How to Install Company Values & Culture | Philosophy Friday #21

hello everyone and welcome to philosophy Friday I am joined today by Stauffer toberg wait is that how you pronounce your last name I go by two Borg here look I I answered anything okay anyway so Stafford tuborg is one of the brightest game Executives I know and today we're going to be talking about organizational Theory versus implementation meaning that I believe that in many companies there are a lot of conceptual Frameworks that are discussed and communicated within the company but more often than not they remain at the conceptual level and never really installed and I think company culture is a really good example of this mini game CEOs or Executives often talk about how their company is a certain way we believe in X Y or Z our company culture is like this but actually on the ground employees may actually not behave in the ways that management desires or that is

kind of documented by the set of company values that's written on the walls so um even at my company Leela games we have a set of company values we've documented it it's on our website we communicate a lot a lot about our values but what I found was that communication was not enough so even if we communicated our values and even if you know we talk about it very regularly in weekly All Hands meetings and things like that I was personally not that happy with the installation of the conceptual stuff not to say all of our employees but certainly some of our employees didn't sort of walk the walk even though they could sort of talk the talk on this and so um this is a topic I'd really love to talk to you guys about today I asked stoffer for advice on this topic and I thought he had a lot of great insights which I want to share with the audience today but before we dive into that stuffer just to establish your credentials because you're such an impressive guy with a great background in gaming could

you for the audience could you talk a little bit about your background yeah I I don't really think of my background is very impressive I think I think I was like one of the last generations of kind of dumb people who snuck in at like entry-level roles many years ago but I'm very humble I I spent I spent a few years at a company called CCP games to start where I ended up being the lead game designer of an old MMO called Eve online um and then I left from there to join Riot games where I was up until this July actually for for almost nine years working primarily on League of Legends and the mobile offering wild Rift and since then I have moved on to a startup called corporate Labs where I'm the EP and um we're working on a a new MMO called a big craft online that I'm uh super super excited about and yeah we've we've met a few times and and talked

about different different kind of organizational challenges right so maybe now just to kick things off and and Dive Right In so I I think you know company culture is a concept many people talk about many Executives talk about I actually also ran a survey earlier this year amongst a bunch of game company CEOs and the number one what they consider to be critical even over fundraising even over a company strategy was company culture but I feel like if you were to ask any two people in a company what is company culture and even beyond that like how would you differentiate values versus culture how would you define those things I I think you get a lot of different responses and so I wanted to just kind of level set the Audience by just kind of understanding from your perspective stuffer you know how do you think about that how would you define values company culture um in your opinion I think I think first of all it's your

point I think you know they're not implemented well many places I actually think employees should think about them much more deeply than they do today I think as I've kind of aged and kind of figured out where I want to go with my career the the cultures and values and the companies that I want to join are actually one of the more important things and I think people underestimate that when they take a job I think there's a real difference between finding a workplace you didn't like and finding one that was really like your tribe that that's really important to you and and I think just like if you're not a Founder out there and you're thinking about switching jobs or going somewhere else make that a part of your thinking because I think you'll be much much happier wherever you go but that's kind of just like a a slight detour like like I think I think I think there's really three levels and I think you've mentioned this but but a lot of people skip the most important part is that there's values which which are optional to have right you can sit down and Define those through your company if you feel like that's important I happen to think it's incredibly important uh but you know you don't have to do it to have

a company and then there's the portion that I think is the hardest part of it that people skip over and I think understand poorly which is the I think you called it implementation I've seen it called like practice or integration or installation actually to think of it as immersion because that's really what it is it's it's really your your company having something that's always present and there around them all the time and then the third part is like the outcome of all that is your culture right and and culture exists at a workplace and it's just how how people interact how they solve problems and it always exists no matter if you've chosen to have values or not values are just a way of guiding it in a direction that you're invested in and and so so that's kind of I think how I think about it right culture exists um whether you like it or not it's present every day values are something that you choose to have to try and guide that culture and then there's the middle step around um around how you actually you know saying that something is something that's not the same as everyone doing that and that's kind of the the immersion portion of it which I think is

really where people do uh really screw it up to be quite honest right and maybe I could get your take on so I've kind of after you know kind of struggling with this issue at our company I've kind of evolved my thinking a little bit and terms of being a little bit more precise in terms of definitions and so this is just my own personal definition but the way that I view things now in terms of values versus culture is that I think of values as like the set of principles or philosophies that that you want the company to support and then I view culture as the specific implementation based upon the the team or the specific work environment that you're operating with right so for example like we are we're building in India and given there's a lot of culture well there's a lot of more like Indian cultural context the working environment the labor laws the all the things that are specific to that

um to that specific geography and so kind of like the way that I've that I view it is that we have a set of values which is the principles the the things that we need to do to help us be as successful as possible but then the specific thick way in which it manifests at in an office like India versus Silicon Valley may be slightly different and so the culture would be that to your point I agree with your definition in terms of the the operating rules and how you interact with one another that would be how I would Define culture but that it might be different for different offices even though the values themselves remain the same I I don't know how you would react to that or back to my definition of that well I think that's a good definition and I think you touched on something that's pretty interesting which is that I think you know as as you know a half Danish half Swedish you grew up in Europe I I've moved over here now and and I think the way I think about values is pretty rooted in that cultural background and you have a unique challenge in in that

you may be presenting values or stuff like that that's not really rooted in what your employees um have right so I'll give you a really interesting uh specific conflict that that that I think I ran into right I mean one of the old Riot values was uh challenge convention right and then we did a code Dev with a Chinese Studio where we're a challenging convention and openly arguing about things you're very much not part of the cultural fabric right so so I think so I think um uh and I think that touches a little bit about one of the problems that you mentioned as well is that like well your your cult your your values are the stuff that you're really excited about has to also be be useful and resonant with your employees right culture isn't something that you can just bang on people's heads it has to be something uh you know to my point earlier about thinking about where you're going with your career it has to be something that your employees are excited about and makes sense to them right you know you can't have someone who's like oh I don't really love that value then they'll probably probably never love that value and the company is not right for them so so I think there's a flip side to that as well right which

is that if your company's work if your company's values aren't working it's really not on the employees it's you really you as as the person who runs the company right and maybe before kind of moving on to sort of values or cultural installation I'd love to also explore the the point that you raised about how important it is for employees to really think about is this the right company for me yeah and I I do think that to your point like I feel that that is such a huge waste of time right like when if you're joining a company and you don't do the research and you you don't really think about is this the right company for me is this the right um environment for me to be working in I I do think that there's a huge potential for like inefficiency and waste you go there it doesn't work out and then you know you you have to then you quit or you're fired and and so I I definitely agreed that like that's something that people should be more cognizant of and

kind of like the way that I describe it to a lot of the people that I talk to are to our employees is that and and I hope that becomes increasingly um better accepted is that I I feel like the other way to think about culture is like you know it might be a stupid analogy but I liken it to different flavors of ice cream right and so there there could be vanilla ice cream that supports like work-life balance and you know like you know having a certain kind of um lifestyle associated with your work and then you might have another company that's chocolate where it's like okay no we're really hard hard-working we're really you know hardcore type of company but like um to your point I think that people should try to understand what what flavor of ice cream is right for me like you might like chocolate then go to the chocolate company instead of the vanilla ice cream company but that's that's um kind of the way in which I view it well I think that's true right I think I think you you largely want values that resonate with you before you come into

the company but but there's also an accountability on making sure that the values are good right I think I think yeah we just work hard I don't think it's a good value right that's like if you're a supermarket and your commercial is like we charge more that doesn't sound great right I mean I think I think I think companies have solved that by saying stuff like well work hard play hard right and and if if I was in my 20s and and a company was like hey we actually we're not like regular eight hour days we're like 10 11 hour days but the amount of equity you get or like every month we do this thing and and we know we're asking a lot that might be something that resonated with me but but yeah but like just like working hard I think is like yeah to your point there's got to be a setup and Nuance about okay well work hard why what what's the situation in which you know why are we working hard for what reason what's the objective and then also it's got to be fair right it's like you know the thing that's always frustrated me was um and even in Silicon Valley was you know a lot of management or leadership

teams that really drove their employees into the ground and then on the successful launch it's like hey guys we had massive success thank you so much for all of the long hours that you that that you pulled and by the way you're all getting iPads okay here's the pizza party thank you yeah thank you for the pizza thank you for the iPad but then and then and then you know it's like and then the leadership who's not even working that hard gets all of the reward and so I mean yeah so to your point I think like um when you the values have to be right they have to make sense and I I think they have to be fair so they have to be exciting for some type of person right and then and then the way that you feel it in your day-to-day is like how they're exciting right and that's kind of some of the like you know installation or immersion or however we do I mean I think one of the really great um great examples that I feel like when I'm kind of diving back into kind of the riot bag who I think it was a company

who did it very well actually CCP did it pretty well too but but I think in very differently right but but if you take like one of the old um uh one of the old values which was like take place seriously right you you felt that every day right if you've ever interviewed with that company you know that the first five to ten minutes starts with a talk about video games right it's to relax the candidate but it's also to really find out like do they love playing video games are they a good fit in a culture where that's like a really really core part of it right and then once you're through the door you see it through all these different like ways of immersion right I mean you get like I can't remember what it what it is now I think it's like you get 400 bucks for video games every year that you can just like refund off steam or whatever you can play games at work there's like uh there's really a principle which I don't know if they've kept up now they've expanded so much but there used to be a PC bomb or a PC Cafe at every every office to make sure that people could go play whenever they whenever they did right there's an event called Thunderdome which is a big hackathon and and and the take place seriously thing is just like it's just

such a part of culture no matter what you do as a part of that that life in there and that's that's the part that's hard right that's the part where where I think companies are either highly successful with their culture and values or it's something that they just plaster on the wall and everyone forgets about right so maybe now we could talk about that part which was really um I've I felt like really great advice you gave me when it comes to the values or cultural installation and um you know I I think that um if maybe we could just go back to that um you know as just just for the setup for our audience you know I wasn't happy and again it wasn't all of our employees but some employees like the manifestation or the support of the values I wasn't seeing uniformly being supported and so you know it'd be great to hear your thoughts about okay you come up with a set of values or you're trying to Define your culture in a certain way management documents it communicates it and so

what's the next step there in terms of how the the practice what you're calling the practice or what I call the installation how do you think about that well well I actually think you shouldn't communicate it before you have like a plan for installation right because you might have a value that once you think about how to install it or make it successful it doesn't doesn't work at all right and I think what you really want to do is you want to figure out what are the things that are really meaningful and important to you as as someone who has a company and how do you make sure that it's meaningful and important and impactful on all the people who work for you right so so and and that can be you know like I said a at Riot for play it could be that you know you get that gift card to play games and you're encouraged to spend it I think you know other other organizations who have done it very successfully I mean look at I mean I think religious institutions do it very well I think like the other day I was thinking about the military as well right when you think about like War and Peace time Command right and the wartime command is reinforced absolutely every day through ranks through access to different things through like just

automatically not even making culture choices like saluting and stuff like that right and it and it's so ingrained and immersive in that experience and you want to figure that out I think before you unveil it right I think if you go these are the values then come then people read it and they forget about it but what you really want to do is you want to make sure you have everything in place to have people live it otherwise it just becomes like a slogan right so so I think that exercise and that kind of brainstorming and quite honestly investment on on company leadership time in terms of how you live it day to day I think is is really important to have down before you do it this is like for me I think coming up but you could come up with corporate values in three minutes but you could spend a lot of time figuring out what the implementation is and never get it right and I think that's where people trip up because they do the first part and and then the middle part is kind of skipped over right and I think that was the mistake that we made or I made in terms of being more structured about how do you actually install this stuff and one of the things that you talk to me about and you kind of ran ran through with me

was this notion of like um I forgot what you call it but uh like a manifestation board and so uh Stafford could could you talk about that and and how and um it's you know it's not like a super complicated exercise but I thought it was very very valuable and kind of for me you know Unearthed some deficiencies in which you know some of the values it's like oh yeah we do this this this but in other places it's like ah actually those are just words right now we're not really reinforcing them with systems but could you talk about uh that practice that you had recommended to me yeah I think I think when you've outlined what those values are I think you really grab I mean and this could be done I think with with you know different scales at at different companies I think there are companies who could do this collectively as the entire companies I think my starting point would probably be some some like founder topless leadership team right and then and then there's really like a kind of put your money where the where your mouth is it's like if you feel like these values are right what are the ways that they're going to kind of manifest in in every day and and

um and I think it could be anything from like how does it physically impact your working space or your office how does it what what kind of rules or behaviors do we expect I think uh I think kind of when when you say that value what does it mean and it's really like a brainstorm of of things that that you want to do I think I'll give a good example from from CCP that I used to work at right and and one of those values was transparency right and and some of the ways that they figured out how to manifest that in like just the landscape of the office was that uh you know there were no closed off offices there are no meeting all meeting rooms were basically see-through glass you could always see what was going on you could always walk past the meeting and see what's on the screen and kind of go oh they're doing something interesting they did something pretty radical that I think in the end wasn't the right idea but I respect them for trying it's like on our internal like web page they listed the subscriber number for the MMO and and this is like I'm dating myself a little bit but this is basically back when like there were two two Revenue models there was basically subscription based in box base before free to play right so so it's

really your lifeblood and you could really see how the company was was doing every single day when you logged in and those are some of the physical manifestations of that value that company had and and I think you just want to go through that brainstorming exercise and go what are the ways that this is going to touch people in their day-to-day life and and and then and then really when you have that as is when you can roll out your values and I don't think you should roll them out before right and so to your point like for every value what is that value and then what is the manifestation or the initiatives that reinforces that value what are all those things that that you want to do or or exist in the company and that's a practice that we're rolling out right now and I I you know definitely felt like that was great advice from you and by the way I would say if you go through that exercise and you have values that are hard to implement you may want to reconsider whether that's a value right because it's also a soft test on whether the choice is right for the company because you might be in a situation where you have a value that you know your people can't live up to

you have no way of implement manifesting and is it even worth using then it's probably not and I think highly successful ones are the ones that you can manifest frequently and and powerfully and and and again you know in a way that that hopefully you could use this in a very negative way right you you could go like oh well our value is that people are here for 11 hours and and and that's that's obviously also not how it should be to be done I think I think the places where it's done well you you create a culture where where people feel like they're in a place where they fit and they belong and that the companies run in a way that makes them really happy coming to work and obviously on the company side you know you you get something out of it as well right there there is there is some shape of your product in your organization that you think will make you win right and maybe like the next question I can ask you staffers just because I think that the um the consensus view on company culture is that it's critical and I think like I mentioned I you know

had this survey amongst 50 game company CEOs number one by far company culture that's the most important more important than fundraising blah blah blah everything else but then I think if we were to ask you know well then how important is it to a company to have strong values or a culture and I think if you were to really see how much time is spent by game company leadership teams on culture and values I mean certainly there are exceptions I mean I'm sure riot probably spends a lot of time on stuff like that not every company does despite saying that it's so important so I was wondering if we if I could get your perspective more like not like the the tap dance answer like we always get the tap dance answer from the MCU guys and even I'm trying to really better articulate okay like I I fundamentally understand why it's important and I feel that you know unless we stick these principles Implement these things in this way I don't think we can be successful but from your perspective could you speak upon why you think it is

so important to have strong values or culture in a company yeah well so I don't want to sound like a like a 9 AI list here I think but but like I don't think anything is important unless you have a good purpose for it right so so I think I have really strong opinions around uh you know Frameworks that solve certain problems in time but but I'm not married to any one thing I think if you're a two-man company right let's say you and I started a company and we knew that we just really wanted to make games together and we're never going to scale past that and and we're just going to do that for the rest of our lives culture and values might not matter right I mean culture and values is a way of retaining something as you grow so so I think it's it's important in situations where uh where you're a growing company that has something they a goal that they want to reach um but I don't think everyone should be married to it right you could start a five-man company and not have values in culture and take it seriously until you're 25 right I mean that might be the right the right choice for your company I think that it's one of the most

important ways for you to continue making the product that you're really passionate about in an environment that scales endlessly right so so if if you and I start a company together our values and cultures are really unsaid and we probably telepathically kind of know it from working together and wanting to find this but that just doesn't scale at kind of the the right way right and I think for um you know to dig into another ride sample which is like players first that's a way to scale decision making uh in in like a thousand man company right so so if you're starting that company and you're just like man we really want to make something that players really love and we want to make sure that that's at the Forefront of every decision we make and we think that's our superpower when you bring AI number 900 in he might be coming from a different company and go like man I'd really like to just monetize the hell out of everything and and that pre-alignment happens at the values and culture stage so so you don't have to manually tell everyone what to do at every decision right so so you know hopefully it's it it hones your decision making in to consistently make

something you're really passionate about and something you think will win and and that's why I think it's important and I think if I were to start a company it would be one of the first things I did and and I would but but but again you know there's probably companies who haven't defined this at all who are small and managed to do really well without it and that's fine too I mean it's not like uh um it's not that you can't be successful without it I just feel pretty passionately that it that it's one of the things that that um that helps guide success and I think for me too I think it kind of dictates you know the the people you're around and what you do and how you feel about it I think um I think it was a big change for me going from CCP which was a company I loved but it was also a company that I think hired for pretty hard skills um over necessarily games right and you know people would leave at five and and and go home and you know do whatever they did and then coming into an environment where everyone you know was was living and breathing games just like me and it was just an environment that I loved being in so so for me as someone who chose it it was it was really important so the flip side of that is like you also want to create an

environment uh that that you want to work in right so yeah so I really like the way that you're thinking about it which is really kind of like if I could uh rephrase what you're saying is like culture and values is a way of maintaining a consistent workplace operating system as the company the grows which I think makes a lot of sense yes and it aligns in so many ways right it aligns workplace Behavior product decisions hiring decisions everything right it's a really powerful thing where if you get it right you're just going to like shave a layer of problems off that everyone else is going to have to deal with as they grow right so maybe maybe like another question I can ask you then is like when it comes to misalignment and I I will say that to your point before we talked about employees should make make sure that they're they actually support the values and culture of a company they should do more research before they join I think that's true but I also think like in my

experience like I actually created a values deck for myself and I had sent it out to companies before I joined them and I said hey this is how I am this is what I believe in if you know if you don't think this is a good fit don't hire me but they hired me anyway and and and so and and then it became very clear like some of the things I believe in like very direct communication and things like that was a misalignment at the company I joined or even in our company today you know we document our values I have like a presentation uh multiple presentations as well as like links that real that that have us speaking about culture and things like that but then there's some people who are kind of like the philosophy is I'm just going to get in the door and then I'll work it out and it's like ah why did you do that we were so clear on what what our expectations and what our culture is like and now that you join you you then they're just like well I actually I'm like this not like this and it's like why did you do that now I have to let you go right so then for

misalignment how do you how do you think about reacting to that do you just let them go or like how much leeway or slack do you do would you would you consider for employees if there isn't a perfect fit yeah I think it's interesting and I think to your point there's companies who don't take this seriously and then and then people who take jobs who don't take it seriously and I wish everyone would but that's probably just because I'm passionate and I think this stuff is cool and that probably makes me a little bit of a dork more than than most most other people who think about this but but but to your point I I do think it's a problem right either like the example you said where you're just like hey this is who I am and the org maybe not cares about culture and values and they just go that's fine coming through the door or or people who take jobs who just don't go through it or aren't cognizant about what the stuff that they care about I think I think um in terms of interviewing I think obviously you know uh a lot of Silicon Valley companies will use like a star model that focuses down a lot more on like soft skills over over hard skills and I think part of that soft

skilled Focus um I I think should focus on a focus on figuring out how people fit into culture and values I think it's a really um I think saying culture fit in interview terms is like really overused and beaten to death but but at the core of it is it's really important right you need to figure out whether you're a match for that person and that person is a match for you and I think it really starts there right so so I think that has to be a really key part of the interview process um and then once you get in I think one you should allow people a window to kind of get off the train if they need to if you come in and you figure out the environment isn't right for them I think it's actually really important for you as a company to let people leave gracefully and with some help rather than retain them right because if you can have someone come in and be a bad influence and do poorly in your company for a year that's much more expensive than you saying hey we're gonna pay you two months if to walk out the door if you're really uncomfortable right so so I think I think that's one thing that's one thing that that I think you know don't you know it's hard to change jobs

and it's hard to leave and I think uh I think employees knowing that that if they made the right choice that they could go somewhere else I think is pretty good and then to your portion which is like how do you align um how do you align people and and and when do you let people go I think ultimately um if you can tie your values back to results I I think that's pretty important I actually think that um that that's another thing that I think many companies really underestimate is like well if you have those um if you have those requirements and and all those like implementations exist well you can you can sometimes trace it back right I think you know you said that your company hard work is is kind of part of it and if the expectation is that people work hard and and there's certain results type that then then if people don't don't like that or don't follow that then there's probably something you can tie it back to what I will say is saying um saying you're gonna get fired because you're not like a cultural fit I think is like a little lucy and I think I think it's like I think it's a pretty questionable practice right I think you

know you'll you can have a lot of probably well-founded discrimination lawsuits and and it's like a little too soft I think to just kind of let someone go but I do think you can you can tie uh results around some of your values you care about you can talk to people about how they feel about those values and if they don't resonate help them out the door so so I think you know you want to make sure that that you run a company where everyone is is kind of on board with that with with some acceptance at some percent of your companies who probably are probably not going to have that fit as some of the time and you have to kind of work with that but um but I think firing someone because they're not aligned with the values I think it can can be pretty tricky yeah I totally agree with you on that um just to provide a little bit of additional context I I spoke to another game Company CEO about you know this this notion about cultural installation and one of the bits of advice he gave me is like you know at some point you're going to have to look at your employees and the biggest way to change your culture is essentially to fire somebody right and so

um that was his point is like you know there might be some people who aren't aligned with your culture but you know you can continue to try and and you know um change somebody but you know people don't typically change and so then when when it comes to this point about you know when do you what kind of um cultural inconsistency is enough or the specifics around when does it make sense to let someone go or not I I completely agree is a very very tricky issue yeah well what I will say this and and one of the things that I am a really firm believer in is like executive accountability right I think you know ultimately if there's something wrong with your culture and values the only person who can really change that is is is is you as well and and I understand why that person said that the only change you can do is to fire people but I also think that's like treating the problem and not this or the symptoms and not like the cause of it right which is like well if if you navigate Culture by

terminating people I think that's like really destructive compared to having good guard rails for when people come in there right 100 and maybe to your point on that and and I think it would be very valuable for the audience to learn more about as well is that so for example so if you hired somebody who's not a good cultural fit maybe it's your fault like you know how did you how did you interview these people and did you do enough to check for a cultural fit or not before and so I and this is another another area where uh for our audience where I I felt like Stauffer you gave me some great advice with respect to like um how to better structure recruiting could you talk a little bit more go into a little bit more depth you talked about the star model but could you talk a little bit more about your your thinking and philosophy about how you should be structuring your recruitment process and how by you you know implementing some of these things it could be helpful so that you do have a better cultural fit

yeah well I mean I say first of all you said that like if you hire someone you fire them it could be your fault I think you're always accountable for that right you are always an accountable for the higher and and ultimately the successes and and uh and failures of people come in I think is is always a reflection on you and you want to make sure that you keep that number somewhere High 50 line right so yeah so so I think that that's that's really important um I think to kind of the star model and like um some of the stuff it gets at I think I think my base assumption and by the way this is I'm gonna paint it out in a pretty black and white way right now I think there's there's a lot of nuance especially to different types of companies and startups right but I think um but I think my base philosophy is that like um hard skills can can be taught in soft skills are significantly harder to teach um and and a lot of times the soft skills and and those values kind of have some overlap so it's a really good way of testing stuff right so um so so uh and again this will be different for for a startup potentially because sometimes you just need a superstar through the door who can solve a problem but but I

think if we're just like in an open field I I would always hire the person who has really strong soft skills and assume that they can learn learn the hard skills down down the road um and then and then again you know there's a whole bunch of like uh adaption you can take to kind of this the startup uh the startup hiring I think I guess um in terms of this what would be good to go into because I think I have like the like how do you model your employee type thing around like are you are you like growing new Talent are you or that type of stuff right or like what are some of the key considerations or things that people should be testing for how can they how can they um restructure their interview process to be more uh to be more predictive of whether someone's going to be a good cultural fit or not maybe just kind of high level explain star yeah yeah so um so so I'll I'll give a good example um right now is that I think where I'm

at now you know we're a small company and I think we value people who can do multiple things right if we can have a whole bunch of people who are pretty entrepreneurial and have um and have uh uh and have a good experience having done different things right if I can get an artist who's a little bit technical that's really great if I can get a designer who's a little bit of an artist I think that's really great too and and what we really probe for is like kind of the enthusiasm around those multiple skills or kind of trying to get to some of that that type of stuff we're a fully remote company so I care deeply about teamwork right I care deeply about how they've solved problems in the past and it's not really as much about um whether you know they they move their revenue up ten percent what I really want to try and understand is how they they solve different problems right I think a really really uh a really traditional teamwork question on like a star interview is like tell me about a time you got critical feedback right and and you want uh and you want someone to I think Loosely go by the SBI model

which is like situation Behavior impact right which is that like in this situation I did this and the impact was this and someone else told me and you really want the person to demonstrate that they took that feedback seriously how they thought about it what kind of their course of Correction was really more than whether or not you know the piece of feedback was something broke and they saved like a million dollars by fixing it right that's not really what you're fishing for they're really fishing for for how people think about things and and yeah their response goes okay and maybe just as a last question for you stoffer it basically I I like the point that you raised about you know maybe you need to bring in a superstar that may not fit the culture for a specific problem and that kind of reminds me of I don't I don't know if you're familiar with NBA basketball but there's a coach Phil Jackson who had what he called the Dennis Rodman rule basically like Dennis Rodman did not fit the team's culture and it's and so one of the questions he asked is who do we hold the bus for if if um if you know if you're late so you know Phil Jackson was

really really harsh in terms of discipline right he wanted all of his players include including Michael Jordan to be highly disciplined but he said okay but we have a Dennis Rodman role for that one player because he fulfills a very specific need we will hold the bus for him only but nobody else so uh maybe you could go into your thoughts on should people have these exceptions for a specific problem what do you think um you know what is your take in terms of having some kind of Dennis Rodman rule for exceptions it's it's so interesting because I actually talked to a talent person about this just last week and okay I'll give you my principle and then I'll tell you what I told that Talent person even though I feel a little bit bad and I hope I hope I hope I won't offend anyone um I I don't like that rule I think look I mean you can run your company in in a million different ways I think you can have that rule and be very successful it's not for me I think you call it what The Talented the brilliant or whatever and and for me uh

I I I don't think that's right I think you can situationally use that person I think the way I frame it is the only situation that I would bring someone on like that would be a contractor to solve a specific thing if I was like hey we'll bring you on for a month to solve this specific thing I would probably do it but as a full-time employee that works closely with other people in the company I'm in I don't really believe in it and again that's my personal philosophy um but I did get asked by a talent person exactly that question what was like and the question was I think what do we do about The Talented and I said we let Ubisoft hire them and so so by the way if there's anyone who works for Ubisoft out there I'm very sorry that wasn't intentionally about your company but uh but but yeah it doesn't really align with my values I think I think I prefer in terms of values and culture right I I I I you know I prefer soft skills I prefer teams that can work together and solve problems uh I I think you have such a high access to Talent if you have a good workplace where people have psychological safety and can challenge

each other in the right way and I don't think that person fits there if you need someone to go and like spin up a data center on their own in two months in the desert in Las Vegas or something like that fine hire them to do that but I don't I don't think I'd ever bring them on as full-time people in the team and again that is not the right way to do it that's that's the way that resonates with me I think uh you know people are free to kind of I mean there's companies that swear by that and okay that's fine yeah I um just maybe a final comment for me is that I do think like to your point on on I think that there are a lot of companies with the no rule but what I haven't seen is the definition of an right so like it's like hey no at this company but it's like okay what is an right and then there's different philosophies and thinking behind what that is so anyway that's something I'm actually gonna uh talk about um in a future podcast but uh definitely think that's um that that's an interesting thing that I'm seeing I actually just did a I just did a um uh

for like a 360 thing for a prep I did a presentation on a few different like feedback models like SBI that I mentioned before but there's also radical Candor which which I think incorporates like kind of the person but in in an interesting way where where there's I think you can kind of split them into two people there's people who kind of know they're an and they don't care and then there's people who think they're well-meaning uh right who who uh I think you know um try to do the right thing but do it in in a bad way and uh and I think and I think it's important to have that like Nuance if that's a thing yeah especially um Tony Fidel who worked with Steve Jobs for like 15 years he actually wrote a book called build and in that book he actually to your point he puts a Nuance there here are the four kinds of one two three four yeah yeah yeah in general it's not for me I you know I've been in environments where they existed I thought it was terrible for some people you know you know I mean

some would say that Steve Jobs was was kind of that and obviously Apple has has been has been a moderately successful little startup that you know is is huge so you know different things work for different people and again that's just the value to Define chocolate ice cream it's it's different exactly exactly all right stuffer well thank you so much for your time I definitely appreciate all your wisdom and for our audience and for me personally as well thank you so much for all the time you've spent advising me as well so for our audience that's it catch you all next time bye thanks for having me on Joe and sorry for everyone who works at Ubisoft all right thanks bye [Music]

thank you [Music]