Last
week I had the opportunity to attend in Paris the Game Connection week! Yay!
These events are a great opportunity to attend shows and demos of different publishers and it gives some insights about next steps of our industry. In the city of l’amour I could not only try amazing tender cheese, yummy! Rich flavors French wines, double yummy! but also I could see the hype VR is creating, also I had the opportunity to see in a huge screen how awesome the new FIFA 17 from my ex- EA colleagues look. Very impressive the control movements of franchise players. Well done! You guys rock! (and I have very clear which it’s going to be my gift for my kids birthday next month :)
There
was also a competition of Just Dance, Counter Strike etc etc, it’s great to see
how big the video game industry is evolving and becoming more and more
important …. And what about Localization? Is it also becoming something
important? Of course! It was already something very important! Let’s not forget
that Localization brings nice % revenue to videogame publishers!
It’s
great to see that there are presentations and panel discussions of different
aspects of our Localization industry in events as important as the Paris Game
Week.
I
was invited by the event organizers to give a talk, and I happily accepted the
offer! I gave a talk titled “How to lead teams Localization team in the
Knowledge era” and I had many questions about some aspects of my talk at the
cocktail bar J
I
thought it might be a good idea to use my blog to expand my thoughts and share
with you bibliography used while preparing my presentation. I’m writing this
whitepaper with a secret hope that this might help you in your management
localization leading challenges J
I
focused my presentation on one area that we tend to overlook when we talk about
Localization, that area is PEOPLE!!
We
can spend long hours or even days talking about best localization practices,
how to create the perfect localization kit for our vendors, we can also have a
passionate discussion about cost models and ROI of internal Loc teams’ vs
outsourcing or we can be very techie and we can talk about how to integrate 3rd
party API in our internal TMS
It’s
great to have so many resources and ideas!!! … but, usually we forget to pay
attention to people ... and to be honest this is something I don’t understand
very well. As usually, most of the projects fail because of
the people
and the communication within team members and different stakeholders. Very
rarely I’ve been involved in my 21 years of Loc career in a project that failed
because of the tools or the processes. Yes, I have worked with very crappy
glossary databases or very basic TM tools such as Wordfast Anywhere … but even in these cases the Localization results were good.
It’s
true that it took us more time to deliver certain assets of the different
components we were working, true that I did lot of tasks quite manual ….but
ultimately deadlines were met and quality delivered conformance to requirements
… and according to Mr. Philip B. Crosby then I can be happy of how I manage the
project … so, in my opinion, people is the most difficult component to
integrate in the Localization process, we (humans) are complex creatures with
complex reactions to complex (or easy) situations … we are random and we can
behave totally different in our relationships with other team members depending
on many many external factors … .therefore with these precedents, I think it’s
very important to focus on how to lead Loc teams. This might help us to answer tortuos
questions such as how do we lead our teams? How do we motivate them? Grow them?
Empower them?
And
the reality is that leading teams nowadays is complex. There are new generations
arriving the workforce, globalization, people
that might work from all over the world and dilemma of Management 2.0 techniques
vs Management 3.0 techniques
Before
going deeper in my thoughts the first concept I want to cover in today’s post
is the definition of knowledge era (and creative workers).
Knowledge
worker has been a concept that it has been around for a few decades now.
Knowledge workers are workers whose main capital is knowledge. Examples include software engineers, physicians, pharmacists, architects, engineers, scientists, public accountants, lawyers, and academics, whose job is to
"think for a living"
The
term was first coined by Peter Drucker (1959) in his book “Landmarks of tomorrow”
Peter
Drucker, which in my opinion is best management guru of the 20th century
already elaborated this definition of Knowledge worker a few decades ago. He
suggested that the most valuable asset of a 21st-century institution, whether
business or non-business, will be its knowledge workers and their productivity.
He was a real visionary. I cannot agree with him anymore.
Now,
this definition of knowledge worker is almost 60 years old, and I believe it
becomes a little bit obsolete.
Now knowledge workers in the localization game
industry evolved to an organism more complex to lead, knowledge workers of the
21st century has evolved to become creative workers!!!
Knowledge
worker and creative worker might be similar, but in fact they are different
because creative workers work nowadays in the creative economy and
they collaborate in networks, not in hierarchies.
A
creative worker is a person who creates or grows unique value within a network
of people, or someone who creates or grows the network in an original way for
others to share their value. Even better, it can be a person who does both! The
term knowledge worker, on the other hand, implies that people add
value only with their knowledge. It does not imply creativity or the ability to
network.
When
you think about this, quickly we can realize that the gaming industry is a very
creative industry, therefore it’s a perfect ecosystem for creative workers, game
designers, developers, illustrators, artists …. and also for localization
teams. Because we need to adapt our localization services to a more demanding
environment who requires very short localization cycles with a great accuracy for
example in the tone & the style of our translated files.
Knowledge
workers, creative workers, continuous localization, less hierarchies in the
teams, the reality is that the world now is quite different from the
Localization world I knew when working for Microsoft Dublin localizing MS
Project’95 and MS Office J
On
top of this you might be leading some Localizations specialists that they know more
than you know in very specific areas, and that’s normal!!, because they are
working in their field every day! … and nowadays specialization is an important
concept, so how do you handle leadership in these situations?
In
this post I’m going to share with you 3 principles that I have used during my
latest years to lead localization teams. These principles might help you to
answer these questions that I find relevant to lead a localization team
The first principle I want to share with you about leading in the knowledge
area is empowerment
How can you empower you Localization team culture?
Let’s
start first with the why, as the great Simon Sinek recommends (start with why)
Why
empowerment is so important? why do I want to empower my
localization teams?
Empowerment
is a technique that I find very useful to lead teams nowadays.
Empowerment
is based on the idea that giving employees skills, resources, authority,
opportunity, motivation, as well holding them responsible and accountable for
outcomes of their actions, will contribute to their competence and satisfaction
It’s
a technique that I apply in my teams mainly for 2 reasons
•
The first one: It’s not to please them or to avoid discussions ….
it’s because often they come up with better decisions than me. This might
sound weird to admit …. However, I found that people usually make better
decision related to their tasks or peer ideas when they talk and decide
together ….
• The second reason it’s to ensure they are motivated and engaged.
Motivation,
engagement … those are important concepts that I would like
to elaborate a little bit more.
There
are plenty of statistics measuring team’s engagement. I particularly like the survey from AON. This study shows an engagement
quite disappointing for European employees we are almost fifty-fifty when it
comes to engagement and motivation
I
really believe Employee
engagement starts with leadership and leadership starts with actually accepting
the culture of your Localization team. That clash of cultures is something I
experienced in first person a few years ago when I was working for Sulake. I don’t know if you are
familiar with this company
Sulake
is a gaming company famous for making Habbo Hotel, the most popular game- community for teenagers.
I was in charge of a localization portfolio in 12 languages and while working in
Habbo I realized that engaging with my stakeholders it was trickier than in my
previous companies. After thinking carefully, I noticed that most of the
conflict it was coming about how the decisions were taken. I realized that my stakeholders
at Habbo preferred a coaching/cooperative approach rather than other leadership
style where the manager makes more decisions.
I
think this was related because early in my career I’ve been working in
companies from United States, France or Spain …. and there’s an excellent
book When Culture collides from Richard Lewis that
really made me aware of this issue. In this book Richard Lewis talks about the
different leading styles and differences in culture between people (include
graphics) … and when I saw the different graphics and behaviors he suggested
I realized why I had less difficulties in agreeing with my team members from
the States or Germany or France … and why I had more problems to find
an agreement with my Scandinavian colleagues. And actually, this was
a big problem! because Sulake is a Finnish company, with headquarters in
Helsinki, this means that I had a lot of interactions with Finnish colleagues
that they preferred a leadership style totally different to what I was used
to ….
That
was quite challenging, but I had an idea!!! and put something into practice
that I learned in a meetup session a few years ago when I was based in Madrid
working for Electronic Arts.
I
attended a meetup workshop based on Management 3.0, and the key of this new management style is
that it helps employees, it’s a management style more collaborative, it empowers
employees. And that’s exactly what I needed! During this workshop I learned a
few tools and techniques that I used from that moment onwards to lead my teams
in a more engaging way.
Management
3.0 is a framework create by Jurgen Appelo, a famous Dutch writer and
Agile practioner who created incredible resources to fill the gap between M2.0
techniques and M3.0 techniques ….
The
most revealing part from me is that finally I understood that nowadays from a
leadership perspective in the knowledge era you don’t need to focus your
attention to manage people, you need to
manage the systems. This is weird, isn’t it? why do I have to manage
the systems instead of the people? the reason is that they are the specialists!
As I said earlier I have localization members in my team that they know much
more than I know in certain areas, so I cannot help them to manage their work
at a very detailed level, but I can help them with he vision, and definitely I
can help them if I manage the system in which they are working.
And
what’s the system? The system is everything that affects your localization team,
it’s what the PMI defines as
EEF. The
system is everything that it smells corporative policies, for example how to
pay your localization vendors, guidelines about how to hire your loc teams,
work authorization systems, travel policies, localization cost tracking reports
etc etc I learned that I was more effective if I work managing these barriers
so my team can keep being productive
Now,
the question is: how do you manage the system?
There
are different techniques you can use in the management 3.0 framework. Going
back have to my previous example of working in Habbo with my Finnish friends I
identified that different stakeholders were struggling with the delegation
levels and the way decisions were taken. therefore, the way I had to manage the
system in this specific case was to create a delegation board! Having a
delegation board agreed created a framework and it was an effective way to
manage the system.
As
a manager I believe I need to delegate as much as possible so my teams can grow
so I can focus on managing the system or other areas.
Managing
the systems also means working with the different stakeholders to eliminate or
minimize bureaucracy, might be also a goal to reduce the number of unnecessary
internal meetings, might be working with HR to get a budget for trainings etc
etc, basically managing the system means manage the constraints to empower
employees so they can release all their potential and creativity.
Therefore,
if you see yourself in a situation a little bit stuck in terms of authority or
delegation levels give it a chance to the delegation poker game! It helps to
understand how to manage the systems more efficiently, maybe this game might
help you as well! Definetely it helped me!
The second Principle I
want to share with you to lead in the localization era is Engagement
How
do you increase engagement with your localization team?
You
need to build the relationship
Although
I mentioned earlier that we are in a complex era, much complex than a few
decades ago, there’s something that it did not change that much, people work better
when they know better each other. It’s as simple as that. The chances that you
get something done is much much higher when you build a strong relationship
with your peers or with your team.
And
the principles of getting a good relationship is the same that it’s used to
work in the past. To build a relationship you need to communicate often and
more important … you need to know your team.
Dale
Carnegie explain these concepts brilliantly in his book How
to win friends and influence people.
The
chances to get more support and help from different individuals is by getting
to know them, you need to build the relationship with your localization team. I
think this happens in all the areas of our life, the chances that one of my
friends will help me will be attached to the level of trust we have in our
relationship, and that relationship with my friend is built after years of
being together and talking. I believe we should
never underestimate the power of relationships.
Another
book that I really recommend to read is “Never
eat alone”, in this book Mr Keith Ferrazzi gives a master class about
giving and sharing. This was especially important for me to remember… because
at a specific point of my localization career I was very naive and I thought
that I could achieve great goals by working hard and being discipline (and work
alone)…. and although discipline and hardworking are important skills, the
reality is that another skill very important is the capacity to collaborate, to
communicate to create synergies
About
the question about how I build relationship within my teams… To be honest I
used many different techniques in my career from team building activities to
workshops, but I realized that trust is not build in one day. You might have a
great team activity going to a cooking class event or you can play the Escape
room game or any other team activity available near you ….. and then, the
following day trust is not there magically, trust doesn’t work like that, trust
needs time, and the way I found to build trust and build relationships within
my localization teams it’s the 1:1 and the personal maps.
Different
studies over the years shows that the single most important, and efficient
thing that someone can do as a manager to improve performance is to spend time
to know the strengths and weakness of your direct reports. Managers who know
how to the get the most out of each individual member of the team achieve
noticeably better results than managers who don’t. And the most efficient way
to know your team is to spend regularly time with them …communicating with
them.
People
and their behaviors are what deliver results to any organization. Not the
systems, not the processes, not the computers, not the machines.
When
I explain to some colleagues that I like doing 1:1 as often as I can usually
there’s some skepticism. And usually I’m said one of these two things
1. I think I know my people
very well actually
2. No need, I talk to my
people all the time
When
I think about this, some ideas come to my mind, try to do a personal map of the
things you know of your direct. Personal maps are like
a mind-map where you put what you know of your people. Different branches
where you would be able to identify important things such as the names of their
kids/husbands/wife, favorite food, hobbies etc etc, nothing super complex, it
shows just the little things you know of the people that surrounds
you … but after all, that’s how a relationship is built….. it’s based
on little things. This exercise was quite embarrassing for me first time I did
it …. I realized how little I knew about my team and my people even after
being working with them for over a year …. I was not able to list more than 2-3 bubbles
of things I knew about my direct reports; I was not even able to list the names
of the children of the people who was reporting me!!!! This isn’t a conclusive
exercise of course …. but it made me think ….in most of the cases
when you ask people what goes first for them if family or work usually family
will be go first … therefore I must admit I feel ashamed of
not knowing at least the first names of their most beloved ones ….
About
the second point … we talk all the time … think about your
direct report perspective, I, as a manager I might be sending them emails or I
can drop myself in his/her desk and start talking about projects and different
topics … but when I do that, please think again, this is not a
bidirectional conversation .. I start the conversation and I start talking
about MY topics, my topics from a management perspective. That’s not the more
effective way to build trust, and trusting relationship with your directs is
based on aspects that are important for them.
Now,
I covered why 1:1 are important in my perspective. Next topic is how we do them
The
key in the 1:1 it’s that the primary focus is on the team member, they decide
about what they want to talk, I have 1:1 where people start talking about what
they did during the weekends, while others they start talking directly about
productions aspects. And that’s the beauty of the 1:1, the focus is on them,
it’s not in me as manager, It’s not in what I need as I mentioned earlier. In a
1:1 the focus is on the team member. They decide how they want to start
and what areas they want to cover.
Another
aspect quite important is that 1:1 are regularly scheduled. This means that
your team members know that they will have always some
time available to discuss about their topics, you as manager
might be busy, and direct reports maybe don’t find the right time to approach
you. With 1:1 always happening the same day every week, at the same time it helps
to create a window to discuss different topics.
About
the frequency …. And how often we should do 1:1
I
tried monthly of 1 hours or bi-monthly … but to me it did not work
that well as weekly, and the reason for this is that when I make 1:1 monthly
then
Too much happens between one on ones. I
talked earlier about the complexity of today’s world, everything nowadays is
very fast, therefore talking about what’s going on once every month it might be
not enough, or at least it was not enough for me. On top of this the building
relationship progress is not the same when you meet every week or every month.
But there’s another reason that I found very important when it comes to meet
often vs periodically …. when you meet every month You miss the
chance to get buy in on big decisions
If you are making a big decision or have a big announcement
coming, the best thing you can do is shop it first privately. Then you can
gauge reactions from the people you need buy in from most. If you can get them
to come around, others will as well, and you will know the objections you need
to overcome.
There
are different ways to approach it, but in my experience the approach that
better worked with me is weekly, 30 minutes
The Third and last about leading Localization teams in knowledge era is
How do you grow the people?
I
believe I have to think about how to grow the people of my team.
And
I personally like the
Flow model where you have challenges in one axis and the skills in another.
This
model elaborated by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi explains
a theory very interesting about flow and growing people of the team. Mihaly
suggests that we have different aspects to evaluate when we assign work to
people.
He
created this graphic that I find very useful, in this graphic we have different
areas, different scenarios, therefore if I give a tasks very challenging to one
of my localization team members, but he does not have the skills, I might
create some anxiety and s/he might be nervous … but what if I give
something to a team member that it’s challenging but this person is very high
skilled … in this scenario he’ll be bored very easily, the scenario
might be even worse when you have low challenges for low skills people …
in this case we might have team members in apathy mode …. so this graphic
is quite interesting to think about how to grow your team …
The
beauty of this flow it’s that’s there a sweet spot … where you are
challenged slightly over your skills but it does not create a great anxiety
because you can learn and get better. That sweet spot it’s what Mihaly call the
flow moment.
My
role as Localization Manager to grow my people is to put them as often as
possible my teams in the flow quadrant …. and to be honest this is a
never ending process because a team member he or she might start in the low
quadrant but eventually she/he might move slowly to higher quadrant… and then
again the performance of the people in that new area would be quite high and
this person would not be in the sweet spot anymore … human learns
and we get better and better at different stuff which is an amazing thing! but
at the same time it’s quite challenging because it becomes a cyclic exercise.
We need continuously calibrate skills and complexity to put as often a possible
our people in the flow part.
For
me the best part to juggle with the balls of complexity, challenge and skills
is again during my 1:1
In
the 1:1 I can talk to my direct reports to ask them about goals and
different areas they want to work and I can find out more about their strengths
and interests, so for example, if someone in my team is interested in exploring
in which situations translation memories stop being our best friend … what I
can make is a plan to grow this person, it might be attending a training, it
might be by being backup of the main localization point of contact for a
specific game or it might be by self-learning via books or self-exploring
Sometimes we might struggle to find the right balance of
people skills and complexity and I found the Strength Finder techniques the
most powerful technique I ever used. These techniques are based on the book
StrengthsFinder
2.0 and nowadays there are also training providers who can help you run
this test for you or your teams … I really like reading the book, for me it was
quite eye opening as it changes the mindset of improving weakness to focus
directly in the areas we are better. We all know that we cannot perform equally
in all areas … but there are some areas each of us have tendency to
be better … when you polish those natural skills you can be even better!
Hooray!
This
book talks about 34 different skills and it encourages you to come up with your
top 5 of skills.
Therefore,
when you know a little better your Loc team members and also when they know
also better themselves, they can grow doing more challenging tasks. So for
example, let’s imagine that we have a goal in our localization team to use a
better tool to handle the glossary of our games. In this case I would need to
assign this task to someone in my team who is a strategic thinker. Because this
person has the capacity to think out of the box. Actually I have had people in
my teams that they think as if there would not be any box at all!!!!, they are
good at creating ideas, seeing the future and analyzing data. The tasks of
finding a tool to handle better the glossary of my games would be a perfect
matching to someone in my team with these analytical skills…. but once the tool
is selected if we need to talk to different stakeholders to explain why we chose
this specific tool and how we are going to use it I would need in that case someone
in my team with good communication skills. When we need someone to take
charge, speak up, and make sure our localization group is heard, I have look for
someone with the strength to influence.
CLOSING
During
this post I used the word encourage several times. And actually this is a word
that I really love. Because really as a Localization Manager is all that I can
do. I can’t force my people to do anything, they are adults, they make their
own choices but I can create an environment that encourage them to do these
things and when I do these things wells then I’m effective leading my
localization team
Remember
it’s all about people, empower your localization team to build the relationship
and make them grow. And remember to put people first! I found during my career
that it’s pays off to invest on people.
Have
a wonderful day and happy leading!
@yolocalizo
Bibliography used to create this Whitepaper
Managing
for happiness by Jurgen Appelo
Management
3.0 by Jurgen Appelo
The
Effective Excutive by Peter Drucker
How
to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie
The
Speed of Trust by Stephen Covey
Never
Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi
When
Culture Collides by Richard Lewis
Flow:
The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's
Strenght
Finder by Tom Rath
Start with Why by Simon Sinek