Business Strategies for Developers

you so how many of you developers why are the rest of you here no no good a serious question because this might be beneficial to your it might not and I'll change the talk because only a minority of your developers somebody want to say what they do that's not development yes we need to give you a mic okay so this is my friend Mohammed who I met last night Salam anybody else okay

so marketing so some different areas this doesn't just apply strategy doesn't just apply to developers strategy is important in business strategy is also important in life we will come to why it's important usually in business this is an incredibly difficult subject for people to understand and nobody actually asks the stupid question which is what is strategy and because they don't understand strategy or they think they understand it there's a shared misunderstanding everybody goes along and because of that companies become miss shapen so we are going to go through very very simply very I'm not going to do the introduction to my life thanks to you my friend embarrassing the hell out of me

I was going to do a very brief introduction it was not going to be as flattering as yours but I will go through some definitions and some strategies so that's my timeline so in 1965 is God knows prehistoric but 1982 is the age of jahiliyya is when I started in the industry I guess I made my biggest impact from 2011 to 2015 a Playstation where I created and led a team called strategic content so strategy was in the title and I must confess in 2011 I didn't have a clue what strategy was either I had the same misunderstanding about strategy that everybody does this - okay he did us quite a lot actually people didn't notice does anyone know that Barack Obama is a smoker by the way he

hid his habit very well be a smoker and a Jana so what I don't have here are my notes that's fine we'll go without notes definitions are really important here's an example somebody read out the top word roh-roh yes he understands somebody read out the second word object I object you know this game you're not allowed song read out the third word yes well done he's cracked the code a fourth word project project now what's the point of this the point is if we don't know the context of these words then we can have a completely different take a completely

different understanding or what's being discussed and so if you don't think that strategy is important and yet you can't agree on the simplest communication and what it means that it's going to impact your life it's going to impact your communications it is certainly going to affect your relationships with other people you work with those misunderstandings in the long term will create failure let's see if I can no that's not gonna work is it so here are some definitions these are words that we use in western business a lot I'm sure that these words have equivalent translations all across the world and I will cover some of them but the one I will focus on is strategy

everybody talks about what is the culture of a business we talk about purpose mission vision objectives strategy tactics and you will find that people often mistake strategy for tactics culture I used to use the word culture with other people who probably had a completely different understanding this was probably the most influential person for me at Playstation anyone knows who this is you're not allowed who's this Jim Ryan the president of Playstation at the time he was not the president so he's risen up the ranks but in the cab ride from Hyderabad Airport to our hotel that we shared he told me what culture was I was beginning to talk

about culture you know opening my mouth and in front of somebody who really knows their stuff I try not to make that mistake I'm sadly I'm making that mistake here today there's probably several people in here who know this stuff better than I but but he said no culture is much simpler than that they're not the nonsense that I said to him about culture I'm not going to repeat he said culture is the personality and the actions of a leader and you will see that reflected all the way throughout the organization so PlayStation in its history had chaotic leaders and guess what the organization was chaotic people modeled the leader whether the leader thinks they're leading or not people modeled the leader so it's very important to understand culture you wanna know the culture of any company look at its leader you wanna know the culture of the USA at the moment you only need to look at Donald Trump no matter how much people protest the fact is that Donald Trump is setting

the frame I'm not making a political point here I'm making a point about culture the culture of the discourse has been coarsened because that is how Donald Trump has framed it as the leader of the United States of America so culture very very simple purpose purposes is what drives you purpose is what gets you up in the morning why you are doing what you are doing without this there is absolutely no point in fact it's very hard to wake up in the morning without purpose many people wake up in the morning thinking okay I've got to get up early because I've got to go to work why have you got to go to work because I've got to make money why have you got to make money well because I have to pay the rent and that's a pretty powerful purpose it's not necessarily a positive purpose unless you enjoy your work

nevertheless which is a purpose and in any business you have to be very careful about how you define the purpose in your life it's very important to define your purpose I will give you a very quick personal story my purpose back in PlayStation times was to make PlayStation the natural home of independent developers when I first started saying that publicly people thought I was absolutely mad two years later it was a fact now that sounds great right well I mean I could have been crazy it did sound crazy at the time I had to convince myself fibers not crazy in the beginning but that changed the day I collapsed on the floor of our bathroom and saw my infant son looking at me and there I was

I was actually making the Shahada because I thought I was gonna die now I've suffered many episodes in my life I've come close to death many times but that was a time when I thought I have absolutely no idea what this is I could be dying I'd have no idea why I've collapsed I've been pushing myself very very hard so overnight my purpose changed it didn't change in the first half hour by the way because my first response after the paramedics arrived and checked my pulse and said they couldn't find a pulse my first response my wife tells me was to ask her to phone my boss to say I would be half an hour late today yeah that's what purpose can do to you it can drive you beyond all reasonable limits a day later I had to take the day off otherwise my wife is very happy and the fact that the paramedics couldn't initially find a pulse also had something to do with that

my purpose changed entirely but what happened is that my life had to catch up with my new purpose my new purpose was much more family oriented my purpose became I have to be able to see my son grow up he needs a father now suddenly if my work got in the way of that work had to come second so you have to have a purpose and the important thing is you have to know what that purpose is it's in life if it's in business anything if you have not written down your purpose you are not living your life as my new friend Martin told me this morning over coffee your life is living you mission your mission is the things that you do

in order to arrive at your objective your mission is how you turn your purpose into reality so you write down the things that you're going to do so for example my mission one of my mission personal mission statements became spend more time with my son and that meant I had to come home earlier so I started coming home earlier I still worked but I worked more from home in the evenings well that became part of my mission oh that's interesting we just knocked the HDMI out okay so your vision is an aspiration it is the thing that you create a picture of to motivate yourself

to motivate your team to motivate your co-workers to motivate your family it is a picture you paint in your mind of the promised land which of course we're not very far from literally but metaphorically speaking you need your own promised land a vision of that in your head and my vision at PlayStation was and this is crazy at the time you have to understand at the time Vita was a complete they seemed like a complete failure so we're talking about 2011 2012 the vision I had was Vita is a preferred destination for independent developers this is 2000 of 2011 right at the beginning 2012 by 2013 this was a fact now it was so ridiculous so powerful the important thing is if you don't have the

drive the purpose a clear mission on how to reach that vision nobody's going to believe you you can't just sit there saying yeah don't worry it's gonna happen this is not like the secret you know where you make an affirmation and things just fall into your lap anyone seen the film the secret yeah yeah it's it's not about that a vision is up with absolute clarity a reality that can be lost it again a reality that can take shape now here's the interesting thing about a vision especially when it relates to business it should be slightly depending on how much effort you're willing to put in slightly or massively outside your personal comfort zone otherwise it does

not generate enough pool for the people you're trying to attract so you can imagine everybody is laughing at the Vita that's that dude that device is failed forget it we're going to iOS or we're going to go to this or that or whatever but some people are going hold on a minute this disguise absolutely batshit crazy but then things start to happen and at first people are going to laugh at you so this is an example of a vision that that was a way outside my comfort zone you don't have to do that but you should start at some point beyond your comfort zone because otherwise you're just doing what everybody else has already done and it's not a vision it's just a task it's just oh yeah I have a presentation to do by two weeks time to convince somebody of an internal plan

something like that is not a vision something like that is just a project or a task it has to frighten you a little bit otherwise it's not a vision a vision has to be something slightly beyond what you've already achieved otherwise it's not a vision now here's the key thing it has to be attract and when I say attractive I mean that literally as a leader your job is to put that vision very very clearly in the minds of the people who are working with you even if there's just two of you you should be able to communicate that vision and put it in people's minds so that it inspires them to act if you have a well a well articulated mission then they will know what actions I need to take

did you want the notes for it I can share the notes after the talk yeah I can't see the notes myself but that's fine I know what they are okay so the bit that I think is very important if you look at the Wikipedia definition of strategy it's not what I've got here I think the difference between strategy and tactics is much more subtle than people appreciate but also much more important objective is easy objective is a goal what is the thing and everybody here knows about goal-setting and what you need to do to achieve a goal goal needs to be very clear measurable blah-dee-blah you know all of this the strategy is the key idea or key ideas that you are going

to use to reach your objective the tactics are the actual measures that you will take that conform to the strategy I'll give you some examples but first here's the mistake you can make if you keep changing your strategy strategy has to be used over a long period of time otherwise you will never get to your goal so this as you can see is the stages of growth of a plant and what most people do is what Manchester United you all know match the United it's what Manchester United have been doing with their managers since Alex Ferguson left they give them this long and then they sack them right so every manager that has come in since the Alex Ferguson has had their own ideas but it takes time

right so imagine if I'd been told okay go ahead work on your strategy we worked on my strategy on Veta three months later we had no results three months later we were here okay that's not working what cancel the project this is what Manchester United have been doing they don't give the people enough time for the strategy to start to yield some results it takes time and the reason for this is simple a series of actions based on a strategy a series of actions or tactics that are congruent with the strategy have a compounding return effect you do not see the results soon the results accrue over time you are going to need patience in this period you're going to have doubters in this period but you must stay true to the

strategy otherwise you will spend your life in this cycle and if I give you anything today if you take away anything from this today it is to convince you of the importance of believing of having Iman to go beyond this point if you do not you'll spend your life and that's how this isn't working I'll change this isn't working our change a really good example of this is physical exercise I know well what am I thinking about actually this is way better than it was a year ago so physical exercise if you stopped after the first session as you'd have every right to what would happen I'll tell you what would happen a friend of mine recently last week he had a heart attack he's younger than me he had

a massive heart attack he's in hospital on life support and critical condition and then I pray inshallah he's still around when I go back please make du'a for him that can happen at a young age if you don't take care of your physical health now what is the strategy okay because you I've talked about strategy have talked about tactics strategy is the key idea strategy would be health health is my strategy now what is my tactic my tactic is going to the gym okay that's a good idea but how many times a week this is when the implementation of tactics becomes really serious I'll go three times a week bad idea nobody goes to the gym three days a week and keeps it up why because you don't have time to develop develop a habit and

also you start to think hmm I've been once maybe I'll skip Tuesday maybe I'll skip Wednesday suddenly we're a Saturday and you've only been once if you couldn't make up your mind so going to the gym is a bad tactic better to say I will develop a habit to exercise for 30 minutes every single day sounds insane but it's possible start the day with in 30 minute walk done within one month you are already this far down on your mission of developing health exercise doesn't have to be going to the gym going and having a walk for half an hour has incredible health benefits for the heart so the strategy of health needs to have really really concrete tactics so don't sack your strategies before they've had time to bear fruit don't treat your life like Manchester United

treat their managers let's talk about some real-world examples of strategies these are examples of strategies they will appear shortly safety is a strategy large organizations are inherently safe they do not take risks Hollywood blockbusters are safe safety is a strategy of the Hollywood blockbuster Machine sounds crazy but look it's the same for Triple A games if you spend 200 million making a movie or a video game US dollars doesn't matter 200 million of any currencies a lot of money you spent 200 million making a video game at 200 in marketing it you need a return so you have to go with the tried and tested so good strategy for a blockbuster movie machine or a blockbuster triple a

videogame machine is safety but you cannot have that approach if you're an independent developer that is not a good strategy for an independent developer why because you have the advantage of being able to make mistakes learn from more quickly reacting coming up with something interesting so being adventurous is a good strategy for an independent developer fair versus ruthless I'm not saying fair is the opposite of ruthless but you know you could say that sometimes in order to be ruthless you have to be slightly unfair because it's about self-interest banks are generally ruthless why because they're playing with a sacred they're ruthless there now ruthless before 2008 they were reckless yeah before the crash they were reckless and that wasn't actually a strategy this

it was a tactic it was an accumulation of tactics that didn't conform to the bankers strategy and it calls him immense problems flexible and controlling are two other very good contrasting strategies so for example the PlayStation before strategic content was very controlling it wanted to control access to PlayStation as a distribution platform but after strategic content it was a lot more flexible a lot more open as opposed to a lot more closed these are all strategies how they relate to your objective is something else entirely what was the strategy of Apple Steve Jobs time anyone want to take a stab at this no they did not innovate yes control is

very important user experience is very important so user experience was the strategy the key tenet for for this guy and the reason it was a key tenet of his strategy the user experience is because he believed but customers didn't always know what they wanted but once they got it they would love it if the user experience was perfect and so for him simplicity was another strategy so I would argue that the three strands of Apple strategy were control user experience not UX in the modern term which is widely abused but user experience and simplicity given the choice he would always go for simplicity control was absolutely vital he wanted control of everything from the

top to the bottom from how much access reporters had to how the shops were created because of course there wasn't always an apple store but when he created the store he got some of the best people in the world involved and their first design just before his about to launch was scrapped and it wasn't scrapped because of Steve Jobs it was scrapped because of the partner he took on board saying I think this doesn't conform with XYZ which was strategic and Steve Jobs gave him such a Bala King bollocky ng is a very British word yeah it means means shouting at abusively like a boss does to some people sometimes so he gave this guy such a Paulo King but then when he get got to the meeting about the next phase he said he's right we got to do this again it

was that important but they're prepared to make that kind of take I'll give you another example not related to Apple of how strategy its strategy can inform your decisions even at great cost I was once asked about an issue with LittleBigPlanet while I was at Playstation and it was an issue to do with an African singer who used a common expression in Arabic I won't repeat it because it's confidential not the expression but its connotation to this event and it's a commonly used expression in Arabic that happens to be in the Koran as well kourounis invite cattle mouths I think was the line used if anyone's familiar with this expression every social taste of death yeah am i right that it's a reasonably common Arabic expression as

well as being in the Quran people use this from time to time so the question was this because it was used in music one group got in touch with Playstation very small but active group and said we are gonna destroy you and they didn't mean literally they you know we're gonna destroy you in the media if this game comes out with this I happen to be a convenient Muslim and I was consulted and I said personally as a practicing Muslim I don't find this offensive because he is not being demeaning because the expression is used in Arabic language it is not exclusive to the Quran I don't think that the context makes it offensive therefore I think that the two million discs you have just printed should go out David Rives

great man that he was still is I mean he was a PlayStation lent back in his chair thoughtfully just like this pose here actually and he said no we're gonna destroy the discs I was amazed but why I don't think you need to do this he said it doesn't matter if we're right or wrong we cannot take a risk like this with the reputation of Playstation he destroyed he ordered the destruction of two million discs it was not whether it was right or wrong but for David Rives number one example of strategy in action reputation reputation is a strategy a reputation that he would spend millions and millions of euro in a late launch to

protect Salix Ferguson controlling development he'd developed talent these are key strategies an example how many of you have heard of Roy Keane hands up if you've heard few people Roy Keane was the most successful captain and the most influential midfield player in the Premier League and certainly the most successful captain in Manchester United's history but he was ruthlessly sacked he was let go stole his services were not needed because on one show on a Manchester United show he seemed to be slightly negative about the Manchester United performance and for Sir Alex

Ferguson togetherness inclusiveness control these are all very important strategies you never ever betrayed the team in public and because of that he was ruthless with Roy Keane and let him go many people say that cost amounts United the title that season and it did but then they won the title three years in a row because he stuck to his strategy so another important point about strategy is you will suffer setbacks but in the long run Sir Alex Ferguson is a most successful manager in the history of the British game my favorite yoga Club is my my team's manager he has slightly different strategy he has a strategy of radical honesty I mean radical honesty he he will say

exactly what's on his mind but it's informed another one of his strategies is commitment any player that shows less than 100% commitment will not make it into the team no matter how good they are our best defender at some point I say our best defender I'm a Liverpool fan was Mohamed Sacko he was let go because he was not committed even though he was the best defender so this wasn't about control this was about commitment because Sacko was not prepared to be committed to the course he was let go so commitment radical honesty you're wondering why I haven't said passion it's not passion actually passion is not a strategy passion is a tactic and it is employed judiciously at certain phases in a game so for example in one half of a game they will employ the tactics so

you need to remember this for your own life you don't use the same approach just because your strategy is is singular it doesn't mean use the same approach for your strategy all the time right so for example if your strategy in life one strategy is health and one day you can't walk for whatever reason maybe you're I know it's way too hot you haven't got access to the car or you woken up late or whatever way past verge of time and off you go and you think no no that's way too hot can't do this you know for whatever reason you decide not to take a walk it doesn't have to be your only tactic to achieve health maybe you have a stationary bike at home maybe you can do so squats or push-ups or whatever so people mistake tactics with strategy end up not achieving their goals because you think that doing the same tactics is what gives you the results it is not the

people who get ultimate success are the ones who are willing to change tactics to support exactly the same strategy so for example Steve Jobs is very famous for this we talked about the strategies user experience control simplicity but you saw that the iPhone became more and more complex because people's ability to understand what a phone could do evolved over time five minutes manelli done so change your tactics we've talked so much about some of the things that we did at strategic content that I'm not going to cover this in too much detail apart from to say that openness was a strategy communication was a strategy but the tactics that we used changed over time

the here's the other thing your objectives might change so for example I could I'll give you a personal objective my personal objective is to get down to 85 kilos in four weeks time I started this objective about eight weeks ago I'm on track and getting there inshallah now what is a tactic for that the tactic is to go to the gym but some days some weeks I'm not able to do that so I've had to change my tactics but then beyond that remember this tactic is in support of my strategy of health after this period my objective will change again so be careful how you set your objectives so you don't demotivate yourself 85 kgs is achievable 75 kgs is not yeah some people have done it you might have heard of a guy called

David Goggins he can do it I'm not prepared to do that I'm not prepared to starve and go outside in 40 50 Celsius heat and run with five layers of clothing for six hours a day with a broken leg he's done that I'm not prepared to do that to lose 10 kilos so your tactics have to support your objectives which have to be in line with your strategy so an ultimatum flexibility is a key strategy and when I say flexibility I'm talking about with respect to my team they're allowed to work whenever they like wherever they like sounds crazy right but it works because I only work with people who are experienced disciplined professional and good communicators and one key one key criteria is that they must have suffered a failure and recovered from it a big failure and

recovered from it because otherwise when you face an issue you'd be working with somebody who doesn't know how to handle failure and that could be catastrophic because of this they're able to meet all of the objectives we've worked with four partners working with the fifth now final criteria final sorry final strategy is inclusiveness and inclusiveness for us means we'll work with anybody on any game so long as it meets with our strategies now strategies are very simple so long as we get to stay flexible and enjoy that flexibility everything's going to turn out fine and I think we're done understanding has

very key semantic differences so everything you mentioned as strategy for me I always believed I always thought of it as culture values so is that important or should I start thinking about them as a strategy or what's the difference because there's a lot of discussion about yeah that's that's a

great question so he's asking about he's saying sometimes strategy tactics values get confused I hope I've clarified the difference between strategy and tactics yeah strategy is like your big idea tactics is the steps you actually take values are what inform your strategy so for example my value is my family right my strategy for enjoying the most amount of time with my family is health you wouldn't know that because I I smoke when I travel but I never smoke at home and because of that I can stay a nonsmoker longer than I am a smoker so you might be able to find lots of these little anomalies but they all follow right so you don't want to live a long life and hate your life right you've got to have a little fun from time to time so fun is also a value I don't want to miserable a long life so this is really

important your personal values have to inform your strap to do otherwise you won't believe in the strategy who wants to work for a company that's controlling and who prefers freedom if you want to work for a company that has a strategy of freedom you don't work at Apple right so this will inform your life decisions you need to understand the strategy even if the company doesn't make the strategy clear to you nobody told me explicitly the strategy of Apple you but you can look at what they've been doing you can read about Steve Jobs and understand what he's done to see that that is exactly their strategy but your personal values should drive your personal strategy and if your personal values conflict with the strategy of the company or the partners you want to work with you have a decision to make it's answer the question yes you know when it comes to culture versus strategy I'm still not able to you know remove those examples

that you mentioned as strategy culture so is a personality and actions of the leader the leader does not always act in accordance with the objectives in the strategy the leader does not always understand the difference between strategy and tactics the difference between a good leader and a great leader is a great leader understands the difference yeah poor guy lost attempts to have culture meetings in culture events and culture and purposes but if it's not actually follow through by manager which almost never errors the action culture always reverse to the moon which is as exactly saying the actions of behaviour so it's

not scary what do you think of convenience as a strategy if it maintains the quality yeah convenience could be a strategy I mean if you do your best to be convenient and I mean thing is your own thing so your objectives are likely to change throughout life and throughout business but your strategies should change less often than your business

because it's your values that connect to the strategies right objectives change all the time we all have different goals the things I wanted when I was 7 I didn't want when I was 14 definitely there were different things so your goals will change throughout your life what about business I mean same every year a business sets especially a large organization like Playstation even my small organization we have yearly goals what do we want to do this year what do you want to do next year we don't necessarily make five year plans that's crazy these days but you certainly want to look ahead at the year ahead and say these are our objectives this is what we would like to achieve we're going to continue with our strategy we've had the same strategy in my company for four years and we used much of the same strategy as strategic content where I was for four years so eight years I followed very similar working strategies reputation is a strategy for me as well I learned that from David Rees very

early you don't change your strategies very often but you change your objectives you don't change your values but you change your tactics and on that note thank you very much thank you [Applause] [Music]