GDC 2018 - Art Leadership Roundtable - Day 2

On the second day of the roundtable, we started by focusing on artist career progression.  The key question focused on which studios were working through the development of career ladders.  The first participant to chime in came from a studio who was building a new system for career progression.  In this particular instance, the studio had operated for ~10 years of generic titles.  The problem with this scenario was that there was no sense of progression for anyone.  In response, the studio established a range of titles including associate, mid, senior, associate director, and director.  The trick in building the progression system was to develop leadership roles that did not require people to become develop as managers.

In contrast, another attendee referenced their own smaller studio (~25) who likewise wanted to build a career progression path without requiring leadership/management advancement.  Due to their size, they avoided traditional titling built around ranking language.  Rather, their titles focus primarily on the work or job function.  There is a career path, but clearly they've created a culture that doesn't rely on specific language.

Another participant shared the idiosyncrasies of their particular studio.  This studio has created 5 tiers of the senior, although the speaker referenced a hidden sixth level that no one can achieve.  We could probably have done another 15 minutes on the idea of unused or unreachable career levels.  However, this studio allows for a lot more employee movement between roles.  In these cases, the studio simply appends the prefix "junior" to a role (implying that it is not integrated into the title).

One problem that studios potentially face is when there is inconsistency between internal titles and industry titles.  In the particular case, the studio opted to build five new tiers of progression.  They kept the roles (such as lead or director) separate from titles.  However, the studio did recognize that roles with more responsibility require a higher degree of service.  Naturally, this opens the question as to whether or not the role should earn more pay.  That then leads down the route of asking whether or not the increased in pay should result in higher tier or different title.  The attendees seemed to generally agree that conflating role with pay was more problematic.  In this particular instance, the studio resolved the problem by instituting the title of "veteran."  This title communicated the proper level of seniority, respect, and recognition without being built into the roles on the project.  However, a problem still remained: almost everyone with the veteran title was a founder in the studio.  To ensure that new employees understood what veteran meant, the studio also established the expectation/responsibility that new employees are mentored by veterans.

One attendee then expressed a very specific problem their team was facing, and we spent a fair amount of time investigating this topic.  This person worked in a large studio system and was looking at creating a new job family, specifically oriented towards cinematic design.  This new job family would be comprised of a variety of different developers including animators, cinematic artists, and character artists.  As with other groups, they were looking to develop a system that split craft from leadership (as a career path).  They were also looking at Croner's salary data to reinforce was the salary brackets for this new group.  They also wanted to set up this new job family for success by establishing solid mentorship practices, oriented towards feedback, training, and team motivation.

Many attendees chimed in on this particular topic with a variety of suggestions of what to be mindful.  It was suggested that this new job family identify and recognize skill variation, such as what makes the department unique or different from similar departments.  As new roles are developed, make sure there is clarity in responsibilities.  Talk openly with all stakeholders about where the challenges are and how you'll work to resolve those that are expected as well as the unexpected.  Finally, as much as possible, reduce overlap in responsibilities so that there are decreased opportunities for conflict between this job family and other groups/departments.

It was also suggested to be clear how you will identify the metrics for success in this new job family.  Be clear about who is responsible for the success of the new group.  Develop a progression of criteria for how success is to be evaluated and solicit buy in from all in leadership positions within this new group.  As the group develops, refine your goals as needed and make those goals public.  Don't forget to identify the pain points throughout the process and log what strategies are effective/ineffective.

The last component of this topic was addressing the issue of "overspecialization."  The concern revolved around crafting individuals and groups that were so focused in one specific realm that they might lose sight of their role in the larger family.  Naturally, the most significant group who can be mindful of such an occurrence is the leadership team.  However, it was also suggested that they avoid creating situations where new roles have no clear title or career path.  In short, avoid creating "one-off solutions" meant to address a specific problem, which runs the risk of evolving into a bottleneck in the workflow.  Another comment was to watch out for organizational stagnation.  If you rely on a variety of individuals for specific skill sets, you run the risk of creative burnout and departures.  The end result being holes in your development process, where it is difficult to backfill positions (failing the bus test).

The final topic of the day came from an attendee who was curious about how to build systems (or culture) for people to openly express frustration or ask questions.  The range of responses included encouraging managers/leads to have more direct conversations during one-on-one meetings.  Of course, the managers would have to make it safe, but find ways to encourage team members to be unafraid of expressing negativity (while still trying to keep the conversation productive).  Another attendee pointed out that frustration can often be a symptom of burnout, and so leadership should try to be solicitous of whether or not team members are working in areas that still generate interest/excitement.  Related to this, leaders should also work to help team members understand how their contributions relate to the team's larger success.  Likewise, ensure that team members are being challenged to learn and grow their skills.

Obviously, the second day covered a range of topics.  In fact, the session ran a few minutes late, so we had to call the roundtable to an end, and I encouraged attendees to show up once more on Friday for Day 3.

Speaker Evaluation

Art Leadership Roundtable: Day 2

Thursday, March 22nd at 4:00 pm

Room 215, South Hall
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Total Headcount: 107

Roundtable Session Ranking within Visual Arts Track: your session is ranked 9 of 14

Roundtable Session Ranking within GDC 2017: your session ranked 178 of 435

Session Totals (This Session)
Response	Count	Percentage of Responses
Excellent	12	71%
Good	4	24%
Poor	1	6%
Terrible	0	0.00%

Comments

• Always a highlight of my time in GDC, this was a great conversation particularly well moderated. My only contention is less to do with the event, and more that consistently all the attendees used the male pronoun pretty much consistently - I don't know how we could do it but I would love it to be more inclusive 

• Today's talk about artist progression and roles was informative but didn't really expand into something applicable for smaller studios

• I really appreciated the focus of this session- this is a real leadership issue in studios and it was great to hear discourse and ways other studios have approached it. 

• What a phenomenal conversation today! I'm always impressed with the caliber of these roundtables but this one really knocked it out of the park.

• I think this Roundtable was not as good as the one at Day 1 and Day 2. All hour was about one topic (names of different professions and advance level in companies). It was interesting but not very useful knowledge. Still, the talk was organized very well and discussion was well balanced.

• Info not really helpful—uninteresting