Non-game related…

Focus is a self-preservation mechanism – tackle what’s in front of you. Awareness is a growth mechanism – know you need to plant seeds in the spring to get food in the fall. Everyone has some ability to do both, and likely shifts between them given circumstances and experience. What you would do in a burning building vs what a firefighter would do are drastically different.

I opine about game design and for the most part, the topics relate to breadth (the big picture) more so than depth (the minute details). I find the best games find the balance between both, where systems manage to be co-dependent and balanced. Intrinsically, gamers can feel this balance and can rapidly sniff out systems that conflict with the bigger picture. Anthem was really bad at this, where the systems simply conflicted with each other, like someone making a meal with whatever ingredients they could find. Others are curated experiences, like Baldur’s Gate 3 or Clair Obscur.

I am finding more and more analogies in real life. At the start of my career, I often found it strange that some folks could not anticipate the logical next step of problem solving. You’d fix a blocked sink but not actually determine why the sink was blocked, so it would keep happening again.

Tangent #1 – I recall working a grocery store as a teen and our local handy man would pop by. He’d need to fix some lights, a set of shelves, or hinges. And he always took the time to break something when he left so that we’d be forced to call him yet again and maintain the cycle. He’d been doing that for 20 years with success. That was a marking point for me, as I decided right there I was never going to be that person.

So in my career I’ve tended to try and see more, to collect as much knowledge and experience that is transferable to other domains. Often when faced with a challenge, I’ll ask myself if I’ve ever see or done something similar in the past, and in 99% of the cases there’s some history there I can rely upon. Changing tires is about screwing bolts on, which is extremely similar to just putting a screw in a piece of wood, or connecting a pipe fitting. Mechanically I am making things tight.

Tangent #2 – Years ago I was taking the bus to work and often shared the ride with an old school friend. Mostly small talk. I vividly remember taking about small home projects and how we were each taking our own approach. One of the conversations was about him changing his washer and dryer and paying someone to do the installation. I was baffled as to why, given it was a replacement. The water pipes were there and the dryer exhaust as well. You needed to only disconnect and reconnect the same way, and didn’t need any tools other than a screwdriver. He said it was too confusing and was willing to pay someone else to do it. Still amazed at that entire conversation.

As work has progressed, I’ve taken on more and more complex initiatives. Things that cross international borders, complex security requirements, hundreds of thousands of clients, and many millions of dollars. I’ve continually strived to challenge myself on seeing wider, understanding deeper. Course, there there are challenges here… being an expert and being a manager require different skill set. You need to delegate things you know you can do better and faster, but it’s not sustainable to do it all yourself. You need to find semi-qualified people who want to learn, and guide them along that path. It certainly takes longer to get done, but it’s sustainable and you can do more overall as a result.

Tangent #3 – I can think of quite a few cases of leaders who are unable to delegate and want to keep more on their table. The result is always bad. Either they are overworked and never deliver or they do deliver and end up with serious health/mental issues that prevent them from doing more later. I was certainly one of those earlier in my career and it nearly cost me everything I held dear. We all tend to project our personal self-worth into our careers, and I’ve had to learn to let things go, or to hold staff to a higher standard so that the entire team can find success. I have a lot of patience for those who want to learn and demonstrate some progress. I struggle tremendously with folks who fail to meet lowered expectations.

These days, the type of work I do is quite broad in scope and needs a significant amount of expertise depth to see delivered. This also includes a substantial amount of change of culture where folks have to change their perception of authority and control. The closest analogy I can come up with is a transition from an independent restaurant and one that is part of a franchise. The desire is to move to the franchise model of operation as there is a pile of benefits exchanged for the loss of control. Making that transition is not a simple thing, there are tons of dependencies and pitfalls that truly are only acquired through experience. And the best folks in this space are those who are able to not only anticipate those items, but prepare their teams to address them so that they gain the ability to anticipate as well.

More acutely, I am finding it difficult to oversee these complex files due to the lack of overall experience. It’s not for lack of trying to delegate, inform, or train people. The desire is there, but the curve is simply too steep. You can’t learn to be a fighter pilot by taking an online course, and I am in dire need of a handful of fighter pilots. Or, I am in need of an expectation reset on timelines to goals so that the existing people have enough time to adapt to the curve. The truth is likely in the middle.

So for now, I’m trying to stay as optimistic as I can, applying practical solutions that will help in the medium term, but will absolutely generate short term pain. I know that not everyone will complete this ride, quite a few have opted out already. I lose no sleep on that matter. Time will tell how long I stay in this specific role, as any candle that burns bright, burns fast.