April 16, 2025 • 31 mins
”Writing is thinking, I love thinking, I love working on problems, I love thinking through the problems…. So the whole writing thing is a thinking thing.” says Graham McAllister in this final part of our conversation. His foray into writing a book on Games Usability after he sold his company was also a foray into exploring the process of writing, asking himself questions like "How do you write a book? What's my voice? How do I write? What fits in with my life?”
Graham unpacks his experiences about the art and craft of writing that worked for him in answer to these questions. He starts with reflections on publishing challenges in academia and his commitment to making knowledge freely accessible. He also talks about the process of discovering his writing voice, the iterative writing process, setting up a writing routine and setting achievable goals. Graham also reflects on the broader implications of his work within academia and industry, the pursuit of clear communication for your audience, and his future aspirations in writing and consulting. The conversation highlights themes of personal growth, the importance of thoughtful work-life integration, and the impact of past mentors and opportunities.
Overview
00:00 Introduction
02:50 Introduction to the Book Writing Journey
03:28 The Philosophy of Free Knowledge
04:51 The Writing Process and Idea Generation
07:12 Structuring and Refining the Book
10:08 Finding Your Voice and Writing Routine
11:51 Future Writing Projects and Reflections
20:09 Balancing Work and Personal Fulfillment
26:04 Final Reflections and Gratitude
Related Links:
Graham’s Home page and LinkedIn Profile and his books
CAL120 Part 1 episode with Graham on his previous career pivots
CAL121 Part 2 episode with Graham on team vision alignment
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
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.
(00:29):
What do you think about writing?
And how would you answerthe following questions?
How do you write a book?
Especially a book aimed at non-academics.
What's your voice and how do you createa writing routine that fits in your life?
(00:53):
These are all questions that GrahamMcAllister asked himself as he
embarked on writing his book on gamesusability after he sold his company.
He calls them the softskills of writing books.
And he wanted to use this book as a wayto explore the process of writing itself.
(01:16):
So in this last of three parts of myconversation with Graham, he shares
his experiences about the art andcraft of writing that worked for him.
He talks about his commitment to makingknowledge freely accessible about the
process of discovering his writing voice.
The importance of knowing your audienceand being able to communicate clearly and
(01:40):
succinctly with them, and how the writingprocess itself is highly iterative.
He also shares the writing routine thathe set up, how he did that, and also
how he set himself achievable goals.
So he set himself up forongoing progress and success.
(02:02):
And whether you are writing a book orwriting an academic paper for an academic
audience, I think you'll find a lot totake away from his experiences here.
And towards the end, Graham also reflectsmore generally on the implications of
his work within academia and industryand what's next for him possibly taking
(02:26):
time again to reflect on the impactof past mentors and the importance
of thoughtful work life integrationand finishes with the call to us
that we can design a better life.
Enjoy this final part of myconversation with Graham.
(02:50):
You said before about after you soldthe company and you went away on
holidays and you sat there and wrotea book or started writing a book.
And what I saw is this book isfreely available on your webpage.
So talk us through the book, youknow, both the writing process, you
(03:12):
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, to makeit freely and not try to get a
publisher and make money from it.
Graham (03:27):
Yeah.
Um, first thing is part of methinks knowledge should be free.
Um, and I, I realize I'm a consultant,but I, I realize the irony in saying
that, but I hear I'm thinking of.
Can I name specific publishers?
Oh, no, I'll not, I'll not, I'll not.
So there's academic publishers who,even as an academic, I did not want
(03:47):
to publish with because the researchwas funded by the government or
something like that, and then theywould charge to pay off that research.
And I felt that research should be free.
That's what I thought was fair.
Wasn't paid for by you.
I should be able to put that on mywebsite or my research group's website
or the university's website so thateveryone can benefit from that.
(04:08):
And that was one of my main frustrationsas a, as an academic was there's
some great work out there, butboy is it hard to get that, those
findings out to the wider world.
As someone who likes educating andlearning and sharing what's been learned.
That is a major painpoint as an academic bit.
That is a barrier.
(04:28):
That is a usabilityfriction point to my work.
Also an economic one.
That if you're rich and if you wantto spend 50 dollars on a really boring
academic paper that I wrote, youcould probably have access to that.
But there's a lot of people where50 dollars, even if you knew how
to get it, is very difficult.
So just that whole access thingbothers me enormously with academia.
(04:49):
Enormously.
Um, so when I decided I want towrite a book, writing is thinking,
I love thinking, I love working onproblems, I love thinking through
the problems, I like clarifying thethinking, like am I really answering
the question that I think I'm workingon or am I not thinking clearly enough?
So the whole writing thing isa thinking thing, you know, I
(05:10):
can't, I can't separate them out.
Um, so that was partly it in terms of,I knew I wanted to write a book and
I A bit like, I have a lot of ideas.
I think I come up with a lot of ideas.
Usually when I'm running,I, they just come out.
I can't explain it.
They just Blow out at a high rate, um,so much so that my watch face when I'm
running on my Apple Watch is the, thenote recorder, so I run along and I hit
(05:34):
the, people usually have their Stravatimes, like how fast they're running.
Mine is to take ideas.
So I have a button thattakes, takes ideas.
Anyway, I turn around anenormous amount of ideas.
I had an idea for a series of bookson organizational psychology, and
I really, well, that's interesting.
I'm not short on ideas of what,uh, how to help teams or design
(05:55):
teams and thought, well, I better,I better start writing then.
You know, if I've got this seriesof ideas, you have to begin, you
have to actually do one, justdo one and see how it feels.
And so the easiest thing forme to write about is the field
I've been in for the previous.
I don't even know, 10, 20 years,wherever it was, in terms of user
research in the games industry, HCI.
And I wasn't interested in the topic.
(06:16):
I knew I knew enough to writeabout it off the top of my head.
I didn't need to read researchpapers, but I was interested
in the process of writing.
How would I write?
What is my voice?
And then I thought back to what'sthe problems I have with books,
like why do I abandon books?
And a lot of books even, I'm not goingto joke, I'm a famous American academic
and I've tried to read two of his books.
And that is hard work,I've abandoned both.
(06:38):
He's a CS professor and I like him onpodcasts, but his books are terrible!
Sorry, I'm getting It's like he's gotone idea, and it could have been a
really interesting 400 word article,but it's just padded out to a book
because a publisher said write a book.
And I have a very low tolerance for thatBS, I must say, and I'm not having that.
(07:00):
That's the other thingI should write back.
When I give a talk, I'm not very good atputting up a Putting up with people's BS,
I'm probably going to tell you like it is.
Geri (07:07):
mm hmm.
Mm hmm.
Mm hmm.
Mm hmm.
Mm
Graham (07:08):
common thing.
But it's evidence BS, it'snot just opinion usually.
Anyway, so if I'm going to write a book,I decided I was interested in the softer
side, the soft skills of writing books.
How do you write a book?
What's my voice?
How do I write?
What fits in with my life?
What works with me is definitelynot gonna fit in with you, you know?
So I decided I'm gonna writefrom 9:00 AM to 11:00 AM every
(07:29):
morning, two hours, because Ifeel more creative in the morning.
Some people feel morecreative in the evening.
I used to when I wasyounger, but not anymore.
So I'm going in the morning, I write herefor two hours, and some days nothing may
happen, but I'm not allowed to leave.
I have to sit here for twohours and I have to, I am.
I'm encouraging myself towrite 200 words a day, minimum.
(07:49):
But no, I may write more, and manydays I did write more, but I, I,
I should leave with 200 words.
That's like a paragraph.
Like, surely I could write a paragraph.
So that's 1, 000 wordsa week, 200 words a day.
I take the weekends off.
I think I ended up working weekendsanyway, because I couldn't stop it.
But the idea in the beginningwas Monday to Friday, 200 words,
that's 1, 000 words a week.
(08:10):
Um, so 4, 000 words a month.
Uh, and I reckon I have the bookdone 12, 000 words, whatever, in
three months or something, whateverit was, six months or 25, 000 words.
It was that type of, I've got the,I've got the math wrong, so someone's
going to make fun of me, that's fine.
But that was the idea, something simple.
Uh, and then I'd go for a run afterthat, do some form of exercise.
That's what I think about what I wrote.
(08:32):
And then the next morning, thatidea or what I had, what I ran
would feed into the next morning.
So there was this loop, right?
I would write.
I would do exercise wheremost of the thinking happens.
I would take the thinking and captureit, not write about it, just feed
that into the next morning's loop.
And I kept that going.
I wrote 25, 000 words orsomething on the usability book.
Um, but I wrote the book four times.
(08:52):
I realized the first writingwas just getting the idea out.
It was just a long bit back CSprofessor who I'm criticizing.
It was just like a, but itwasn't repeating the same idea.
At least it was more content,but I realized that's kind of.
Kind of reads like a book.
I was, I was rethinking what a book meant.
What does a book mean?
A book means I'm sharing ideaswith someone and their ideas I
(09:13):
think are useful, but why are theyalways written in these long, you
know, long chapters, like 20 pages?
It's hard to keep 20 pagesof stuff in your mind.
I don't think I could do that.
I'm pretty sure I couldn't do that.
So at some point I had this ideaof I'm going to chunk it up.
Typical psychology, right?
We'll chunk it up into how our mind works.
And the original idea wassomething like, I'll come up with
(09:34):
a hundred ideas on usability.
And the book will have some punaround the number 100 or 99 or
whatever crazy idea I had at the time.
It ended up, I think there were 66 ideas.
Uh, I didn't pad it out to 100, I thinkI could have, but I was trying to be
authentic, which is, well, it's 66.
Maybe I should have done a route 66 pun.
Maybe I could have made that work.
But anyway, you see, I shouldhave went on another run, I think.
(09:57):
Whatever the number ended up being,I just felt that's the number.
I'm not going to artificiallyinflate it or reduce it to
make it fit some clever title.
Just, it was what it was.
But I didn't care about the book itself.
Um, so the book was anexercise in me writing.
I love the writing.
I love the thinking.
I love the rethinkingof what a book meant.
Um, I put it on mywebsite for free in 2023.
(10:19):
Um, as we're speaking now in January 25,I'm just, I'm going through the process
of getting it on the Kindle in print.
Because the book I really wantto write, the book on game
vision, I want to get that book.
That's the book I really want to write.
I did not want to writea book on game usability.
I wanted to write a book.
Um, so this was the, me practicingthe habit and the, the art of writing.
(10:42):
So I was not interested in thetechnical side, the idea, which
most academics are interested in.
The domain knowledge they have.
It's everything else, which is,well, even if I can communicate my
domain knowledge, how do I do that?
I thought through how best toget that idea out there, um,
rather than just saying, oh,it's going to be in 10 chapters.
I'll break it up.
(11:03):
I think you can do, you canrethink that a bit more.
Rather than just, well, theseare the 10 chapters, I'll write
the 10 chapters and get it done.
Technically, you could do that.
What else?
You know, what else could you do?
So, um, I don't know whatthe next book will be.
Maybe it will be a boring,these are 10 chapters, and it
could end up being that way.
Um, but you at least think about it.
You know, what, think through.
(11:25):
My case, I was teaching the gameusability, but with teaching someone
else how to how to do a thing.
So it made sense for it to be in 66 stepsbecause that's actually what you're doing.
You're following this step wise through.
That's how you would teach it effectively.
So it made sense to follow.
It was like me sitting down besidesomeone and teaching them how to do it.
I would follow through andtell them, these are the
(11:46):
steps you need to go through.
So it's a teaching book, so it makessense to follow the teaching format.
The game vision one, I don't know whereit's going to be yet because I think
I could take it in different ways.
I could just tell you, these are theproblems with mental models on teams.
That could be an interestingbook by itself, right?
It's just, I'm just raising awareness.
of saying, well, these are typical thingsthat crop up and you should find this
(12:07):
interesting because it explains lotsof psychological problems on teams.
It explains why you've got frictionbetween management and creative.
For example, that's a knownpsychological problem that came up.
But then you went to the model andyou can tell people, here's why.
And let me point to some solutions.
And my MSc thesis was halfthese are the problems.
And then I introduced amodel at the second half.
And I say, here's my model.
(12:29):
That solves all those problems.
Maybe, maybe I don'thave to write about that.
I don't know.
Sorry, you were going to ask a
Geri (12:36):
Mm hmm.
No, I think that's a really interestingprocess that you've been through
and I love that the first book wasabout finding your voice and finding
your rhythm of writing and, andthat it still had a clear purpose.
Its goal was to educate people, youknow, to teach them as a teaching
tool to walk through these steps.
(12:59):
Did it also provide some sort ofclosure as well to that phase?
Graham (13:05):
I think so.
I think, um, I don't have anyintentions of going back in that career.
I don't think that's,that's a very unlikely path.
Um, so I think it wasgood just to summarize.
I was reading at one point,why do people write books?
And that came up as a reason for sure.
One is, you know, sharing knowledge,but other is closure, which is, well,
I've spent my time in this career.
(13:25):
What really have I learned?
And if you can't even write a book onwhat you spent 20 years doing, it's
not, it's not interesting by itself.
There was a series of books I couldhave written on user research.
I don't, you know, that's not thecareer for me anymore, so they
will look for me in my ideas file.
But I took one and justsaid that's the easiest one.
I can still take value in that andgive value to others, and I can
(13:46):
learn more about myself as a writer.
You know, I can learn how Iwrite, or do I, it could have
been, I do not enjoy writing.
Like, I learned, for example, Idon't like making YouTube videos.
I started a YouTube channel at onepoint, and what I realized really
quick was, I do not like making videos.
I have no interest in doing that.
Geri (14:03):
What did you not like about it?
Graham (14:06):
it was very time consuming and the technical side of it wasn't
a skill that I wanted to develop.
Um, I also felt that I wasn't,it wasn't personally satisfying.
Writing, I felt, satisfied me.
I felt I was thinking deeper andquicker and I did not get that from
making a video for whatever reason.
Maybe some people do,but I did not personally.
(14:26):
So, um, yeah, I think I just like writing.
Uh, that's what I learned, which is good.
You should know, but maybe youtry a book and I hit this process.
Geri (14:35):
Absolutely.
And that's fine.
Isn't it?
And it is about knowing ourselves.
And I, I liked what you said about like,it's no good just to paraphrase you.
It's no good just thinking about,I've got this series, a book, just
get on and write one and see.
So that making progress, which is oftenthe thing that people find hardest
when it's about procrastination,especially if you're a perfectionist.
(14:57):
You want to get everything alllined up and feel like it's going
to be perfect before you can start.
And sometimes you just have tostart and give it a go and reflect.
Graham (15:05):
And that's why I set myself a really low goal, like 200 words per day.
It's so low.
Like I remember writing it andthinking surely anyone could write,
you could do that over a tea break,you know, and some days I did.
But that was the point.
It's, it's um, it's a bit like exercise.
You're not allowed to do noexercise, you have to do some,
Geri (15:24):
Um, Um, Yes.
Graham (15:25):
But you can't, can't do nothing.
That's a bad, that's a bad,you know, result, outcome.
Geri (15:29):
You're not setting yourself up to fail by having unrealistic
goals, which is really helpful.
It seems like you're still trying tofind the, the clear why for the next
book you've got the topic area, andit's more, is that, you know, to, to
sort of more like unpack or communicatethese things for people's awareness?
Or is it about a how to do the, yeah.
Graham (15:52):
I think you're right.
My, my main goal for 2025is to write that book.
Now I've got a thesis, an MSc thesison that topic, and part of me thinks
I could just, you know, repurposethat, um, which is one option.
Um, but I'm not sure it'spractical enough for me.
I'm not sure it's gonna, I thinkpeople want to know what does it do.
Geri (16:12):
Yeah.
Graham (16:13):
And obviously that's why I designed it.
It is designed to do something.
It's not just an academic thesis.
There's a practical, heavypractical element to it.
So some people solve that bywriting a theory book and a field
workbook or some sort of, someof these books behind me here.
I realize your people can't,listeners can't see it, but
there's a bookshelf behind me.
And it's common to write two books,the exercise book and the theory book.
(16:34):
Um, and that could be useful becauseI plan to take this into a workshop.
I'm already starting doing that, actually.
So there is a workshop component, andso I should write like that if I know
what I'm going to do with the book, orif I know how people are going to use
it, I should write with that in mind.
It's not a book, no one reads aboutmental models on a Sunday morning, it's
not the book you pick up, you know, or goto bed with a shared mental models book.
(16:55):
So I have to think through, well,how are people going to use my book?
I know they're going to doan exercise at some point.
But I like the bite sized format that Ilearned in the previous one, which is If
you read two pages, it takes you a minute.
If I can't tell you something interestingin two pages, am I communicating?
Because I think there should besomething interesting within a few
minutes to keep your attention.
Um, and if it's just waffle, thencut it back to the CS professor.
(17:19):
There's a lot, I would find notolerance for that type of book.
Um, and there's a good idea in there,but it just could have been said.
I feel it's going to be usedin a different way, let's say.
Geri (17:31):
That's knowing your, uh, intent, intended audience as well in a way.
Graham (17:36):
I think so as well, because my audience is not academics.
It's going to be people whowant to solve the problem.
However, I'm not going to shyaway from the academic nature.
I can imagine I would beputting academic references.
Geri (17:48):
Uh,
Graham (17:49):
That's my current idea.
I might backtrack on this in thisbecause I think I want people to know
that this is underpinned by science.
Because there's lots of people who'vewritten, well not, there's lots of
people who've got ideas in the gameindustry for vision, shared vision.
But it's just an idea.
They're like, oh, I think this works.
And I would ask, well, how do you know?
And they would say somethinggeneric like, well, I asked
the team and they say it works.
(18:10):
And I'm the other end of the scale.
It's like, well, I'm interestedin the proof behind that.
So my model will proveif the team is aligned.
That's why I designed it.
Because I was tired of peoplesaying, oh, we're definitely aligned.
People say there's no problemhere, and so I designed it, you
know, so I'm always interested inhere's how I got to that answer.
And if you want to read thattoo, I'm going to pinpoint you to
the very things that I learned.
(18:32):
So I want to trade that, instead ofdumbing the book down and saying,
here's academia, and I'm going toremove all the hard slogs that we would
read as academic papers, I'm going toremove all that and just distill it.
I'm instead going to say, I want tobring you up and elevate your knowledge.
And it's going to be a littlebit tricky, but I think it's
going to be worth it for you.
So that's my current thinking.
Geri (18:52):
Yeah, and that seems like a skill you've really developed well is that
communicating to people why it matters.
Graham (19:00):
I think, and I think that's the reason, I think, if you write a
book that's hard to read, and you can'ttell people why it's worth it to read
through it, they're probably abandoned.
But if you tell people in advance, thisis not going to be the easiest of reads.
There probably would bean easier way to say this.
But, I think you will get more fromit by going through this journey.
This is likely harder to read.
(19:20):
There's going to be academic jargon.
I'll explain it to you.
You will benefit stronger ifyou stick with it, and I'm going
to do my best job I can to notwrite a long, woefully long book.
I'm going to help you, to elevate you,to bring this academic terminology
and models into your thinking, ratherthan keep it out of your thinking.
I don't think I'm doing you anyfavors by removing it from your
(19:40):
thinking and your mental model.
My job is to improve you, but Ihave to, the journey's going to be
a little bit of, Be a bit tricky.
Not as hard as an MSc or a PhD,but it's not a blog article
on, you know, Medium either.
It's, it's in between.
Geri (19:58):
That's probably good food for thought for people, especially with the
increasing push to impact, which requiresa different sort of communication skill.
We should wrap up.
So what next for Graham McAllister?
There's the book and you saidabout starting to do consulting.
Graham (20:18):
I, I, I honestly don't know.
know.
I do think this is the final career.
So I guess, I don't know howyou phrase your life journey.
But I think this is the, this is thewind down phase, for sure, right?
Um, I don't work five days a week, or, Idon't work five days a month, you know.
So, and that's my design,it's not for anything else.
(20:41):
Could that change?
Yes.
So this is another one of thosedots where I'm saying, I am here,
and I spent five years going backto LSE and designing a model.
And that model shows that the gameindustry is, Missing a substantial,
you know, explains their problem, and Icould bring that into the game industry.
And all I know is I have tobring that to the game industry
Geri (20:59):
in some format.
Uh, Um, Uh,
Graham (20:59):
format.
And I imagine if we speak in two yearsI don't know what I would say, right?
I could say it turned into nothing, or Itried and I failed, I tried to tell them
and they wouldn't listen, or I designedthis model and someone built on it and
now it's this amazing thing, and you canimagine all the ways that could go, um,
and I do not know, and I'm okay with that.
(21:21):
I'm
Geri (21:21):
I was just going to ask, is it scary or exciting?
Graham (21:23):
No no.
It's more on the exciting end, I think.
The final part, the final, finalpart, I think is bringing it maybe
to people outside of video games.
As you hinted at, this is a human problem.
This is a team problem.
Whenever a group of people get together,they have an alignment problem.
And that alignment problem genericallyis caused by language and the
(21:47):
structure of their mental model.
And yes, we could talk aboutvalues and things like that.
But that's what's causingthe friction ultimately.
And so if we can generalize thatand say, well, here's a mental, the
general mental model for any team, butwe know you'll need to refine it for
your industry, while our team works inthe automotive industry, or space, or
(22:07):
healthcare, or fintech, or I get it.
But generally speaking, this is away of thinking, and again, that's
one of the book outlines that Icould write, is saying, generalizing
that to teams, uh, of any type.
So I spoke to a publisher years ago,pitching the Game Vision project.
This is 2020 maybe 5 years ago, and thisis a famous publisher in the States,
(22:33):
and they said they nodded and listenedand went, yes, interesting, interesting.
Could you write that?
So it's useful for any team.
So they wanted to, you know, they saidthey'd publish the game book if I wanted,
but the book they were really interestedin is the thinking behind that model
and applying that to the wider audience.
And I said, well, that's not me.
(22:53):
It's not my passion.
But in 2025, since going back to LSE andseeing models with any organization, I
do know, I think, yeah, I could see how Iwould go about writing that book as well.
So I don't know, but I can see, youknow, um, I could imagine maybe just
writing books for the end of my, myfinal working career where, and you
(23:17):
give a few talks on them and a fewworkshops and you love doing it.
And there's nothing wrongwith that path at all.
You know, I don't see.
Geri (23:26):
So it's a lovely example of You never know where life will
take you and you can pivot yourcareer in many different ways.
And you're still applying a lot ofyour core skills around, you know, like
as you've talked about, identifyinginteresting problems and being able to
(23:49):
articulate them, getting to the why,what's behind it, how do we solve them,
how do we bring methods to solving them,how do we communicate the findings.
So there's a lot of those redthreads as well through all the work.
Graham (24:04):
I think so.
I think so.
It's like, why do theseproblems keep happening?
If you're like an organizationor research group.
And you're seeing recurring problems.
What on earth?
Why is that happening?
What's going on there?
You know, so I think people, I think it'san interesting time for us to talk because
(24:24):
people are rethinking what work is.
This has been a common trend sinceCOVID in particular, and they're
saying, well, okay, I go to work,I get money because I need money
to pay the rent, blah, blah, blah.
I get it.
But what about me?
What about my, what do I bring?
Am I fulfilled going to work?
Um, this work life balance, you know, isit going to work to get money, but your
(24:45):
life starts at 5pm when you come homeand do it the things you want to do.
And then people rebelledagainst that idea quite rightly
saying, well, could they not?
Can we not have both?
Can we not go to workand feel happy there too?
Can I bring myself to work?
Why do I have these two identities?
So this, all of this, the underlying themebetween everything we were talking about,
and I apply this particularly to the gameindustry, which has had a horrific Three
(25:08):
years of companies closing and peoplecrying in car parks and losing their jobs.
And the other line, you couldask me, why did I do game vision?
I've tried to give you some answers,but the bottom answer, the root cause
of all of this is people are havinga really horrible time at work.
And yes, we could say it's partlyleadership and culture, and
that's true, but we can fix it.
(25:28):
We can have, we can design a better life,whether you're in the video game industry
or academia or wherever you're in.
Um, it could definitely be better.
I don't know how much better,but it could be better.
That's what I would say.
I think people are starting to paymore attention to that, uh, over the
(25:48):
last five years, which is good to see.
Geri (25:50):
Yes.
Definitely.
Totally agree.
Well, Graham, this has been wonderfulcatching up and such an interesting
story and so much in it to reflecton, on lots of different levels.
So anything that we haven't talked aboutthat you would have wanted to cover?
Graham (26:11):
I don't think so.
I think, you know, you've hada huge influence on my life.
That's the final thing.
Because multiple times, I don't know why.
You accepted me into Sussex tostart as a senior lecturer back
then, 2007, 2008, whatever it was.
It really, that was amajor pivotal moment.
(26:32):
Without that, there wouldn'thave been a company.
Without that, I wouldn't havewent to LSE to do the vision,
the share mental model work.
You're, you know, andthe generosity you have.
I mean, we never got to talkabout you on this podcast.
I don't know if we want to, I guess,talk about you or not, but there's
probably a consistent theme, um,about your generosity with your
(26:54):
time and how you are to people.
And I won't tell stories, but Idefinitely I think of stories and
things you did that were so generous,back to that window we had in Sussex.
Things you did, I remember thinking,what a wonderful, wonderful,
kind person you really are.
Geri (27:11):
Oh,
Graham (27:11):
And honestly, there's so many examples, I'm not going to cite them
because they're personal to me and theywon't mean anything to anyone else, except
to say that I'm not short of examples.
You know, and I'm not the onlyone who says that, you know,
um, the fact you're doing thisand giving, giving back as well.
But yeah, just, just to say thank youbecause you took my life in a massively
(27:33):
better, more interesting direction that Iwould not have reached on my own for sure.
Geri (27:41):
And you, yes.
So I really appreciateyou saying those things.
I'm very humbled.
So thank you.
And I also am honoured to have beenpart of that journey because you've
Being the one who's made that pathwork and, um, take, you know, like
used it and, and built things.
(28:03):
And as you said, the multiple impactson all sorts of people, companies,
people in the industry, people playinggames, you know, just generally.
So we, we never know, do we?
How, who we touch or how we touch people.
Graham (28:20):
That's what I was thinking about.
These random, someone saysa word in a corridor or a
Geri (28:25):
Um, Um,
Graham (28:28):
I like, I never get, I won't be able to tell Gary anymore
that he changed my life too.
This random lecture that he gave bysaying yes to this talk at Queen's
University and, you know, it sentmy career on a whole different path.
And
Geri (28:41):
Um.
Graham (28:41):
As you say, stop the podcast and tell people, you know, someone,
because it's bound to happen.
Geri (28:47):
That's a great point to, to, uh, stop on.
So stop now and go and tell someone whatthey did for you, what they mean to you.
Yeah.
So thank you, Graham.
And so ends the last part ofmy three part conversation with
the wonderful Graham McAllister.
I just love his energy and how clearlyhe thinks through issues and connects
(29:12):
the dots of his various career pivots.
And
isn't he such a powerful communicator?
I think there have been nuggetsspread across all three episodes.
And in this latest episode, whether youstruggle with writing or love writing,
(29:32):
I hope you'll have found some thingshere that you can take away to try out.
And even though Graham was talking aboutbooks and for non-academic audiences.
I think there are aspects on the art andcraft of writing that he's shared that
could apply to all forms of our writing.
(29:53):
I know that I took away a lotfrom my own writing practice.
And finally, I just want to spotlightsomething that Graham said at
the very end of our conversation.
That I think comes through in so muchof what he's done for himself across
his various career pivots, and also theimpact that he has had on the people
(30:18):
that he's trying to work with to solveproblems to make their lives better.
And that's this quote from Grahamabout designing a better liFe.
Graham (30:30):
We can design a better life, whether you're in the video game industry
or academia or wherever you're in.
Um, it could definitely be better.
I don't know how much better,but it could be better.
Geri (30:44):
So let's all work at making it better.
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 Stitcher.
(31:06):
And I'm really hoping that we canwiden the conversation about how
we can do academia differently.
And you can contribute to this by ratingthe podcast and also giving feedback.
And if something connected withyou, please consider sharing this
podcast with your colleagues.
Together we can make change happen.
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.
(00:29):
What do you think about writing?
And how would you answerthe following questions?
How do you write a book?
Especially a book aimed at non-academics.
What's your voice and how do you createa writing routine that fits in your life?
(00:53):
These are all questions that GrahamMcAllister asked himself as he
embarked on writing his book on gamesusability after he sold his company.
He calls them the softskills of writing books.
And he wanted to use this book as a wayto explore the process of writing itself.
(01:16):
So in this last of three parts of myconversation with Graham, he shares
his experiences about the art andcraft of writing that worked for him.
He talks about his commitment to makingknowledge freely accessible about the
process of discovering his writing voice.
The importance of knowing your audienceand being able to communicate clearly and
(01:40):
succinctly with them, and how the writingprocess itself is highly iterative.
He also shares the writing routine thathe set up, how he did that, and also
how he set himself achievable goals.
So he set himself up forongoing progress and success.
(02:02):
And whether you are writing a book orwriting an academic paper for an academic
audience, I think you'll find a lot totake away from his experiences here.
And towards the end, Graham also reflectsmore generally on the implications of
his work within academia and industryand what's next for him possibly taking
(02:26):
time again to reflect on the impactof past mentors and the importance
of thoughtful work life integrationand finishes with the call to us
that we can design a better life.
Enjoy this final part of myconversation with Graham.
(02:50):
You said before about after you soldthe company and you went away on
holidays and you sat there and wrotea book or started writing a book.
And what I saw is this book isfreely available on your webpage.
So talk us through the book, youknow, both the writing process, you
(03:12):
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, to makeit freely and not try to get a
publisher and make money from it.
Graham (03:27):
Yeah.
Um, first thing is part of methinks knowledge should be free.
Um, and I, I realize I'm a consultant,but I, I realize the irony in saying
that, but I hear I'm thinking of.
Can I name specific publishers?
Oh, no, I'll not, I'll not, I'll not.
So there's academic publishers who,even as an academic, I did not want
(03:47):
to publish with because the researchwas funded by the government or
something like that, and then theywould charge to pay off that research.
And I felt that research should be free.
That's what I thought was fair.
Wasn't paid for by you.
I should be able to put that on mywebsite or my research group's website
or the university's website so thateveryone can benefit from that.
(04:08):
And that was one of my main frustrationsas a, as an academic was there's
some great work out there, butboy is it hard to get that, those
findings out to the wider world.
As someone who likes educating andlearning and sharing what's been learned.
That is a major painpoint as an academic bit.
That is a barrier.
(04:28):
That is a usabilityfriction point to my work.
Also an economic one.
That if you're rich and if you wantto spend 50 dollars on a really boring
academic paper that I wrote, youcould probably have access to that.
But there's a lot of people where50 dollars, even if you knew how
to get it, is very difficult.
So just that whole access thingbothers me enormously with academia.
(04:49):
Enormously.
Um, so when I decided I want towrite a book, writing is thinking,
I love thinking, I love working onproblems, I love thinking through
the problems, I like clarifying thethinking, like am I really answering
the question that I think I'm workingon or am I not thinking clearly enough?
So the whole writing thing isa thinking thing, you know, I
(05:10):
can't, I can't separate them out.
Um, so that was partly it in terms of,I knew I wanted to write a book and
I A bit like, I have a lot of ideas.
I think I come up with a lot of ideas.
Usually when I'm running,I, they just come out.
I can't explain it.
They just Blow out at a high rate, um,so much so that my watch face when I'm
running on my Apple Watch is the, thenote recorder, so I run along and I hit
(05:34):
the, people usually have their Stravatimes, like how fast they're running.
Mine is to take ideas.
So I have a button thattakes, takes ideas.
Anyway, I turn around anenormous amount of ideas.
I had an idea for a series of bookson organizational psychology, and
I really, well, that's interesting.
I'm not short on ideas of what,uh, how to help teams or design
(05:55):
teams and thought, well, I better,I better start writing then.
You know, if I've got this seriesof ideas, you have to begin, you
have to actually do one, justdo one and see how it feels.
And so the easiest thing forme to write about is the field
I've been in for the previous.
I don't even know, 10, 20 years,wherever it was, in terms of user
research in the games industry, HCI.
And I wasn't interested in the topic.
(06:16):
I knew I knew enough to writeabout it off the top of my head.
I didn't need to read researchpapers, but I was interested
in the process of writing.
How would I write?
What is my voice?
And then I thought back to what'sthe problems I have with books,
like why do I abandon books?
And a lot of books even, I'm not goingto joke, I'm a famous American academic
and I've tried to read two of his books.
And that is hard work,I've abandoned both.
(06:38):
He's a CS professor and I like him onpodcasts, but his books are terrible!
Sorry, I'm getting It's like he's gotone idea, and it could have been a
really interesting 400 word article,but it's just padded out to a book
because a publisher said write a book.
And I have a very low tolerance for thatBS, I must say, and I'm not having that.
(07:00):
That's the other thingI should write back.
When I give a talk, I'm not very good atputting up a Putting up with people's BS,
I'm probably going to tell you like it is.
Geri (07:07):
mm hmm.
Mm hmm.
Mm hmm.
Mm hmm.
Mm
Graham (07:08):
common thing.
But it's evidence BS, it'snot just opinion usually.
Anyway, so if I'm going to write a book,I decided I was interested in the softer
side, the soft skills of writing books.
How do you write a book?
What's my voice?
How do I write?
What fits in with my life?
What works with me is definitelynot gonna fit in with you, you know?
So I decided I'm gonna writefrom 9:00 AM to 11:00 AM every
(07:29):
morning, two hours, because Ifeel more creative in the morning.
Some people feel morecreative in the evening.
I used to when I wasyounger, but not anymore.
So I'm going in the morning, I write herefor two hours, and some days nothing may
happen, but I'm not allowed to leave.
I have to sit here for twohours and I have to, I am.
I'm encouraging myself towrite 200 words a day, minimum.
(07:49):
But no, I may write more, and manydays I did write more, but I, I,
I should leave with 200 words.
That's like a paragraph.
Like, surely I could write a paragraph.
So that's 1, 000 wordsa week, 200 words a day.
I take the weekends off.
I think I ended up working weekendsanyway, because I couldn't stop it.
But the idea in the beginningwas Monday to Friday, 200 words,
that's 1, 000 words a week.
(08:10):
Um, so 4, 000 words a month.
Uh, and I reckon I have the bookdone 12, 000 words, whatever, in
three months or something, whateverit was, six months or 25, 000 words.
It was that type of, I've got the,I've got the math wrong, so someone's
going to make fun of me, that's fine.
But that was the idea, something simple.
Uh, and then I'd go for a run afterthat, do some form of exercise.
That's what I think about what I wrote.
(08:32):
And then the next morning, thatidea or what I had, what I ran
would feed into the next morning.
So there was this loop, right?
I would write.
I would do exercise wheremost of the thinking happens.
I would take the thinking and captureit, not write about it, just feed
that into the next morning's loop.
And I kept that going.
I wrote 25, 000 words orsomething on the usability book.
Um, but I wrote the book four times.
(08:52):
I realized the first writingwas just getting the idea out.
It was just a long bit back CSprofessor who I'm criticizing.
It was just like a, but itwasn't repeating the same idea.
At least it was more content,but I realized that's kind of.
Kind of reads like a book.
I was, I was rethinking what a book meant.
What does a book mean?
A book means I'm sharing ideaswith someone and their ideas I
(09:13):
think are useful, but why are theyalways written in these long, you
know, long chapters, like 20 pages?
It's hard to keep 20 pagesof stuff in your mind.
I don't think I could do that.
I'm pretty sure I couldn't do that.
So at some point I had this ideaof I'm going to chunk it up.
Typical psychology, right?
We'll chunk it up into how our mind works.
And the original idea wassomething like, I'll come up with
(09:34):
a hundred ideas on usability.
And the book will have some punaround the number 100 or 99 or
whatever crazy idea I had at the time.
It ended up, I think there were 66 ideas.
Uh, I didn't pad it out to 100, I thinkI could have, but I was trying to be
authentic, which is, well, it's 66.
Maybe I should have done a route 66 pun.
Maybe I could have made that work.
But anyway, you see, I shouldhave went on another run, I think.
(09:57):
Whatever the number ended up being,I just felt that's the number.
I'm not going to artificiallyinflate it or reduce it to
make it fit some clever title.
Just, it was what it was.
But I didn't care about the book itself.
Um, so the book was anexercise in me writing.
I love the writing.
I love the thinking.
I love the rethinkingof what a book meant.
Um, I put it on mywebsite for free in 2023.
(10:19):
Um, as we're speaking now in January 25,I'm just, I'm going through the process
of getting it on the Kindle in print.
Because the book I really wantto write, the book on game
vision, I want to get that book.
That's the book I really want to write.
I did not want to writea book on game usability.
I wanted to write a book.
Um, so this was the, me practicingthe habit and the, the art of writing.
(10:42):
So I was not interested in thetechnical side, the idea, which
most academics are interested in.
The domain knowledge they have.
It's everything else, which is,well, even if I can communicate my
domain knowledge, how do I do that?
I thought through how best toget that idea out there, um,
rather than just saying, oh,it's going to be in 10 chapters.
I'll break it up.
(11:03):
I think you can do, you canrethink that a bit more.
Rather than just, well, theseare the 10 chapters, I'll write
the 10 chapters and get it done.
Technically, you could do that.
What else?
You know, what else could you do?
So, um, I don't know whatthe next book will be.
Maybe it will be a boring,these are 10 chapters, and it
could end up being that way.
Um, but you at least think about it.
You know, what, think through.
(11:25):
My case, I was teaching the gameusability, but with teaching someone
else how to how to do a thing.
So it made sense for it to be in 66 stepsbecause that's actually what you're doing.
You're following this step wise through.
That's how you would teach it effectively.
So it made sense to follow.
It was like me sitting down besidesomeone and teaching them how to do it.
I would follow through andtell them, these are the
(11:46):
steps you need to go through.
So it's a teaching book, so it makessense to follow the teaching format.
The game vision one, I don't know whereit's going to be yet because I think
I could take it in different ways.
I could just tell you, these are theproblems with mental models on teams.
That could be an interestingbook by itself, right?
It's just, I'm just raising awareness.
of saying, well, these are typical thingsthat crop up and you should find this
(12:07):
interesting because it explains lotsof psychological problems on teams.
It explains why you've got frictionbetween management and creative.
For example, that's a knownpsychological problem that came up.
But then you went to the model andyou can tell people, here's why.
And let me point to some solutions.
And my MSc thesis was halfthese are the problems.
And then I introduced amodel at the second half.
And I say, here's my model.
(12:29):
That solves all those problems.
Maybe, maybe I don'thave to write about that.
I don't know.
Sorry, you were going to ask a
Geri (12:36):
Mm hmm.
No, I think that's a really interestingprocess that you've been through
and I love that the first book wasabout finding your voice and finding
your rhythm of writing and, andthat it still had a clear purpose.
Its goal was to educate people, youknow, to teach them as a teaching
tool to walk through these steps.
(12:59):
Did it also provide some sort ofclosure as well to that phase?
Graham (13:05):
I think so.
I think, um, I don't have anyintentions of going back in that career.
I don't think that's,that's a very unlikely path.
Um, so I think it wasgood just to summarize.
I was reading at one point,why do people write books?
And that came up as a reason for sure.
One is, you know, sharing knowledge,but other is closure, which is, well,
I've spent my time in this career.
(13:25):
What really have I learned?
And if you can't even write a book onwhat you spent 20 years doing, it's
not, it's not interesting by itself.
There was a series of books I couldhave written on user research.
I don't, you know, that's not thecareer for me anymore, so they
will look for me in my ideas file.
But I took one and justsaid that's the easiest one.
I can still take value in that andgive value to others, and I can
(13:46):
learn more about myself as a writer.
You know, I can learn how Iwrite, or do I, it could have
been, I do not enjoy writing.
Like, I learned, for example, Idon't like making YouTube videos.
I started a YouTube channel at onepoint, and what I realized really
quick was, I do not like making videos.
I have no interest in doing that.
Geri (14:03):
What did you not like about it?
Graham (14:06):
it was very time consuming and the technical side of it wasn't
a skill that I wanted to develop.
Um, I also felt that I wasn't,it wasn't personally satisfying.
Writing, I felt, satisfied me.
I felt I was thinking deeper andquicker and I did not get that from
making a video for whatever reason.
Maybe some people do,but I did not personally.
(14:26):
So, um, yeah, I think I just like writing.
Uh, that's what I learned, which is good.
You should know, but maybe youtry a book and I hit this process.
Geri (14:35):
Absolutely.
And that's fine.
Isn't it?
And it is about knowing ourselves.
And I, I liked what you said about like,it's no good just to paraphrase you.
It's no good just thinking about,I've got this series, a book, just
get on and write one and see.
So that making progress, which is oftenthe thing that people find hardest
when it's about procrastination,especially if you're a perfectionist.
(14:57):
You want to get everything alllined up and feel like it's going
to be perfect before you can start.
And sometimes you just have tostart and give it a go and reflect.
Graham (15:05):
And that's why I set myself a really low goal, like 200 words per day.
It's so low.
Like I remember writing it andthinking surely anyone could write,
you could do that over a tea break,you know, and some days I did.
But that was the point.
It's, it's um, it's a bit like exercise.
You're not allowed to do noexercise, you have to do some,
Geri (15:24):
Um, Um, Yes.
Graham (15:25):
But you can't, can't do nothing.
That's a bad, that's a bad,you know, result, outcome.
Geri (15:29):
You're not setting yourself up to fail by having unrealistic
goals, which is really helpful.
It seems like you're still trying tofind the, the clear why for the next
book you've got the topic area, andit's more, is that, you know, to, to
sort of more like unpack or communicatethese things for people's awareness?
Or is it about a how to do the, yeah.
Graham (15:52):
I think you're right.
My, my main goal for 2025is to write that book.
Now I've got a thesis, an MSc thesison that topic, and part of me thinks
I could just, you know, repurposethat, um, which is one option.
Um, but I'm not sure it'spractical enough for me.
I'm not sure it's gonna, I thinkpeople want to know what does it do.
Geri (16:12):
Yeah.
Graham (16:13):
And obviously that's why I designed it.
It is designed to do something.
It's not just an academic thesis.
There's a practical, heavypractical element to it.
So some people solve that bywriting a theory book and a field
workbook or some sort of, someof these books behind me here.
I realize your people can't,listeners can't see it, but
there's a bookshelf behind me.
And it's common to write two books,the exercise book and the theory book.
(16:34):
Um, and that could be useful becauseI plan to take this into a workshop.
I'm already starting doing that, actually.
So there is a workshop component, andso I should write like that if I know
what I'm going to do with the book, orif I know how people are going to use
it, I should write with that in mind.
It's not a book, no one reads aboutmental models on a Sunday morning, it's
not the book you pick up, you know, or goto bed with a shared mental models book.
(16:55):
So I have to think through, well,how are people going to use my book?
I know they're going to doan exercise at some point.
But I like the bite sized format that Ilearned in the previous one, which is If
you read two pages, it takes you a minute.
If I can't tell you something interestingin two pages, am I communicating?
Because I think there should besomething interesting within a few
minutes to keep your attention.
Um, and if it's just waffle, thencut it back to the CS professor.
(17:19):
There's a lot, I would find notolerance for that type of book.
Um, and there's a good idea in there,but it just could have been said.
I feel it's going to be usedin a different way, let's say.
Geri (17:31):
That's knowing your, uh, intent, intended audience as well in a way.
Graham (17:36):
I think so as well, because my audience is not academics.
It's going to be people whowant to solve the problem.
However, I'm not going to shyaway from the academic nature.
I can imagine I would beputting academic references.
Geri (17:48):
Uh,
Graham (17:49):
That's my current idea.
I might backtrack on this in thisbecause I think I want people to know
that this is underpinned by science.
Because there's lots of people who'vewritten, well not, there's lots of
people who've got ideas in the gameindustry for vision, shared vision.
But it's just an idea.
They're like, oh, I think this works.
And I would ask, well, how do you know?
And they would say somethinggeneric like, well, I asked
the team and they say it works.
(18:10):
And I'm the other end of the scale.
It's like, well, I'm interestedin the proof behind that.
So my model will proveif the team is aligned.
That's why I designed it.
Because I was tired of peoplesaying, oh, we're definitely aligned.
People say there's no problemhere, and so I designed it, you
know, so I'm always interested inhere's how I got to that answer.
And if you want to read thattoo, I'm going to pinpoint you to
the very things that I learned.
(18:32):
So I want to trade that, instead ofdumbing the book down and saying,
here's academia, and I'm going toremove all the hard slogs that we would
read as academic papers, I'm going toremove all that and just distill it.
I'm instead going to say, I want tobring you up and elevate your knowledge.
And it's going to be a littlebit tricky, but I think it's
going to be worth it for you.
So that's my current thinking.
Geri (18:52):
Yeah, and that seems like a skill you've really developed well is that
communicating to people why it matters.
Graham (19:00):
I think, and I think that's the reason, I think, if you write a
book that's hard to read, and you can'ttell people why it's worth it to read
through it, they're probably abandoned.
But if you tell people in advance, thisis not going to be the easiest of reads.
There probably would bean easier way to say this.
But, I think you will get more fromit by going through this journey.
This is likely harder to read.
(19:20):
There's going to be academic jargon.
I'll explain it to you.
You will benefit stronger ifyou stick with it, and I'm going
to do my best job I can to notwrite a long, woefully long book.
I'm going to help you, to elevate you,to bring this academic terminology
and models into your thinking, ratherthan keep it out of your thinking.
I don't think I'm doing you anyfavors by removing it from your
(19:40):
thinking and your mental model.
My job is to improve you, but Ihave to, the journey's going to be
a little bit of, Be a bit tricky.
Not as hard as an MSc or a PhD,but it's not a blog article
on, you know, Medium either.
It's, it's in between.
Geri (19:58):
That's probably good food for thought for people, especially with the
increasing push to impact, which requiresa different sort of communication skill.
We should wrap up.
So what next for Graham McAllister?
There's the book and you saidabout starting to do consulting.
Graham (20:18):
I, I, I honestly don't know.
know.
I do think this is the final career.
So I guess, I don't know howyou phrase your life journey.
But I think this is the, this is thewind down phase, for sure, right?
Um, I don't work five days a week, or, Idon't work five days a month, you know.
So, and that's my design,it's not for anything else.
(20:41):
Could that change?
Yes.
So this is another one of thosedots where I'm saying, I am here,
and I spent five years going backto LSE and designing a model.
And that model shows that the gameindustry is, Missing a substantial,
you know, explains their problem, and Icould bring that into the game industry.
And all I know is I have tobring that to the game industry
Geri (20:59):
in some format.
Uh, Um, Uh,
Graham (20:59):
format.
And I imagine if we speak in two yearsI don't know what I would say, right?
I could say it turned into nothing, or Itried and I failed, I tried to tell them
and they wouldn't listen, or I designedthis model and someone built on it and
now it's this amazing thing, and you canimagine all the ways that could go, um,
and I do not know, and I'm okay with that.
(21:21):
I'm
Geri (21:21):
I was just going to ask, is it scary or exciting?
Graham (21:23):
No no.
It's more on the exciting end, I think.
The final part, the final, finalpart, I think is bringing it maybe
to people outside of video games.
As you hinted at, this is a human problem.
This is a team problem.
Whenever a group of people get together,they have an alignment problem.
And that alignment problem genericallyis caused by language and the
(21:47):
structure of their mental model.
And yes, we could talk aboutvalues and things like that.
But that's what's causingthe friction ultimately.
And so if we can generalize thatand say, well, here's a mental, the
general mental model for any team, butwe know you'll need to refine it for
your industry, while our team works inthe automotive industry, or space, or
(22:07):
healthcare, or fintech, or I get it.
But generally speaking, this is away of thinking, and again, that's
one of the book outlines that Icould write, is saying, generalizing
that to teams, uh, of any type.
So I spoke to a publisher years ago,pitching the Game Vision project.
This is 2020 maybe 5 years ago, and thisis a famous publisher in the States,
(22:33):
and they said they nodded and listenedand went, yes, interesting, interesting.
Could you write that?
So it's useful for any team.
So they wanted to, you know, they saidthey'd publish the game book if I wanted,
but the book they were really interestedin is the thinking behind that model
and applying that to the wider audience.
And I said, well, that's not me.
(22:53):
It's not my passion.
But in 2025, since going back to LSE andseeing models with any organization, I
do know, I think, yeah, I could see how Iwould go about writing that book as well.
So I don't know, but I can see, youknow, um, I could imagine maybe just
writing books for the end of my, myfinal working career where, and you
(23:17):
give a few talks on them and a fewworkshops and you love doing it.
And there's nothing wrongwith that path at all.
You know, I don't see.
Geri (23:26):
So it's a lovely example of You never know where life will
take you and you can pivot yourcareer in many different ways.
And you're still applying a lot ofyour core skills around, you know, like
as you've talked about, identifyinginteresting problems and being able to
(23:49):
articulate them, getting to the why,what's behind it, how do we solve them,
how do we bring methods to solving them,how do we communicate the findings.
So there's a lot of those redthreads as well through all the work.
Graham (24:04):
I think so.
I think so.
It's like, why do theseproblems keep happening?
If you're like an organizationor research group.
And you're seeing recurring problems.
What on earth?
Why is that happening?
What's going on there?
You know, so I think people, I think it'san interesting time for us to talk because
(24:24):
people are rethinking what work is.
This has been a common trend sinceCOVID in particular, and they're
saying, well, okay, I go to work,I get money because I need money
to pay the rent, blah, blah, blah.
I get it.
But what about me?
What about my, what do I bring?
Am I fulfilled going to work?
Um, this work life balance, you know, isit going to work to get money, but your
(24:45):
life starts at 5pm when you come homeand do it the things you want to do.
And then people rebelledagainst that idea quite rightly
saying, well, could they not?
Can we not have both?
Can we not go to workand feel happy there too?
Can I bring myself to work?
Why do I have these two identities?
So this, all of this, the underlying themebetween everything we were talking about,
and I apply this particularly to the gameindustry, which has had a horrific Three
(25:08):
years of companies closing and peoplecrying in car parks and losing their jobs.
And the other line, you couldask me, why did I do game vision?
I've tried to give you some answers,but the bottom answer, the root cause
of all of this is people are havinga really horrible time at work.
And yes, we could say it's partlyleadership and culture, and
that's true, but we can fix it.
(25:28):
We can have, we can design a better life,whether you're in the video game industry
or academia or wherever you're in.
Um, it could definitely be better.
I don't know how much better,but it could be better.
That's what I would say.
I think people are starting to paymore attention to that, uh, over the
(25:48):
last five years, which is good to see.
Geri (25:50):
Yes.
Definitely.
Totally agree.
Well, Graham, this has been wonderfulcatching up and such an interesting
story and so much in it to reflecton, on lots of different levels.
So anything that we haven't talked aboutthat you would have wanted to cover?
Graham (26:11):
I don't think so.
I think, you know, you've hada huge influence on my life.
That's the final thing.
Because multiple times, I don't know why.
You accepted me into Sussex tostart as a senior lecturer back
then, 2007, 2008, whatever it was.
It really, that was amajor pivotal moment.
(26:32):
Without that, there wouldn'thave been a company.
Without that, I wouldn't havewent to LSE to do the vision,
the share mental model work.
You're, you know, andthe generosity you have.
I mean, we never got to talkabout you on this podcast.
I don't know if we want to, I guess,talk about you or not, but there's
probably a consistent theme, um,about your generosity with your
(26:54):
time and how you are to people.
And I won't tell stories, but Idefinitely I think of stories and
things you did that were so generous,back to that window we had in Sussex.
Things you did, I remember thinking,what a wonderful, wonderful,
kind person you really are.
Geri (27:11):
Oh,
Graham (27:11):
And honestly, there's so many examples, I'm not going to cite them
because they're personal to me and theywon't mean anything to anyone else, except
to say that I'm not short of examples.
You know, and I'm not the onlyone who says that, you know,
um, the fact you're doing thisand giving, giving back as well.
But yeah, just, just to say thank youbecause you took my life in a massively
(27:33):
better, more interesting direction that Iwould not have reached on my own for sure.
Geri (27:41):
And you, yes.
So I really appreciateyou saying those things.
I'm very humbled.
So thank you.
And I also am honoured to have beenpart of that journey because you've
Being the one who's made that pathwork and, um, take, you know, like
used it and, and built things.
(28:03):
And as you said, the multiple impactson all sorts of people, companies,
people in the industry, people playinggames, you know, just generally.
So we, we never know, do we?
How, who we touch or how we touch people.
Graham (28:20):
That's what I was thinking about.
These random, someone saysa word in a corridor or a
Geri (28:25):
Um, Um,
Graham (28:28):
I like, I never get, I won't be able to tell Gary anymore
that he changed my life too.
This random lecture that he gave bysaying yes to this talk at Queen's
University and, you know, it sentmy career on a whole different path.
And
Geri (28:41):
Um.
Graham (28:41):
As you say, stop the podcast and tell people, you know, someone,
because it's bound to happen.
Geri (28:47):
That's a great point to, to, uh, stop on.
So stop now and go and tell someone whatthey did for you, what they mean to you.
Yeah.
So thank you, Graham.
And so ends the last part ofmy three part conversation with
the wonderful Graham McAllister.
I just love his energy and how clearlyhe thinks through issues and connects
(29:12):
the dots of his various career pivots.
And
isn't he such a powerful communicator?
I think there have been nuggetsspread across all three episodes.
And in this latest episode, whether youstruggle with writing or love writing,
(29:32):
I hope you'll have found some thingshere that you can take away to try out.
And even though Graham was talking aboutbooks and for non-academic audiences.
I think there are aspects on the art andcraft of writing that he's shared that
could apply to all forms of our writing.
(29:53):
I know that I took away a lotfrom my own writing practice.
And finally, I just want to spotlightsomething that Graham said at
the very end of our conversation.
That I think comes through in so muchof what he's done for himself across
his various career pivots, and also theimpact that he has had on the people
(30:18):
that he's trying to work with to solveproblems to make their lives better.
And that's this quote from Grahamabout designing a better liFe.
Graham (30:30):
We can design a better life, whether you're in the video game industry
or academia or wherever you're in.
Um, it could definitely be better.
I don't know how much better,but it could be better.
Geri (30:44):
So let's all work at making it better.
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 Stitcher.
(31:06):
And I'm really hoping that we canwiden the conversation about how
we can do academia differently.
And you can contribute to this by ratingthe podcast and also giving feedback.
And if something connected withyou, please consider sharing this
podcast with your colleagues.
Together we can make change happen.
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