Since you will be able to ask and learn from people who are used to seeing the world through the eyes of other fields it helps build up the experience people get in those fields. From walks of life like finance, doctors, scientists or others can give a very different perspective on how they might have dealt with stressful situations that can help the team.
During interviews, the presenter would make sure to have frank conversations with the interviewee so that they can get a better grasp of their talents and how they might deal with situations as well as their values.
Meanwhile, team resilience comes from building support structures for team members. Also allowing team members to push each other further and trying to keep everyone honest and being pushed to do their best. It also helps the team deal with any wins that they get and can celebrate together anything that they overcome.
This can be done through managers who help team members reflect on their progress as well as any areas of strength or weakness. Having 1 on 1 meetings every so often will allow both people to have a deep conversation about what has happened and what could be improved. Giving access to mentorship programs also helps people to stay motivated and learn from more experienced people about how they solved similar problems.
At the same time having events that allow the team to interact with each other more often besides just work will allow them to become more comfortable with their coworkers. In the medium to long term, it also means they will be more likely to seek help from other coworkers if they ever have a problem. Some events can be book clubs, board game nights, and other similar ideas occurring in a weekly fashion.
Organizational resilience is when whole companies can respond to changes and evolve as time goes on. This comes down to the fact that different teams can talk with each other and themselves to determine if things need to be changed and what might be dragging the whole company. Usually allows for the company to affect these changes internally and won't require as much assistance from outside organizations.
The organizations that can become resilient are since they diversify their revenue in case one stops working. This can be done by having different sub-brands work as separate companies where they can individually work with other companies but also be able to work collaboratively and make a game as a single company. By also expanding the customer base allows for the company to be prepared in case a few stop working with the company.
Also allowing for career expansion and specialization means that the highly motivated people in the company can continue growing and becoming better employees. This also helps to keep them motivated and willing to work at the company as they feel like they can continue to become better people.
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