Creating Accountability: 4 Simple Steps for Managers

[Music] well hello thank you all for being here thanks to the staff uh especially Juno and Matthew for all the help with a setup uh special thanks to Aaron Smith my co-founder at building better games he created this accountability model with me and to Jenna Spangler who guided me through the GDC submission process to make this possible I would not be here talking to you honestly if it wasn't for them uh quick reminder silent things with the potential to beep okay my name is Benjamin carage I am a former Army captain and then game producer I started building better games with Aaron Smith four years ago so we could help leaders in Game Dev build better games at least partially because we love playing great games and wanted to do more of that today I want to talk about accountability accountability is a word I've heard tossed around quite a bit both in the military and in Game Dev the usual scenarios are as follows I hear something like I wish people were more accountable or I wish there was

more accountability around here another one comes up a lot why does no one take accountability anymore and usually after something goes wrong who's accountable for this in all of these scenarios there's an underlying idea that accountability is something we want more of and don't have in nearly all situations where accountability is being brought up it's because something has gone wrong also in nearly all of these situations accountability is poorly understood and seems linked to blame and Punishment when accountability is seen primarily as the potential to be blamed and punished after something has gone wrong I'll admit my lack of surprise at how uncommon it seems to be so people don't know what they mean sometimes when they say accountability too and that's another part that's can be confusing with this often people think of accountability and ownership and responsibility even culpability all these might be the same thing depending on where it's heard to avoid us being confused I'm going to State what I think accountability is agree or disagree this is what I mean by accountability in the context of this talk

I view accountability as having two parties involved one is the person who will be holding accountability or holding someone to account and the second is someone who is being held to account the person or group holding accountability needs to have the resources to create consequences for whatever happens and must have expectations of what they want to see the person or group being held to account needs to not do too much actually and this will cause some problems down the road which we'll get to the ability of one party to create consequen and have expectations over another party is all that's needed for a very basic and toxic accountability to exist set another way accountability involves judging or evaluating someone or a group and establishing consequences based on their actions Behavior or outcomes regardless of fairness knowledge or evaluator identity meaningful consequences hold individuals or groups accountable I want to deconflict accountability from responsibility here those are the two I most often see confused they are similar but they're not the same thing the biggest

difference between the two accountability is external someone else holds you accountable responsibility is internal you take on and then feel responsible for something practically I can hold someone accountable through consequences based on my expectations but I can't force them to be responsible they can always refuse to care about my expectations and consequences if you want more info on responsibility I recommend checking out Christopher Avery's work on the subject he wrote a book called the responsibility process uh it's worth it's worth a look for this talk we're going to be focusing on accountability so a couple of anti-patterns emerge whenever accountability comes up I kind of referenced a few of them earlier let's talk about those first we have this idea I've already mentioned that accountability is directly connected to negative consequences when this version is all you know accountability means knowing who to blame or who to punish in systems where this is true the motivation to set up accountability is near zero the only thing I do by being account or holding others accountable is

blame and punish since most people don't like to be blamed or punished or blame and punish others either out of kindness or because if I'm doing it to someone else someone else might do it to me too it's just not going to be something anyone prioritizes this view does appropriately attach consequences to accountability but only negative ones it ignores all positive consequences like giving someone credit for doing a great job or rewarding someone because they achieved what was needed a quick story on the idea of negative consequences I remember a large business unit of an org I was working with hundreds of people they were struggling to produce value that would help the rest of the company in the audience it was incredibly expensive and disappointing and went on for a long time but how did no one pull the plug or look into it well every year or so sometimes even months it seemed like the senior leaders found someone who was accountable for the failures and fired that person I'm not going to go into the details but I am highly doubtful that they were practicing healthy accountability it seemed more as though a scapegoat was needed declared

accountable and then fired I don't doubt that some of you have seen similar situations accountability in this case had purely negative consequences and it led to a large part of an org where everyone ran from accountability as fast as they could and hoped it didn't catch them I want you to raise your hand if you've heard of accountability operating with this anti pattern where basically the only thing that happens if accountability is present is negative consequences just raise your hand okay got a decent number of hands there raise your hand if you've seen accountability operating this way at a place you've worked personally okay now raise your hand if you've experienced accountability operating this way accountability is pure negative consequences still a decent number of an okay so you guys are are familiar with this anti pattern the tldr of it if accountability just means that something nobody wants to happen happens don't be surprised when that thing doesn't exist second anti pattern that is super common we claim we want accountability but we don't tell anyone what they are accountable for it seems we care about

accountability but in reality everyone is left in the dark about what it means to be successful or fail and if that's unclear then accountability will be at best useless and at worst it might end up toxic as I mentioned earlier if you want effective accountability you have to tell people what they are accountable for here's two contrasting stories from my own experience as a game producer at Riot working on League of Legends Story number one I'd been hired by Riot I'd already shifted managers once I was working really hard but I didn't know much about game at the time I kept asking the leaders around me including my manager how I was doing they kept saying things like fine or good or solid whatever else means generically okay/ competent without any details it was terrifying I felt I couldn't get a clear answer where was I failing to meet expectations where was I overdoing it what could I do better I admit that some of this was probably my own insecurity perhaps no answer would have satisfied me but the vagueness of their answers certainly wasn't helping it seemed like my entire job was to do a

good job and I had to figure out the rest for someone who had never been a game producer before this led to a lot of fear and anxiety okay Second Story four or five years after that one I was placed in charge of a team of teams responsible for the technical sustainability of League of Legends this was a super exciting role for me even as it took me away from the Art and Design heavy teams that I've been working on for so long when I stepped into that role I asked the leaders around me what they wanted they were super clear they wanted the group I led to become more predictable the work from the team was great the people seemed solid there was good product thinking and Alignment to the bigger League Vision but everything seemed to be unpredictable and as we know unpredictable usually means late they didn't tell me how to specifically accomplish more predictability but at that point in my career i' been leading for a while I had the tools to work through the rest they didn't just tell me to do a good job they didn't tell me just to do my best they had a specific problem they wanted solved and they were clear they wanted me to solve it over the course of the next year I took that group from the least predictable to one

of the most if not the most predictable teams working on League they had set clear expectations had they not I might have focused on other problems and failed to solve their primary concern with how powerful clear clearly setting expectations is it's a huge missed opportunity that we don't do more of it in our industry okay so now raise your hand if you're familiar with this if you've heard of accountability but nobody ever sets clear expectations anybody heard of that lot of hands again okay raise your hand if you've seen this at a place you've worked okay and raise your hand if you've experienced accountability operating this way almost everybody all right tldr of this anti pattern when expectations aren't clear accountability won't work like you want it to so the lessons of these two anti patterns for the first rewarding and praising people for succeeding is as important as punishing and rebuking people for failing if you want to create real and effective accountability both

are a part of what good looks like for the second expectations must be communicated if you don't communicate what you want don't be surprised when you don't get it all right we've covered what accountability is and is not and looked at some of the biggest anti patterns that I think pop up around it it's time for the model so four steps to healthy accountability there you have it number one set expectations number two negotiate number three commit and number four hold accountability well I guess I finished early any questions just kidding if you've already learned anything about me it's that in any given scenario I've probably got more to say if you haven't learned that yet you're about to so let's start with setting Expectations first step setting expectations is the clear communication of what you want to be done it could be specific tasks it could be ownership of some aspect of a product it could be improving something like predictability from the story I told earlier if you're someone leading something or have some type of oversight as a stakeholder or manager or whatever you should have expectation of the people are things you

have oversight of the setting expectations step is just the articulation of those expectations this first step fights clearly back against the second anti- pattern of never communicating what you want by actually communicating what you want it also gets people who perhaps haven't thought clearly about what their expectations are to think about it I honestly think that's one of the biggest reasons the second anti- pattern exists it's not anything malicious it's just busy people not putting time into thinking about what the heck they'd want out of the teams group or people they lead it gets lost in the busyness of work and I'm going to go meta for a second one of the reasons there is so much work to get lost in is because no one has told them what is expected of them either so they are like so many of us trying to do everything at once so what happens if you don't set expectations when you skip this well the first outcome is the chance you get what you want from the people you lead or manage goes way down second those you lead or manage are likely to be a bit confused about what's important feel some anxiety about their own performance and generally have an emotional burden to carry around and third when you

attempt to hold the people you lead or manage accountable it is likely to feel surprising random and unfair I remember a story with someone I'd worked with I was no longer with the company they' quit recently and I was really surprised they were incredibly hardworking and had seemed very passionate about the space they explained why for the last half a year or so they' absolutely crushed it doing all kinds of work for the role they were in they were in discipline development and they built out training expectations for roles ton of other work it went really well they were feeling like forward progress could be made in an area that had felt blocked for years at that company they went to their performance review excited you already kind of know what happened huh their manager gave them pretty average marks the person I'd worked with asked why they felt that way and the manager explained that some big things hadn't been accomplished when the person pushed back saying all that they had done the manager said something like oh yeah that was that was good but it wasn't what was most important nice that you did that stuff though so one of the harder workers I've ever encountered in the product space didn't even realize they were working on on something their manager considered a nice to have or

bonus and that they were not accomplishing what their manager felt was the most important work to do expectations had not been set the result was a great employee leaving the company pretty frustrated and feeling set up or even betrayed by poor leadership a couple of more advanced notes on uh setting expectations so the first setting expectation can also include what is not expected it is a prioritization of what matters most this will fight the idea that all the work that could possibly be done should be done there is nothing down that path but burnout Crunch and despair in focusing on what you want done you are saying there are other things that don't need to be second note setting expectations is ideally done by both the person being held accountable and the person being held to account excuse me and the person holding accountability why do we not just care what the boss thinks though well your manager may have a good handle on what you're doing but they don't see everything that you do you may have realized things that need to be done that outside of your manager's

visibility if so thinking about what expectations you believe the company team or boss should have of you is a really useful tool okay setting expectations this is about articulating the vague internal thoughts both people have about what the future might look like it's about being able to State what you want and when so someone can act on that desire or fail to setting expectations is the second most common part of the four-step model and I think it's not common at all once you've set expectations you move on to the next step negotiate negotiate is well we didn't really get really creative with these step names it is what it sounds like negotiation is between the person holding accountability and the person who will be held to account it's where we look at what we thought would be expected and start refining those expectations to match what's reasonable my manager might expect me to get the team going 10 times faster many of my managers wanted that uh that might not be a reasonable ask during negotiation I get to bring this up now I'm not going to lie to you and tell you this is a

meeting between peers it's not accountability in a business context almost always implies hierarchy and a power differential but that doesn't mean negotiation is pointless unless you've got a really problematic person holding accountability and if that's the case attempting to negotiate will inform you of that problem so you can start looking elsewhere find a new manager I mentioned during set expectations that it works best if both people set expectations if you did that this is where it comes together the two parties get to look at their different lists and see what matches and what doesn't if you're a manager you might realize that there's some incredibly important things that your director report is doing you didn't know if you're the direct report you might realize you were with the best of intentions going to focus on things your manager doesn't care about in both cases this helps create Clarity because negotiation is not just about exchanging lists it's about aligning on a final set this might take some time to work through and the person who holds the other accountable the boss or manager or leader they will have the final say but the goal is to reach a place where both parties feel good about the final set of goals and

expectations skipping negotiation is really common as mentioned accountability typically involves hierarchy and if you see the boss's job as to give work to the direct report then once you've set those expectations as the boss you just tell the direct report the expectations and you're done but not negotiating will lead to a few problems first as the boss you don't get to see what your direct report thought was important and gain a better understanding of their situation it's possible they're barely holding things together right now and you just completely overloaded them with a bunch more expectations it's possible they are focused on the wrong things and it's a great time to teach them or share the vision and get aligned or whatever it is you're going to miss that opportunity if you don't have this conversation second you don't know how well they understand anything because you haven't had a conversation about it while I feel like it's been said a lot in the modern world I'm going to say it again sending someone an email list of items or some text messages on slack heck even a voice or video message on slack is not going to create the Clarity you probably want

and perhaps even expect if clear communication is important conversations are how you get there there's just too many ways to misinterpret written messages no matter how carefully you word them this means that if you don't negotiate about the expectations you are less likely to reveal the misunderstandings and more likely to be disappointed in either direction down the road third problem if you don't negotiate you remove agency and in so doing disempower your direct report this is crucial and should impact what negotiation looks like if negotiation is just a conversation to help us get clear on what the manager wants their direct report to do that's not negotiation it's just clear Direction which don't get me wrong is better than unclear direction but we can do better if you want people to become responsible all on their own and you do you have to let them impact question and challenge what you expect of them it doesn't mean you have to compromise every time it doesn't mean you can't hold boundaries regarding what matters most it does mean if you never give them the ability to influence

what's expected of them they will become disheartened and lose energy and passion over time remember that story where my manager and others told me to create predictability I challenged that I have a bias against predictability being the most important thing yes it matters and I'm a producer I know it matters but it's I don't like it when it's like at the top of the list I saw other issues on the team that I felt were more important to focus on such as the development of the leaders and general support and when I did we got into a conversation SL debate about why they were asking what they were asking and was it just because we wanted pretty road maps to report up the chain or was there something more well it turned out there was something more because the team was doing foundational technical work on the league code base having unreliable releases me other teams that wanted to bank on when particular improvements or tools or build systems would be made and were using that to make their own plans they had to do a ton of guesswork and they often got blocked the priority wasn't predictability because we liked nice burndown charts it was negatively impacting teams across the studio that

we didn't have it I still did invest time in what I thought was important around developing leaders but after that negotiation I put right at the top of my list predictability because I was able to understand why they wanted it couple more notes on negotiation number one both parties don't have to have a set of expectations to bring to the table though that does work best but even if the manager or just the direct report brings expectations you can use that as a starting point for the conversation to reach alignment second note don't try to do this in 5 minutes at the end of a one-on-one it's going to take time and that's okay uh book a separate meeting if you need to third note this isn't just negotiating what a direct report or the party being held to account by another will be expected to do another piece of this is what and how much support the manager or party holding accountability will be providing let's talk about that for a second so providing support look managers are not just here we're not just here to set expectations we are here to provide support if we have the power to create Co consequences we also

have the power to help our direct reports succeed through our organizational influence and relationships that can look like a myriad of things it may be backing your direct report up in a conversation with another senior leader it may be helping them find a great mentor it may be approving their purchase of a course that they need to grow their skills it may be personally investing time to go over the most important deliverable you expect because they've told you in negotiation they don't know how to do that and need more guidance than your one-on ones will provide whatever it means means for a manager to provide support that is also on the table in negotiation if you want your direct report to move Heaven and Earth to get something done but you aren't willing to talk to your boss to get them $300 a year to get a piece of software that's going to be a huge help what are you doing I'm not going to go deep into what good people management looks like this is a talk about accountability I will say that if you're doing a good job as a people manager it means you are creating an environment and providing the help when needed for your direct reports to succeed you are not responsible for their success they are but you should

feel responsible for setting them up in a place where success is possible or even probable all right back to negotiation step two here negotiation is where we bring our lists of expectations together and form one list we can agree on as well as discussing support and sketching out possible consequences it is the second most forgotten step in the process that I see out in the wild so this leads into step three commit so you set expect and shared them you've negotiated a modified or perhaps entirely new set of expectations now it's time to clearly commit the commit step is unique in that the person being held to account rather than the one holding accountability is primarily responsible for it only they can commit to commit is to sign on the dotted line it's to communicate to the person who will be holding accountability that to the best of my ability I will do these things and if I don't something went wrong I'll also throw this out there you don't technically have to have this step but it's really helpful it goes a long way in moving someone

past external accountability and to internal responsibility in some ways it's the simplest step it's the shortest but I think it's also the hardest if I go back to when I was talking about how much we all say we want accountability but how much we don't create healthy systems that would lead to it I think this step is why to commit is to expose yourself someone who has committed to me to set of expectations can be accused of failure if they don't and the person doing the committing usually has less Oran organizational power they're less protected by default I hate this step personally I live for a long time trying to keep expectations for myself as low as possible in all areas of life so it was hard to fail and relatively easy to succeed and it kind of worked I had rarely been considered a failure but it also limited my upside when I got more aggressive with what I'd take on it forced me to grow my capability and expertise I had to become better than I was because the me of today whatever I look like wouldn't solve the problems of today that I had committing is uncomfortable and by the

way if you've ever been in toxic organizations where incredibly High performers can be given impossible expectations are then expected to accept them and then get burned at the stake for nearly inevitable failure you can see why this is uncomfortable you are vulnerable once you've committed it's frankly easier to leave everything vague and that's why so many organizations don't have the culture of accountability they claim they want because all the way up the chain no one trusts that if clear expectations are negotiated and committed to to that that won't end really badly for them it's better to sit in the fog with plausible deniability except it's not the lack of commitment hinders growth for the people being held accountable it hinders managers actually following through on supporting teams and people as they try crazy things it stops us from being clear about what's important and that's why this is the least seen step of the four steps well behind negotiate which I think is well behind set expectations so how do you get people to commit well comes back to that first anti- pattern I discussed above that

accountability means negative stuff consequences are just blame judgment punishment why on Earth would I want to commit to anything when the only thing I ever see happening to people who do is neutral they met the expectations and so did their job or negative they failed and got blamed judged and punished you introduce positive consequences and you create trust that harsh negative outcomes aren't that likely because they shouldn't be it's time to talk about consequences The Good The Bad and The Unknown so without consequences accountability doesn't exist if we fail to meet someone's set expectations and nothing happens and that keeps going everything's just business as usual we're not going to be concerned about meeting or not meeting expectations moving forward and neither will anyone else consequences create Stakes If someone knows consequences are headed their way based on what's happened in the future most people will care more I'm going to split consequences into three buckets negative positive and adaptive negative consequences matter

whether present or absent remember that leader leading hundreds of people and consistently failing to create good outcomes and meet expectations the senior leadership of the organization is on the hook to resolve that if the failure is consistent over time consequences might be changing the failing leaders role or removing them from the team or even the company if no one deals with it though you are teaching everyone that the company doesn't take consequences in accountability seriously this will hurt Studio morale long term especially if accountability seems more absent at senior layers of the org than elsewhere negative consequences you tend to see them in a couple different buckets I've kind of mentioned them there's punishment there's blame there's judgment these sometimes we I am appropriately to blame for something I've done wrong sometimes it is appropriate to punish someone and remove responsibilities whatever that might be and sometimes it's appropriate to have higher scrutiny on what they're doing uh based on how things have turned out that's a part of being a manager and part of running a company as well okay enough on negative consequences I labor it let's talk about positive

consequences as I've mentioned these are too often absent and I've talked about some of the reasons why but there are more if you agree to some type or scale of positive consequence when the person you had expectation of expectations of meets the bar you are now obligated to honor your agreement if you don't have the power agency to create positive consequences this can put you in a real bind for example let's say you challenge a producer working on a team to deliver a key piece of value three months earlier than originally planned It seems impossible but the game needs that bit early and so you told the producer they would get a promotion and a raise if they succeeded while beating the odds the producer did it only now you realize you never cleared anything with your boss and you are limited to a 3% raise for average performance and a 5% raise for exceptional performance also the company has put a freeze on production promotions as a cost cutting measure whoops gosh if I have positive consequences I as a manager now need to handle the reality that if my people blow away my expectations they should get them similar to negative consequences this is much easier for managers to want to leave in the fog

because what if my employee keeps overperforming for their role now I've got to keep convincing my boss and boss's boss if this person who is totally crushing it should be promoted how annoying do you realize how backwards but common this thinking is I had an experience once that was incredibly frustrating I had a manager was a super nice guy Great Game Dev I think a great producer he was pretty overwhelmed in the role and as a manager at one point during a private feedback session I basically told him the truth of how I felt without mincing words I said I feel like your job is to keep me doing as much work as possible as cheaply as possible for as long as possible without me quitting that was a hard conversation to his credit he didn't just fire me and attempt to Blacklist me some might have so I don't recommend you have that conversation if you feel the same way but it sucked and if you're there it sucks I felt like I was doing good work I just wasn't getting rewarded this is one reason why so many people prefer to hop companies instead of trying to get promoted where they are it's easier to convince someone else

that you are capable of more than to fight the system you currently sit within that without it ever being the intention ends up locking you in place but when I had my first direct report I got to experience this reality from the other side she was amazing just crushing it brand new on a huge team and she was just getting so much work done it was mindboggling hard worker perhaps the best culture Builder I've ever seen and able to call out while simultaneously maintain a good relationship with the leaders around her I loved how well she performed it also stressed me out like crazy because I knew that at least twice a year she would be coming to me with her list of accomplishments saying how she was doing and being clear that she felt the raise or promotion was in order and when I looked around at her peers and pay the problem was she was right which meant I had to go advocate for her again to a bunch of people that were kind of getting sick of my stories about how how high her performance was again do you see how backwards this is is it any Wonder we struggle to retain the best talent and we treat them as if they

are the lowest common denominator we treat them as if they're average is it any Wonder we don't like to think about positive consequences okay let's talk about what positive consequences can look like I think everyone here defaults to raises and promotions and I just mentioned them a lot so fair enough but there's a lot more that can be a reward for a job well done and to understand what motivates your direct report you need to talk to them about what they want and value here are a few ways to positively reinforce people besides raises and promotions One open up opportunities for them in an area they are interested in maybe they've always worked on Tech teams but really want to try to work in a more narrative space two praise them publicly uh that can mean a lot to people three give them additional responsibilities that they are excited to take on don't skip the last part or they're just going to become frustrated give them more attention to help them improve faster five bring them into leadership conversations that they wouldn't usually see six ask and value their opinion about how the or should proceed seven give them more freedom and

agency in their work eight give them management responsibility huge boost for Learning and career development make sure it's a path they're interested in and then there's some that are cheaper than raises and promotions but do cost some money like giving them an opportunity to go to conferences such as this one send them to Advanced Training give them external coaching to help them grow now I'm not saying you do these things instead of giving them raises and promotions if they deserve them but I am saying don't feel limited to just those things and again if you don't know what besides raises and promotions they are interested in ask them if you are creative you and the direct report can come up with a ton of things you can probably do to reward them in their role in career this is especially valuable if you are working within HR systems that may be dramatically restricting your ability to increase salary or title if they truly are a high performer that you trust even talking to them about the limits of what you can do can lead to an understanding and a willingness to work through it posit positive consequences are a crucial part of healthy

accountability if your people are crushing it you should be excited to reward them fairly for all the value they are generating if you create a culture where positive consequence is normal you'll see more people stepping up to solve big nasty problems and unlock amazing opportunities because they know that the org is interested in rewarding them for their efforts okay last type of consequence adaptive so adaptive consequences are consequences that happen as a result of all the stuff we didn't expect to happen that did when you had a clear goal to deliver 15 finished characters by June and in the middle of May the outsourcer doing the final texturing suddenly stops working for you because someone else bought out their company you are likely to fail to meet the goal if you're the manager you can go ahead and swing the negative consequences bat around but if you're paying attention at all the best outcome might be a failed goal in that situation because emergency hiring a new and unvetted outsourcer just isn't worth the risk the right call was to accept the fail goal rather than chance wasting a ton of money on work you can't use now that might seem like an extreme case but things like this happen all the time

adaptive consequences are actually a great initial go-to as you're building trust with a direct report when you first start having conversations about expectations negotiating and committing you are likely to get those expectations wrong some of that will be due to inexperience by either of you some of it will be due to outside forces in either case adaptive consequences look at how well people responded rather than holding to the strict letter of the law but wait I hear you saying doesn't this invalidate the entire point point of negotiation and commitment no not at all if things stay largely the same that commitment and any consequences involved should follow but let's face it our plans are living plans our goals should be living goals if stuff changed a lot we look to learn and grow and encourage our direct reports to learn and grow that's adaptive consequences it's pointing out where learning should happen what we could do differently and how we want to respond better next time a very influential boss I had in the military then major Chann once told me he didn't care if I failed the same Mission twice

he cared if I failed it twice for the same reason that was unacceptable he was enforcing learning growth is what we want it's what we encourage it's a key part of how we nurture our direct reports towards higher performance and better outcomes for their teams adaptive consequences allow us to not be stuck in the binary of either throwing a party hat or a punishment bat after outcomes happen they're about teaching and growing your people by the way even if there is no crazy Black Swan event that messed everything up I still prefer to use adaptive consequences instead of negative consequences for the first few mistakes someone makes it will build trust and you'll get to see if your direct reports Thrive or struggle when given feedback and an opportunity to improve okay there you have it consequences negative positive adaptive having all three on the table will help you create healthy accountability getting back to that commit stage if the person you are holding accountable knows that positive and adaptive consequences are out there not just negative ones they will be more willing to commit once your direct

report has committed we're on to the final step of the process holding accountability okay we've stated expectations we've negotiated to align on a final set and the person being held to account has committed to those expectations with an understanding that consequences positive and negative can happen they also understand how they'll be supported on their way now it's time to hold accountability this hold step is not about stopping anything it's holding accountability as in someone being held to account this is where you enact the consequences based on what has happened versus the expectations that were set and agreed upon I want to call this out holding accountability is the only truly necessary step for some version of accountability to exist but it's not going to be healthy if you're in a position of authority over someone and just use the hold accountability step it technically Works they are held accountable they are also confused remember accountability is an external Force this is why the hold step is the most commonly seen step often in

the absence of any of the others people are held accountable based on expectations they had no idea existed rarely this leads to surprise rewards for exceptional work more often than at its worst you get punished PL blamed and judged based on invisible criteria leaving you confused and frustrated the hold accountability step also completes our list of the most to least common steps of healthy accountability hold is the most common setting expectations I think is second negotiating expectations is third and committing to those expectations is the least common and to say this again looked at through this lens no one should be surprised healthy accountability systems are rare okay how do we go about holding accountability well a basic way is to have an expectation to have something done by a particular time and when that time arrives you check to see if it's done and then consequences happen based on the outcome this actually works all right especially if you've done the first three steps well and imagine you and your direct report established a 3month set of goals or 90-day plan or

whatever it was negotiated and committed to at the end of the time period you took a look through the goals you evaluated what was done what wasn't what was learned and then you enact the consequences based on that I'd say you are way above average for creating healthy accountability so kudos to you but I want us to do even better I want us to take a look at what hold really looks like in the constantly changing world of gamedev the first thing I want to call out our work and reality as game devs is complex there's a lot of uncertainty and unexpected things happen regularly we never get through everything we wanted to get through no matter how well we plann it upfront there will be unexpected events to react to things we learn that require us to adjust course and stuff that frankly takes way more time than we thought it would so imagine I get together with my direct report to create a 90-day plan and we walk through setting expectations negotiation and committing well we've just prioritized what matters most but it is common for that prioritization to change sometimes dramatically over the next 90 days so instead of waiting till the endend of that time I make it a regular part of

our weekly or maybe bi-weekly one-on-one to check in on how we're progressing towards the goals what's happened that we didn't expect what are we realizing we forgot to put on the list what would we take off to make space how can I provide my direct report better support to achieve their goals by checking in often and as part of this hold accountability step you're going to do three things one you allow for the adaptation of expectations to match reality so we aren't punished because the world changed around us did half your team just quit to form a new startup well that's going to adjust what's possible adapt to your new reality don't pretend our original goals still make sense second thing it'll do you're going to create many more opportunities for your direct report to improve their approach be corrected if they're going down a bad path or tell you you're not showing up with the support they were expecting they and you get more chances to iterate on their way towards the goal third thing you do you're going to build trust with your direct report you didn't just send them into the wild and walk back to your management Ivory

Tower you care about the momentto moment progress and you want to continue to set them up for Success this means a lot to the people you're managing if you don't believe me ask them note that when I say checking in here this isn't some status report where you go through the goals and they y out green or red for each item and then you give them a score and walk away this is a continued conversation about how the expectations are or are not being realized it's unbelievably valuable seriously if one of your direct reports knew that one of their goals that you were relying on them to get done had just become impossible would you want to know now or at the deadline so the hold step actually becomes this ongoing conversation this also means that when you do meet the deadline it's not surprising to either of you both in terms of what actually results and what the consequences will be another thing to quickly cover withhold especially as I make this more of a an iterated continuing conversation well what what should be the broad container what's the timeline for this there is no one answer to this question it depends on the rate of

change of your environment if everything is changing every week having a 3-month plan is pretty useless but if things are relatively stable going through this loop on a monthly basis might be a waste of time so I would take a look at the rate of change in your environment When selecting my broad guideline not a rule would be somewhere between two weeks for a really pretty darn chaotic environment out to maybe 90 days and I know we tend to do performance reviews in 6 Monon and 12- month Cycles but going for 12 or even six months is a long enough time that the odds that most of the expectations you set are still relevant are low at minimum you're going to be rep prioritizing more likely you'll be discovering entirely new things and throwing out what's become irrelevant regardless of the big cycle though I still recommend doing those weekly or bi-weekly check-ins before moving on I want to dive a little bit more into trust for a moment in systems with healthy accountability trust is something that is constantly being nurtured between a direct report and their manager without trust none of this matters without trust no one will want to commit no one will

trust what anyone commits to and generally everyone will stay as far from accountability as possible but if you're following this model it will build trust and it will build it B directionally an ongoing hold step that runs continuously with your direct reports teaches you which ones you can give more leeway to and with higher confidence it teaches you how much you can expect and trust them for the direct report they are going to see you providing the support you said you would and staying present with them as they hit bumps in the road they will also see you going to bat on their behalf with others they will learn they can trust you okay because the hold step is an ongoing one you'll not just see the final outcome which is often the result of a whole host of different variables you'll get to see how they made decisions along the way you'll get to see your direct reports exercising discernment you'll get to see and provide subtle or blunt force direction to help them succeed as they're going they're off course and it will also mean that if you want to promote someone and have to convince others that it's a good idea you're going to have a lot more ammunition in those conversations this

makes positive consequences much easier I want to put this all together so let's look at what this actually looks like and how we do this practically not just as abstracted steps imagine you're a lead designer managing a mid-level designer they are working on a combat team and they're looking for the compelling core game Loop that you're going to build your game around first you provide your direct Report with a timeline that overall that Cadence in this case we're clearly early in development we don't have a core game Loop right so we're picking a tighter Cadence of one month there's probably a lot of change happening second you ask them to create a list of expectations to bring to your next one-on-one where you'll kick off aligning on what you both hope they will achieve within that month you also create your list of expectations third you meet in the one-on-one and share lists there will probably be some overlap if you've worked together for a bit it might be totally different if this is the first time that's okay regardless your job as the manager is to now lead the conversation negotiating toward something you can both get behind there are three

categories you'll want filled out one you want to both have a clear and prioritized list of what they will be attempting to accomplish two you want to know what support they will be expecting of you and how you plan to pave the way for them to succeed three as much as possible you want to be clear about consequences do they expect a promotion if they succeed and is that reasonable if they fail does that mean you'll need to step in more directly to make sure the game stays on track again I lean towards adaptive consequences here early on focus on the learning focus on the growth and focus on praising good decision- making by the way if we're talking about a month this should be a pretty short list a month goes by fast in Game Dev fourth you ask them to commit if they are willing to do that great if not ask about why and what would need to change renegotiate a bit see if you can reach a compromise here and at minimum seek to understand their concerns they don't have to commit I mentioned that earlier but it does make everything a lot easier many times they

don't want to commit because as I mentioned commitment is scary and they've seen it abused in the past people pick up a lot of scars in our industry be willing to shoot low with your negotiated Expectations first to build trust fifth talk about how and when you'll be touching base with them about how things are going if the time period you're evaluating is only a month long I might go for weekly sinks six follow through on having those ongoing hold accountability iteration while I recommend a live conversation even a quick buted set of questions in slack would be better than nothing here's three to get you thinking one uh these are from the manager to the direct report how confident are you feeling about meeting the goals two what's taken more time or surprised you so far three how can I the manager provide you the direct report better support to meet those goals be sure to ask that third one some version of how you can help too many managers skip the step and fail to realize that the power differential in the relationship makes it hard for their direct report to ask seventh at the end of the month run

through what's happened set up the consequences positive adaptive or negative depending on what's happened then repeat the cycle okay what causes this model to fail you've seen the steps there are ways to mess this up there are things that will hamstring it there's a few things so first I want to talk about lack of transparency if either party is not transparent healthy accountability becomes really hard if a direct report is concealing things or worried about talking about what's actually happening it means we're not able to talk about what is real this happened to me once as the direct report I knew I was expected to get a Content Pipeline on track and I also didn't want to fail so I was constantly reporting optimistically about how things were going when I was in fact underwater with bigger problems than I knew how to solve my manager might have been able to help me but I was so worried about people knowing that the problem was bigger than I was letting on and bigger than could handle I never said anything when things didn't

go as I'd optimistically hoped I realized how unwise it was to not be fully transparent it delayed me moving to a different project I really wanted to be on for probably six months we've covered this extensively already but on the other side if you're the manager and you're not open about what's happening in the org you're not talking to your direct report about what you see that will blow up their efforts to meet expectations I'm not saying you have to tell them everything you know some stuff is confidential that's okay but you should be providing them insight into how they are doing from your perspective and informing and helping them work through the big upcoming changes that will impact their work you have better better visibility of those than they do second if trust isn't present the system won't work so first transparency second thing is trust I've just talked about this I'm not going to belabor it trust is essential without it neither party can rely on the other and both end up suspicious and protecting themselves which causes trust to get worse if You' got trust problems that are that are bad these four steps won't matter even if you execute them perfectly because whatever is discussed isn't real very similar to

transparency okay so first transparency second trust third the model will fail but not immediately if either side fails to follow through actually not either side but mostly the manager if the manager fails to follow through if you do all the work to set expectations negotiate the goal support probable consequences and then either party gets too busy or pretends none of that happened accountability is going to break down it's just going to be another process we did to check a box without any real meaningful long-term cultural change now if the direct report fails to follow through the system still functions overall and can be broadly healthy it will probably lead to negative consequences at some point and if that continues long enough removal of the direct report that doesn't care about the expectations of the org and their boss this is pretty rare I think usually if this breaks down it's because both parties abandon it or the boss got too busy to follow through on their commitments and actually continue the steps so maintain transparency build trust and honor what's been committed to and this is highly likely to work objections I get all right so for

managers especially all these wonderful ideas are great but you know what we are that organization it's toxic it's unhealthy there's no good accountability here well the great thing about this model it's not dependent on anything outside of the relationship you have with the people you hold accountability for yes I admit it is easier if the broad org understands and supports these efforts but even if they don't you can create a local space of healthy accountability you have to be hon honest about where the limits of what you can do are again imagine an environment where raises are locked by rigid rules or promotions aren't allowed something like that but this doesn't stop you from building a healthy system for your direct reports using this model it just limits some of the consequences you have at your disposal all the steps can work even if you never tell your boss or anyone else you are doing it nothing we've described requires organizational Buy in and if you set this up and it helps you and your direct reports succeed you might get asked how you did it and then you might get spread the value around okay but what if you're the

direct report you think this model is great but it's not up to you your manager and other senior leaders hold you accountable and they don't know about the model or use it this is a problem uh but it's not as actually as bad as you think I want to do a thought experiment many of you are probably managers if you're not imagine you are now I want you to raise your hands if you would be really upset to have one of your direct reports one come talk to you to a line on their expectations and goals two negotiate what things are most important to you in the org and three agree to provide you regular updates on how they are progressing towards those goals so all those people would be really upset yeah nothing all right well I personally would be thrilled in my experience most managers would be entirely not disappointed by this it would help them even if I as a manager already did a great job of communicating expectations having a direct report show the initiative to come and engage me in a conversation to to create alignment this is everything I'm trying to train them to do I would I would be so excited if

you're a director report and you want to use this method suggest it worst thing that could happen is they say no even if it's rejected my guess is the initiative will be appreciated and if it is accepted now you've shown that they that you value what they expect of you and that you are interested in fulfilling the needs of the broader org not just doing whatever you want there's very little downside as we close up I want to talk briefly about people management because there is a huge opportunity for healthy accountability to add value in the relationship between managers and their direct reports some of you may be frustrated with how management has failed you in the past or maybe failing you now I want to expose some numbers on management According to some articles I found on the internet so take this with a grain of salt 85% of new managers do not get any training prior to becoming a manager that's the vast majority when I was a manager I got some training on it and I understood just how rare and valuable it was because it was years after I became a manager that I got trained as well as many others out of

curiosity in this room how many people became a manager uh before they received any training on it okay so basically everybody how many people have never been trained to be a manager but are one still a decent number of hands okay yeah so even if those of us that did get trained at some point can you vouch for the quality of the training I certainly can't is it all about filling out employee time cards preparing performance reviews and properly rating employees in a nine box I wouldn't be surprised it is therefore no surprise to me that 59% of managers feel unsupported and some of those managers probably didn't want to be managers in the first place but there was no career progression outside of that I know a lot of us think it's silly that orgs still work that way but it's really common it's very very prevalent in in many Industries on the flip side though I want you to know that 84% of us workers say that poorly trained managers create unnecessary work and stress are you

shocked by that cuz I'm not we as managers may be untrained and we may feel unsupported in our role simultaneously it is easy for us to cause a lot of pain for a lot of people something I say about leaders is when you're a leader and you make a mistake other people pay the price not just yourself look I'm not going to say creating healthy accountability will solve all of that but it will make it better than it is today so if you're a manager engage in the process and effort healthy accountability you may be surprised at how helpful it is to those you lead all right that wraps us up thanks again for coming I want to give a final thanks to my wife Lara who supports me in more ways than I could have imagined and also God for all the opportunities and skills he's given me that I did not deserve if you want to reach out I'm happy to chat you can contact me via email or the building better games website or feel free to hit me up on LinkedIn and let me know you saw this talk um right before we go into Q&A I'm I've been told make sure you if if you get the the score card thing for this talk fill that out let me know how I did

let me know the let let GDC know uh about that as well um and so with that we'll go to Q&A with our remaining nine [Applause] minutes hi um great talk um I guess uh my question would be where do you begin with this process so if you have a team that has had managers and they have kind of direct communication and stuff and provide a line of sight but there's never been like a full framework for this so that responsibility and accountability is always stayed on the management side versus the direct report side so where would you first begin in order to kind of make it a full more wholesome framework are you in the are you the direct report or you the manager in this case uh manager okay so can you

repeat the question oh I'm yeah um let me see how do you set this up in a system where and correct me if I'm wrong where there this system hasn't existed and all of the responsibility for expectation setting has always just been on the manager um how do you set up this this Frame this like a healthy accountability so um for me and depending on how many people you manage I might try it out with one I might try it with all of them I have a conversation and say hey I have a model I want to try to use um it involves these four steps we're going to start with setting expectations negotiating committing and then I'm going to hold accountability and what I'm hoping we get out of this is an aligned set of the most important goals for you and also an understanding of how I can support you um and how we can create positive consequences and learn as you go forward how we can grow you um and from that point you kind of the Practical example I gave where you just

you just start start that process say Okay cool so next time we have a one-on-one set the time frame think about what that is you know 90 days a month whatever whatever makes sense in your context um and say could you bring what you think you're supposed to be doing in the next month or whatever and then I'll bring what I think you're supposed to be doing and we can have a conversation with about that the places where this would be hard uh as I said are where people have a lot of scars um so this has gone really badly for them in the past um and that's where I I encourage managers initially to shoot low on what they actually you know hold people to um let people like ex Excel and reward them and let them know that like this is this is actually what I want to see I want to see more of us and then and that if you do take on very aggressive goals and you fail to meet them it doesn't mean I'm going to punish you for that because maybe they were really aggressive goals and I'm really excited that you tried and so again things like adaptive consequences come into play um rather than jumping to

negative does that answer your question okay next question over here hi uh sorry if this is a bit long-winded but no worries uh I've known a lot of developers that struggled quite a bit to break into the industry as we know it's very competitive um and when they finally get here for them the negotiation step seems to be the one that's most Out Of Reach MH for for example I've had colleagues that like are on work visas and they are stuck in the position that you mentioned which is like working as hard as possible for as low as pay as possible without quitting they're kind of just there for a person who might be in a position where they don't feel they have the negotiating power to question authority or to even question the tasks or the or or bringing them to a reasonable conclusion what would you recommend the person in that position do or take steps or like how could they

have be part of this healthy accountability process and this one is from the perspective of the direct report correct okay so this is the question is um if you were a junior person who's just joined the industry and there may be outside constraints making it very difficult for you to challenge your manager how would you go about trying to create a system for healthy accountability sort of from the bottom up um I would would think about what expectations you want and then I would think about the four-step model here and I would suggest it and bring your expectations with you to your manager um it they may say no I'm I'm not going to lie in that situation like I said there's a power differential and what you're actually describing where I can't talk to you about this the implication for me there is there's not trust and as I said that will undermine this so even if we're going through this steps without trust it's pretend um so I would I would get your expect a like okay I think I need to get this done in the next 90 days let me

bring that to my manager maybe they're like I don't care about that I tell you what to do okay guess what you're probably not going to have trouble setting up this model right in that environment they may be like hey your list is awesome I'm going to make some modifications to it well great you you just started on step one and step two um and so talking to them about it just introducing it if you have enough trust to do that you can see how they respond I I urge caution right because you can get burned I I that conversation and I don't recommend other people have that conversation that you alluded to um that guy didn't punish me for what I said to him and I know that there are people that would have like if I'd said that if I'd had that conversation with someone in the military it would not have gone well um uh so so yeah is that a good yeah yeah absolutely just really quick as from the manager's perspective how do you make sure that someone in that position doesn't feel like they're in that position that's hard it's over time um so that again comes down to that idea of trust um you know I once had a

manager expose I I already trusted him quite a bit he exposed to me some information that was relevant to me but he didn't have to tell me about it I won't go into the details of it um it wasn't anything he wasn't like breaking any rules or anything but I think a lot of managers would have just skipped it and he let me know that and what was interesting about that is it built my trust in him that if something was going on that I needed to be aware of to be successful in my job my manager had my back right and then if if I didn't know about it it wasn't because he wasn't willing to tell me it was probably because he didn't know either and so over time you will develop as you prove that you are a person of Integrity that you follow through on what you say you're going to do which is very important as a manager um as you demonstrate your integrity they are likely to trust you more and more and then the system will become more and more valid because like I said I mean I was totally in this situation um where uh you know I I had that trust and I still was optimistic about what was going on to my

own detriment and the detriment of the team I was working with makes sense thank you sorry about the two-part question yeah uh I manage a team of volunteer moderators MH in terms of like this model does it like change any in the face of like a volunteer position as opposed to compensation and how would I better set up like positive consequences when like I can't like give them money for for the job yeah so um yes it does change one of the things with any sort of volunteer organization and I've had some people talk about like they're doing a REV share Dev project where there nobody's getting paid and there's stuff like that look at some level in those you're going to be relying a lot more on people being responsible so taking that internal side rather than you holding them accountable um I don't know what your consequence range is in the environment you're describing where you're um working with uh volunteer moderators but but whatever that is think about um okay cool these are the consequences negative adaptive and

positive I can provide these are the ones I can't and then talk to them about what they're what what might be valuable to them right again you don't you don't have money to give but maybe there's other things that they would really like to that that would be a good reward if they were doing a really great job um so kind of trying to figure out what your consequences are if there aren't any consequences then you're not actually operating in a power differentiated business type of accountability you're more just having a conversation between people either of which could not care and walk away and there's nothing you can do about it and and that's okay like those those exist um there's nothing wrong with that uh it's just not quite what you'd be doing here right thank you yep I think we're out of time yep okay I'm getting the nod I'm out of time so um thank you all for coming I will be heading over to the alov right back here um and if you want to follow up with more questions I'll be there for as long as people I have I think I have like next couple of hours so uh thanks a lot for attending I really appreciate it

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