Episode Transcript
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Geri (00:05):
Welcome to Changing Academic Life.
I'm Geraldine Fitzpatrick, and this isa podcast series where academics and
others share their stories, provideideas, and provoke discussions about what
we can do individually and collectivelyto change academic life for the better.
(00:36):
welcome to part two of my conversationwith Graham McAllister, where we explore
his next career pivot to a master'sdegree in organizational psychology
at the London School of Economics.
You may remember that at the end of partone, we left him having sold his startup
company and on holidays and starting towrite his book on usability and games.
(01:00):
He talks about how during the writingprocess he realized that there was
actually a deeper core problem, andthat was the lack of a unified vision
within the teams developing the games.
Through some serendipitous encounters,he ends up at London School of Economics
as a student again and studyingorganizational psychology to help him
(01:25):
work out how he could solve this problemof shared vision and vision alignment
Again, his insights have relevancebeyond the video games industry to
any creative team endeavor, includingcollaborative research projects.
He discusses the transformative powerof shared mental models and vision
(01:49):
alignment within teams, the importanceof hiring practices for diversity and
the significance of values and beliefs.
He also talks about methods to ensurealignment and resilience within
teams and shares insights into howthese principles can be implied to
improve both product development andorganizational cultures more generally.
(02:15):
So we'll pick the recording up hereat the end of where Graham has been
reflecting on how he got to some ofthose deeper insights into what the real
problems were in the video games industry.
Graham (02:30):
So yeah, eventually at the
end of my career, I got to the bottom
of my pyramid of whys, which isit's, it's mental models combined
with vision and culture are the twothings I ultimately come back with.
Geri (02:44):
So why did you think you
had to go back and do an MSc
Graham (02:53):
I didn't know.
I'd, so here's, when I left mycompany, I did not know for the
first time what I wanted to do.
But I did know that I was done there.
Geri (03:06):
hmmm
Graham (03:06):
I've never had that before.
I've always known what the next leapwas, like, you always join these dots up.
My dot is here, the next dot's over there.
I see, you kind of form a path.
But there was no other dot in this case.
But I went on holiday to a Spanishisland, and in the morning I went for
a long run, and in the afternoon I satwith my iPad and started writing a book.
on my previous career.
(03:27):
So on usability, it was calledusability type testing or something.
It changed over the years, but so Istarted writing this book and I eventually
got to the chapter, which talked aboutuser experience, so not usability.
In other words, what's the barrier toplaying the friction points, whatever.
But more the feeling youget when you play the game.
And I realized I found thechapter quite difficult to write.
I was like, that's interesting.
(03:48):
Basically, you're trying to answerthe question, what is a video game?
What is it?
What happens when we play a video game?
And how would I write that in a chapter?
And I thought about, it made methink about my very first client in
the video game industry, where theyallowed me to walk around the studio.
And I was able to walk around,and I remember asking people,
Tell me about your game.
(04:09):
No, tell me about your mission.
What are you making?
And I got a different answer fromthe different people that I spoke to.
They're in different departments.
Everyone was a designer.
Everyone was a programmer.
Everyone was an artist.
Everyone was in the management.
I remember thinking,isn't that interesting?
This team.
They don't really know whatthey're doing, at least I'm not
getting that from the answer.
And that game ended up beingcancelled due to lack of vision.
(04:32):
In other words, theydidn't know what it was.
So this problem, here's me trying to writethis book as a chapter thinking, it's
very difficult to write what a game is.
And when I speak to peoplemaking the product, they don't
seem to know what it is either.
That's a fascinatingresearch problem, right?
What is it then?
How do I, how would,imagine this was a PhD.
What's the research question thatwe're actually trying to answer here?
(04:54):
What is vision?
What is game vision?
And so someone eventually saidI should speak to, actually it's
someone we know, Pejman,Mirza-Babaei.
Pejman said, I've got afriend you should speak to.
And she was a visiting professor at UCL.
And she said, Oh, I see your problem.
That's organizational psychology.
That's the sub branchof psychology you're in.
(05:17):
I didn't even know whatbranch of science I was in.
I was like, I've got a problem.
I see the problem.
All the evidence in theindustry says there's a problem.
But it took someone else to tellme the flavor that the science, the
branch of science I needed to go with.
And I was like, wow, that's interesting.
So I better find out double quickabout organizational psychology
and thank you because you're partof my LSE journey by helping me do
Geri (05:40):
LSE is the
Graham (05:41):
London School of Economics.
Yeah.
Sorry, I should say.
So I applied to London School ofEconomics, which you, uh, very, you're
very kind as many people listeningwill know, uh, you wrote the, the,
uh, letter of support, the, um, AndI'm sure your level of support is
fundamental to me getting into LSE.
But so I went back to LondonSchool of Economics to study
organizational psychology, whichis a very good program for that.
(06:06):
It's only beaten by a few, like maybeHarvard or, or maybe a few others.
So it's very, very highly regarded.
I was lucky to get in.
Um, but I was doubling down.
The same feeling I had, remember I saidI stood still when I knew I was going
to start a games user research studio.
It stopped me moving.
That's how, that's howstrong the feeling was.
vision problem had the same effect.
(06:26):
Where I knew everything waslike, that, that's the path.
There's no deviation from this path.
That's the path for the end of mycareer is I did not know what I'll
find and maybe what I end up findingis there's nothing to be uncovered.
And it's just one of thoseproblems where we don't know,
but could have been the answer.
I genuinely could have beenthe answer, but it's not.
You actually can fix it,which is the good news.
(06:48):
But I did know that I onlyhad that feeling twice.
One was user researchto the game industry.
And now game vision and bringingthat into the game industry.
I'm pausing there.
Because I think there's going to be a, Icould have a final chapter, some sort of,
um, postscript, which just says, couldI bring this to any team or any company?
Because
Geri (07:09):
we'll get to that , I want
to pick up on, you said it's only
twice you've had that feeling.
Tell us more about the feelingbecause we're often, especially as
academics, researchers, computerscientists, we're in our heads.
And you talked about the first timeyou did the in your head spreadsheet
of pros and cons and adding upand, you know, in the end went
(07:32):
with the gut, the feeling there.
And then you had these other two veryclear experiences of being stopped.
Talk more about the feeling,like how do you access it?
How do you recognize itliterally in your body?
Graham (07:46):
yeah, it is.
It's a feeling.
It's a, it's a very strong.
all consuming feeling where, I don'tknow if you ever watch a TV, an American
TV show called House, he's a doctorplayed by Hugh Laurie, and he's always
trying to solve some really complicatedproblem, you know, and he, but there's a
moment every show where the camera zoomsin on his face and he stares into the
(08:07):
mid distance and you realize he's gotthe answer to this problem, you know.
That is exactly the feeling I get thatI had in these two scenarios where you
realize you're working on somethingbut you don't know quite It's not all
the cogs haven't quite aligned yet.
And then suddenly you realize that's it.
That's the thing.
And I had it with user research.
And I had it with game vision whereit was like, that's the thing.
(08:30):
Those are answering.
You could say as well, we don't havethat term, ikigai, you know, where
it's like, do people have the need?
Do you have the passion?
Do you have the skill?
Those that sort of intersectionof these things overlap.
And I think in each of thosecases, the overlap was so strong,
like it burned a hole throughthe center of the Venn diagram.
Like it was just all consuming.
That is the thing.
(08:50):
And nothing has takenme away from the path.
So I think if you had it where itwas like, yeah, it's a bit like that.
I'll try that for a few years.
Then people change again.
I was not changing.
This is user research kept me for thecompany was seven years, but it was
before that, you know, even at Queens.
So that was over a decade.
That's bringing HCI to the gameindustry, no deviation from the path.
(09:12):
But then when the journey was done, I waseventually, my mind was released from that
problem, thinking, well, we've done that.
What else?
Because I knew that user researchwas not the final answer.
I got to a certain level ofthe five whys, which is, well,
we can put a band aid over it.
We can, we can make the producta bit better, but we're not
actually fixing the team, really.
They still don't know what they're making.
User research did notanswer that question.
(09:33):
That is not a user research problem.
That's an organizationalpsychology problem.
So again, the hole was still burning,but I realized there's something else.
I had saw that problem in my previousjob, but I didn't have, when I left
that job, I didn't quite hadn'tconnected yet because I wasn't aware
of organizational psychology and sharedmental models and all that type of, I'd
(09:55):
heard the terms obviously, but I wasn't.
I hadn't investigated them enough torealize that is the particular that's
leading to the user research problem.
There's a deeper layer thatneeds to be investigated here.
But it's all consuming.
It's like that.
I can't express other than when youknow, you know, when you realize there's
nothing going to take you off that paththat I don't need to look anywhere else.
(10:16):
This is the final, this is it.
This is the answer to there'ssomething here that is a decade
long avenue of research and bringingthe knowledge and the findings
to to your domain, your industry.
Geri (10:29):
I can hear that just certainty.
I can hear the certaintyand the conviction.
And, and it also sounded like you neededto give yourself some space for it to mull
in the back of your mind to get to that.
It wasn't so much an intellectual process.
It was Something that percolatedand it needed time and some
(10:55):
distance, some stepping back.
Graham (10:58):
It needed two things.
You're quite right.
It needed time, need space to, um, needspace to not think about your current
problem, but I also needed education.
I needed someone to tell me,I was not aware of this thing.
It was an unknown, unknown thatI'm going to do that of all the
possible branches of science that Icould go down and MScs I could do.
I could have took the wrong one.
(11:19):
I could have ended up doing somethingkind of similar, maybe behavior
change, which is kind of similar.
But not quite in the samesphere, you know, there was
multiple ways I could have went.
But this was laser, this was the one.
So, I think you needed a little bit Ineeded a little bit of education to say,
Okay, um, I don't want to do this three orfour times in a row until I get it right.
(11:40):
I needed time, I needed a bit ofeducation by speaking to different
people, and then this UCL professorsaid, This is where you need to go.
Which proved to be true.
So, that's lucky, right?
That's luck as well that Pejman happenedto know this professor that happened
to know who happened to know that.
Geri (11:59):
I always say if I did a
word cloud from the podcast of all
the people sharing their stories.
Luck would come out and it'samazing how things work out.
Serendipity happens.
We just happen to meet or, you know, andthere's, there is a part where we have
to be open and in a place to respondand, you know, it's not going to drag us.
(12:23):
Luck isn't going to dragus kicking and screaming.
We have to be open.
But yeah,
Graham (12:28):
And I think that problem
academics suffer from that as well as
in, especially industry people, wherethey're so busy on the treadmill of,
like I remember trying to do some, someconsulting, audio consulting a little bit.
And some companies are,we've no time to do that.
So vision is the number one problem.
I bore you for another hour.
I'll tell you all the evidence.
It's the number one problem,stopping a games team, the game.
(12:51):
And even for the number oneproblem, making that team effective.
They say, we have no time.
They don't have the headspace toeven pop the head up and say, what
problem are we actually addressing?
So they're happy to build the wrongproduct and make a mess of it.
Than stop for four hours andaddress the problem, which sounds
insanity when you put it like that.
Geri (13:11):
Sounds insanity
Graham (13:12):
That's what happened.
Geri (13:14):
Sounds
Graham (13:14):
what happened.
Geri (13:15):
Yeah.
Graham (13:16):
Even as a researcher, like
I would say, going back to my LSE
Masters, I knew going in that if Ifound a meaningful result, I would
be commercializing it in some way orgiving it away, writing a book and
talking about it, sharing my knowledge.
Where I did not have that mindsetwhen I was a PhD student, I was doing
a PhD because I don't think I wantedto get a job, you know, and someone
(13:38):
paying me some funding to hang arounda computer for three years felt
like, you know, that was wonderful.
So, if I got, if I was doing a PhD now,my mindset would be, well, is the problem
substantial enough that I want to do it?
Could I, would I write abook over it at the end?
Could it turn into a company?
My mindset would be completelydifferent back to me as a 22 year old,
Geri (13:57):
And that's a
journey as well, isn't it?
Graham (14:01):
Yeah.
Well, at least I fixed it with LSE.
I did go in thinking this is going tobe a tool, it's going to be a book,
it's going to be a series of talks.
Um, so at least I did learn ratherthan repeat this, repeat this
Geri (14:11):
And did, how, did you enjoy
the, the master's like, because
this is going back to academiaagain, but this time as a student.
Graham (14:18):
You have no idea.
I didn't want to leave.
I did not want to leave.
London School of Economics was wonderful.
I was smiling to myselfwalking around campus.
Like, I'm not using that as a metaphor orsaying that figuratively, I was literally
walking around smiling by myself, justthinking how lucky am I to be here
researching a topic that I cannot stopthinking about, that's going to solve
(14:41):
the number one problem for games teams.
Well, there's a chanceI might solve it anyway.
How lucky is that?
What's wrong with that picture?
That's, that's, that's as goodas it gets, honestly, um, I
couldn't imagine anything better.
That's high up.
Yeah,
Geri (14:59):
Oh, that's
Graham (14:59):
so yeah, I think being a 50 year
old student, you know, I was clearly
the oldest person in the room, uh,including most of the lecturers, but I
didn't, that didn't bother me at all,you know, um, even when I applied to
LSE, they asked me, I applied as Mr.
Graham McCallister, I never usedmy PhD, um, so I applied as Mr.,
(15:20):
but when they wrote back, they changedit to doctor or something, you know,
and I was like, oh, oh, they really,really do look at that stuff, but I
didn't, I wanted them to Ignore that.
I'm a student.
We're all students.
You know, this, uh, this identitytitle that, oh, you, you learned
once, so now you're finished.
That's complete nonsense, youknow, and I want, I wanted the Mr.
title.
I did not want the, the PhDtitle, you know, so I was
(15:42):
disappointed that they used that.
Geri (15:44):
Yeah.
Because it is, it is anongoing learning journey.
I know that, um, I also wentback and did a master's.
I think I was, I think I had justturned 60, actually, when I went
back to do my, to do a master's.
And it was in a applied positivepsychology coaching psychology.
So again, sort of in that area, becauseI saw a need and, and really wanted to
(16:07):
address it and have an evidence base.
And I, I couldn't, I was just smilingto myself because I, it was hard work
and I was doing it on top of my dayjob and I loved every single minute.
It was never a chore to sit down andread a paper or write an assignment.
Graham (16:26):
What do you think changed
between us as 18 year olds doing
our first bachelor's degree andgoing back in the middle years of
our life, you know, and kind ofthinking, this is the best thing ever.
Geri (16:37):
I don't know, it's funny.
I'd go back and study againand I still keep doing courses.
I think it, I heard what you said aboutit connecting to the why you're doing it.
You've got a really clearsense of why you care.
And you also have a clear sensethat you don't know enough in
order to solve a problem or helpin a way that you want to help.
(17:00):
You need some more inputthat you don't have so far.
Graham (17:04):
Yeah.
I think as an 18 year old, you'redoing a degree to get a job.
That's a stepping stone, but at 50or 60, you're doing it because of
some cause, some mission that you'reon to say, well, you don't need to
do it at that stage, but you do.
And, and you want more as you say you doit, it's not like you come out and think,
(17:25):
well I'm glad that's done, I'll now goand do, I want, I want to do more of
that, because there's more, you're justuncovering more of what you don't know,
Geri (17:32):
Yeah.
Graham (17:33):
I don't know how
I
Geri (17:34):
think also when you think also
when you're 18 or 28, you also think
that somehow this is your path.
You know, it's a career and.
And it's not, it's just a step,
Graham (17:51):
I don't what type of PhD you did.
I broadly see two types, so one is, youjoin a department or a research group, and
they're working on problem X, and you'reanother researcher working on problem X.
But mine was not that type, my PhDwas, the funding came from the dean
or something, there was some strangePrize or award or something I had.
So I basically said, we can do computergraphics, but you go and find your
(18:14):
problem and then go and research it.
And of all the things thatstood me the most over time was
being able to find the problem.
The first part of that PhD isthey didn't give the problem and
say, no, go and solve the problem.
It was you find the problem andthen go and fix the problem.
the first part was byfar the most interesting.
(18:34):
How do you find the problem?
That's the bit that's lasted me throughthe company, and what I, the vision,
or player psychology, team psychology,that's the part that's remained,
is your ability to see the problem.
That will endure forever.
The PhD in computer graphics, whatever,no one's, you know, who cares, right?
Geri (18:53):
yeah,
Graham (18:54):
But your ability to think
through, well, if you're going to
solve the problem, how do I know, howdo I know how to solve the problem?
Where do I look?
How do I look?
That's interesting.
Geri (19:03):
mm, it is, yeah, I, I
also did a PhD similar to that.
Um, so you did your, you did yourmasters and you've talked about how
the, the key learnings insights werearound this, um, the value of, of
bringing a mental models perspective tounderstanding shared vision within a team.
And you're very much applying thatwithin the games industry and how
(19:26):
to make games development better,going back to this core problem.
I'm curious whether you thinkthat, you know, because you also
talked about doing some consultingoutside of the games industry.
So I'm curious to hear whether thisnotion of teams and having a shared vision
is a problem in other domains as well.
(19:48):
And I'm thinking of, you know, ouracademic research projects, for example,
Graham (19:53):
For example?
Geri (19:54):
as an example.
Yeah.
Graham (19:55):
It appears to be the case.
So whenever I've talked, we talkeda few times about this publicly, the
game vision model, but whenever Ihave talked about it, it would not
be unusual where people on the teamwould say, Hey, that's interesting.
This is showing we'renot aligned on our goal.
Could you also help us at thecompany level, not at the product
(20:16):
level, but at the game level?
In other words, I don't think thefounders of the company all want to
take the company to the same place.
For example, and people havesaid that from, uh, academia has
come up, for example, banking.
I gave a talk at a design conferenceand someone said, the, the management
of the bank aren't taking it.
And I've always, I've always said, see, Ialways thought that was an easier problem
(20:37):
to solve because they're more tangible.
It's easy to see with videogames, it's an experience.
So it's intangible.
And I thought the problem was,and it kind of is, because it's
not tangible, you can't point toit and say, Well, we're making X.
So we all know we're going in the same.
But if we're making a company, the KPIsare usually quite clear, which is we're
going to, you know, solve this problemfor these types of people in that market.
(20:59):
Um, are we all doing that?
Yes, we're all doing that.
And what do you realize?
And shared mental models is you'reprobably not going deep enough.
In other words, at the surface level,it looks like you're aligned, but
then you might get to something like,well, how do we go about doing that?
Or what do we sacrifice?
Or what are you willing to leavebehind the typical organizational
change models, Kotter's model of,you know, what do we change or what
(21:20):
do we keep and things like that.
So you realize that ifyou're experiencing.
People say they're aligned.
It's probably not true.
That's one thing to bear in mind.
The second thing is just look to see areyou experiencing friction in your team?
After experiencingfriction, is it over a goal?
And why is that?
It means that if you think you'realigned, but you're still experiencing
(21:41):
friction, then you haven't gone to adeeper level of what are we aligned on?
Like maybe you're not aligned on values.
Like maybe we get growth.
We're getting the numbers.
We're making gazillion dollars a year.
But maybe we sacrifice to ethics,we're horrible to people, we're
horrible to employees, we'rehorrible to our customers, we're
horrible to the environment.
We'll sacrifice all ofthat for the bottom dollar.
(22:02):
That's a source of friction, but that,that means you're not aligned, obviously.
So alignment, you need to be, figure out,well, are we aligned all the way down?
Not only in the goals, but also on how wedeliver the goals and how we check that.
Geri (22:17):
So how we deliver the goals,
which goes back to, you know,
cause what you said there reflectsOur shared understanding of the
values underpinning the decisionsfor how we achieve that goal.
Graham (22:30):
And even back to your why,
like you've got a research group.
Why do we have a research group?
But why does this research group exist?
Is it just to churn out papersor to fund PhD students to
sacrifice my career growth?
Or does the research group existto do some other bigger purpose?
Does it have a mission statement?
A company should have a mission statement.
What I've also seen, I'mgoing to speak about my own
(22:51):
industry and video games here.
A lot of them, although they saythey have mission statements,
they're kind of paper thin.
Like really, it's about making money.
And part of me just wishesthem to just be honest and say,
we make, we're making money.
At least it'll be authentic, you know,instead of saying, oh, we do it for
the players or some nonsense like that.
So, and you realize that a lotof people don't hang around in
those companies because theysee through it pretty quickly.
(23:12):
But.
They don't want to belong.
You're just, you're not being honestat least, you know, if you want to
make money, there's nothing wrongwith it, but at least to wrap it
up in some paper thin, you know, I
Geri (23:25):
with your own company, you would
do things differently now, having
gone through the master's degree.
Graham (23:32):
I think so
Geri (23:32):
What would you do differently
if you were starting up your,
um, your own company now?
Graham (23:39):
I think the way I, the way I
viewed hiring people back then was people
who were like me, I'm going to hirepeople with my skillset culture fit.
You might say these days, but again, welook at the science of building teams.
That's exactly what youshould not do anymore.
It's culture add, but you're lookingfor people with the skillset.
The reason why you hired hiredme, in fact, you were ahead of
the curve, so you're looking tobuild people who are, you know,
(24:03):
they fit your values, but they'regoing to add something to the team.
So you don't want people disagreeingon, uh, I'm not a culture researcher,
but obviously it came up withLSE, but you want someone who fits
into your way of doing things.
You don't want someone who's all aboutmoney and somebody's all about ethics.
Clearly that's a clash, you know,but you want someone who's going
to fit the values of the company.
In addition to addingdifferent skill sets.
(24:23):
So culture fits now the outdated modelwhere you're just building more and more
the same and the company doesn't have anyreal, it's going to stagnate over time.
Effectively, you may get success inthe short term, but over the long term,
you're not building a very good culture.
Culture add is the currentbest way of building teams.
Geri (24:40):
You're not building a resilient,
um, culture either because culture
add adds in resilience by nature ofthe diversity that you're adding in.
Graham (24:51):
Yeah, diversity of thought, you
know, challenging of ideas, so culture
builds in resilience, those culturalresilience, and if anything the game
industry is not resilient, you know,and they're also not very honest with
themselves, they have lots of problems.
Leadership problems are terrible,like they're not usually trained on
leadership, they're just someone whowas once a domain expert and has now
been promoted to C level and they are.
(25:13):
This is not good.
They call it a professional industry,but I query that on a daily basis,
and it's very much an amateur industrywith pockets of professionalism.
The domain experts are usually,you know, experts in their domain.
That's true.
But the higher up the management, the moreculture sits or is normally controlled,
(25:34):
not ideal.
Geri (25:35):
Mm.
Graham (25:36):
Not ideal.
Geri (25:37):
But many Part of the problem
in academia, as well as we're not
Graham (25:42):
It is.
Geri (25:42):
trained in leadership, which is why
we have our leadership development course.
Graham (25:47):
And it's needed.
You probably remember, even asan academic, people said, why
do we have academics do researchand teaching and administration?
Why do they have to be a jack of alltrades, for want of a better phrase?
Why do they have to do thesethree separate threads?
When we could, anothermodel is we have experts.
But you apply that out and say,well, why don't we have management
(26:07):
who are actually trained?
In management, we understand cultureand team building and building
resilience and coaching and growth.
And wouldn't that be nice in addition?
So, we don't have that.
We still have academics who doteach and admin and do research.
And we still have, you know, the C suitein academia who are domain experts.
(26:27):
They were professor of biology andnow they're controlling a university.
Can't see any problems with that.
Carry on.
Not to pick on biology, by the way.
Geri (26:37):
So and what else would you
do differently in your company?
So, one is hiring, the hiringdecisions and this idea of culture add.
How would you ensure shared vision?
Graham (26:50):
I think I did not, I did
not think about the future of the
company at all when I started becausethe most likely outcome is failure.
So there are people who tried tobuild games Research Studios before
me, and they were subdivisions offamous research agencies in London.
And they wrote to me in advance andsaid, don't bother trying because
(27:11):
we tried it and it didn't work.
So we'll save you the money and time.
Just don't do that.
And they said you should also doit for the web or user research or
anything, you know, be a generalist,do not apply it to only video games.
Because we are the generalists,so we tried a games theme
that didn't work out for us.
And they're very rich and they'vebeen around for a long, long time.
So I had a few of those emailsfrom several different companies.
(27:33):
So the most logical path was,look, it's not going to work.
And the vision for me was simple butclear, bring HCI to the games industry.
So if people are hiring me to dousability testing, my one service
that I was offering, Then I did notknow what the end result looked like.
I just knew what the startof the journey looked like.
Could I get someone to pay me torun usability testing on their game?
(27:57):
And can I find, and the businessmodel at the time, uh, said something
like, if I do two usability tests amonth, I think that's enough money
to start the company for a year.
It would last for a year.
Uh, and that's exactly what happened.
We did way more than that,by the way, but I think.
I'll not mention specific numbers,but I think we 5x'd the money for the
(28:18):
first year that I needed to survive.
So I needed x to surviveand we 5x'd from memory.
So it was more than I thought.
Um, so it did okay.
That was the indicator that,well, that's interesting.
There's something here.
But then you may ask, well,why didn't I have a vision?
Once I knew it was going to be,you know, had legs to stand on,
why not set a vision at that point?
(28:40):
Um, I think I was just busy doing it.
You know, that as long as I keepdoing it, then that's, I don't
even know what the vision would be.
You know, even when I think back and go,knowing what I know now about a vision,
I'm not sure what I even would have saidexcept bringing this to the game industry.
It's more of a mission than a vision.
It was an enduring purpose.
(29:01):
Like,
Geri (29:01):
Is there a process that
you Could imagine going through
with, let's, let's pretend you'restarting a new company, new team.
Is that, is there a process that youcould go through or talk about, share
to get to some sort of at least initialshared vision for this new company?
Graham (29:22):
I think there's
a few things there.
I think one thing is terminologyaround mission and vision is
sometimes interchangeable.
Um, so I'll state the most common one.
I think it's the most common.
for this conversation.
So mission is usually somethingthat will never change.
It's enduring and usually would lastfor decades if ever changed at all.
So I would say my mission is makingvideo games should be as enjoyable
(29:44):
to make as they are to play.
So the players have a good timeusually, but the people who make
them have a miserable experience.
And I'm trying to fix that.
And one way was.
It's player psychology, likemeasuring the product, and now it's
team psychology of game vision.
But the mission's the same.
In other words, why thisproduct is made is a mess.
So the mission's enduring.
The vision for the last company onthe product, it'll be product focused.
(30:07):
You know, we're going to bring worldclass experience to the measurement
of player experiences or something.
That's a vision that would maybe lastfor 10 years, um, and that could be true.
My vision is to say, well,I'm going to make sure teams
are aligned on their product.
So it's more team, team focused.
Geri (30:22):
hmm.
Graham (30:23):
The process.
Um, we're trying to alignon a vision is interesting.
It has to be, you need a modelfor the domain you're in.
That's one thing I've learned.
So my model for game vision byitself would not apply to a company
because the bits I'm buildinga mental model deconstructor.
That's how it's going.
So I will start off with the one sentence.
My model does start off with one sentencesaying describe your game in one sentence.
(30:45):
It's a very high level.
Or you might say, describe yourresearch group in one sentence.
Our research group or ourresearch project, maybe research
project is better, our researchproject aims to blah, blah, blah.
But then the mental model deconstructionpart is going down those layers below
the surface thinking in terms of, I'm notgoing to name them, but something else.
(31:05):
My video games are intangible.
They're an experience.
So I have to go from that thingthat you think you're making.
My job is to build a model thatdeconstructs the model in your head.
And then we visualize it, andwe see how people's brain has
reconstructed information differently.
So I visualize what'sinvisible, essentially.
That's how my mental model
Geri (31:25):
hmm.
Mm hmm.
Graham (31:25):
deconstructor works.
But you can imagine applyingthat to your own research group.
Why does your researchproject or group exist?
Then people have a first,then you ask, again, another
question, or another question.
But you need an accuratemodel for those sub questions.
This is where it would differentiatefrom the five whys, where you're
asking the same question to go deeper.
In spirit, the mental modeldeconstruct is the same, but I'm
(31:48):
using different questions to pullapart these variations in thinking.
So that's the main difference betweenthe general five whys and my game vision
model, which is, I'm going to go deeper,but I need a structure that is guaranteed
to pull apart the variation in thinking,where the five whys may not pull apart.
Some people may hit a plateauat the third why, for example.
Geri (32:13):
Yes.
Yes.
Because they serve differentpurposes, don't they?
The five whys getting tothe root cause, whereas
Graham (32:19):
You could do it as an example, and
you may want to do this on your values.
I will take a simple model.
So I've tried to do this for companiesas well, because going back to LSE,
we do talk about different models oforganizational culture, for example.
And this is why it would different.
I've got a model of video gamesthat my game vision model works on.
But for a company, you mightsay, well, these are our values.
You know, we pride.
(32:39):
Resilience, we've got a cultureof resilience, we've got a culture
of ethics, and we've got a cultureof, I don't know, creativity.
These are common modelsof culture, I'd say.
And you might say, okay, wellhow do you prioritize those?
Would you sacrifice some ethicsin order to be more creative?
Or to make more money, and some peoplewill say yes, and some people will say no.
(33:00):
I mean, if you see that variationin the, how they weight these
different, uh, that's where you'regetting the friction, essentially.
And so then you have to teaseout, well, why is that happening?
Why do these people say it'sokay to make more money, where
they're praising creativity?
Or ethics, or resilience,or whatever it may be.
Geri (33:18):
And looking for where those
tensions might arise and doing the,
the pre planning work about howyou might deal with that, like,
Graham (33:29):
I've even said with
some companies, whenever you
start off a new project, I wantyou to do a kick off workshop.
And in the kick off workshop,we're going to talk about this
mental model for your game.
And you're going to tell them thisis part of how you make decisions.
They're not arbitrary decisions.
This is the framework, and there'sall the criteria that we use.
So when we say we're making thatfeature or that thing, here's
(33:50):
all the reasoning behind it.
Imagine a new research project whereyou would say, we praise, uh, resilience
because we don't, this is research, right?
We, we think we're going to start offanswering X and we can end up answering Z.
Like the research could pivot atsome point because it's research.
No idea where it's going to go.
However, we will always make thatpivot decision based on this value
(34:11):
so that, you know, when we pivoted,it wasn't a random decision.
It's because this is our value.
We always go this this route,but I've never been on a research
project where that's been
Geri (34:21):
yeah.
Graham (34:21):
clearly transmitted.
I think we're discussed.
Like values.
Maybe you do it.
I don't know.
Geri (34:25):
Because it gives, um, in having
that discussion up front, it also
gives the team a shared language.
You know, it's not just up to the leaderto be responsible for implementing that.
If it's a, if it's a process thatthey've all been to, they can have
that discussion with one another.
How does this fit withthis value as sense checks?
Graham (34:46):
I'm pleased
you mentioned language.
The root cause of why most peopleget a different result than my game
vision alignment check is language.
So these terms are kind of, peoplethink they know what it means
because they came from a certainstudio or a certain research group.
And everyone's from adifferent discipline.
Sometimes you have a manager ora researcher or people who change
careers or like anything can happen.
So just clarifying language, uh.
(35:10):
Going back to the root cause.
One of the problems with mentalmodels is the language and
the other one is structure.
So the structure of the mental modelis not sufficient and the language
they use to describe the structureis not sufficient or it's ambiguous.
So again, being general on what'stransferable, whenever you've got
a mental model for your researchgroup, it's What is the structure?
How do we think about this research group?
(35:31):
What's the cues?
What's the bits I'm using todescribe this research group?
And how do I define those terms?
And do we all do that in the same way?
I bet you it's unlikely to happenin a, even in a small group, you're
unlikely to be aligned on that.
Geri (35:44):
Yes, I agree.
And I see encouragingly increasingefforts to have team charters and
things that sort of try to spell outsome shared understandings that I
think are getting better at somehowarticulating some shared values.
But I don't see the work beingdone to operationalize them into
(36:06):
then, how does that play outpractically in our decisions?
And also not revisiting thembecause a lot of these things
emerge in the doing as well.
And it's, how do we haveperiodic checkpoints to say,
how are we going in this?
Do we need to revise, you know, whatnew language challenges have emerged?
Um,
Graham (36:26):
You reminded me of a famous
model of culture by Schein, S C H E I N.
And he says, it's at the pyramid,if you Google it, you'll see.
But at the top level, it's what people do.
And then at the nextlevel is what people say.
So they'll say, Oh yeah, we'revery resilient around here.
We're always happy to change,you know, and go for evidence.
But the bottom there is beliefs.
It's very hard to see beliefs, but themethod he advises and how to, detect if
(36:52):
a belief is being broken or are presentin your, in your studio or cultures.
If you say something and somebodyhas an immediate and usually negative
reaction, then you know, I've touched.
Some people say touch a nerve isthe way of colloquially saying
it, but you've touched someone'sbelief that's held so strong that
that will, that's hard to change.
So if you're in a meeting and someonesays something and someone has a strong
(37:15):
negative reaction, you're touchingon their belief, the cultural belief.
And you know, flagsshould go up in your mind.
There's something here I need to payattention to because that's going to be
very hard to change if it ever changes.
I've seen it a few times inthe game industry, usually in
association with money, whenthe four day workweek come out.
I remember asking a question like, howwould you change to a four day workweek?
(37:36):
And the reaction wasimmediate and negative.
It was like, we would nevermove to a four day work week.
And I realized right then,that's their culture.
And they don't want to challenge it, orquery it, or explore other models, or
other ways, or how to be more efficient,or, they're not, they don't want to do it.
Until something significant changes.
New leadership, or they'reforced to in some way.
But that's interesting,you know, that lower,
Geri (37:57):
It is interesting and we're often
not very good at reflecting on what's
the belief underpinning that reaction,that strong reaction that we have.
Graham (38:05):
Beliefs are hard, yeah.
Geri (38:07):
Yeah.
Graham (38:08):
Hard to detect, but again, they're
the ones that are, mostly holding a
group back, a team back, is the beliefs.
Geri (38:17):
So this isn't the end of Graham.
I went on from here to ask him aboutwriting his book, and there's just
so much wisdom and insight in theway that he talks about that both the
art and the practice of getting intowriting, that I thought it could be
(38:39):
really useful just to pull out intoits own short episode because we all
are writing in various different ways.
As a hook here is the questionthat I started off asking Graham.
You said before about after you soldthe company and you went away on
(39:02):
holidays and you sat there and wrotea book or started writing a book.
Talk us through the book, youknow, both the writing process, you
know, what lessons we might learn.
So I know that for many academics,they have a book in them and it
can be, feel really daunting.
And also the decision to makeit free and not try to get a
(39:23):
publisher and make money from it.
So I invite you to keep an eye out forepisode three, where you can hear Graham
talk about his very practical tips aroundwriting and his decisions for how to
write an impactful, actionable book.
Insights that I think can beuseful for all forms of writing,
(39:46):
not just in the book genre.
You can find the summary notes, atranscript and related links for this
podcast on www.changingacademiclife.com.
You can also subscribe to ChangingAcademic Life on iTunes, and Spotify.
(40:09):
And I'm really hoping that we canwiden the conversation about how
we can do academia differently.
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