Yes, No, Maybe so
As this series progresses, I’ll be describing many quantitative reasons for why I think a Studio Manager is a great addition to a medium sized or larger creative team. But, first in the next few posts I wanted to go over something a bit more qualitative and it is a topic that lies at the center of a Studio Manager’s mission. This is something that deeply affects the day to day quality of life for everyone on a team — making the decisions of if and when a project can be done and what resources will be needed to successfully complete it. How a leader of a creative group handles the decision making process and how a studio manager can help in improving this process is the single biggest reason I can advocate for hiring an excellent studio manager.

Yes, Man
If you’ve been in the working world for a while, I am certain you have worked with a boss who is the proverbial yes-man. This is someone who, without any solid knowledge of what is required to complete a project, will say yes to anything. Having been a person who then had to execute on this work that my creative director agreed to, the first thought on my mind is to question how on earth will I be able to get this done. This is a valid question to ask, but is not inclusive of the whole story. Most projects that are asked of a creative group are within the achievable reach of the team, especially in a tightly controlled and monitored corporate environment. But, this achievability comes with a caveat. We can do it, but we need the resources — resources can be time, people, more information, or any number of other things that will help get the big job done quickly. The quick answer to the question of how will something get done is that there is a way.

The more important question, and usually the second I would ask myself in the situation where I need to deliver on an unreasonable task, is to ask why the members of the team were not consulted first. “Why didn’t my lead just ask me?” In this question lies the problem of working with a yes-man in charge. Often these decisions to agree to work are made without any thought put into the process by which they are going to get done. A “yes” is not a bad thing — in fact, as a group, a creative team should be able to say “yes” 98% of the time. Saying yes to work is the way to get hold of the keys to opening doors to more responsibility and respect. It is the uninformed yes that is dangerous.

Looking at this from an art lead’s position, it is entirely understandable to want to agree to doing work, even work that seems unreasonable in scope or timing. We, as artists, all want to give off the impression that we are not lazy and flighty — that we are efficient and capable of doing great work under pressure. Soaring above expectations is a great way to convince people outside of our group that we are capable of initiating our own pet projects, that we should be granted respect for the work we do and that we are in so confidently in control that we know when we need more resources. If this issue is taken from the art lead’s position, it is easy to see how some can be blinded by these goals and will rush into judgement on the viability of any new work being asked of the team. There is this automated response that I have seen in every creative person I have known — “Sure we can do that”. The desire to exceed expectations, in itself, is not a bad thing. We should all hope to work with a leader who inspires us to work better or harder or smarter or faster. But making these decisions without first considering how the work can get done will demoralize the creative team and erode the confidence of business partners across a whole company. Let’s look at a few ways this happens.

The first and most immediate effect of uninformed promises is on the creative team itself. Working in environment where a worker’s input is not considered by the leader is demoralizing. An artist may not want much say in how work is divvied up across the whole team, but I can tell you that each artist I have known certainly craves being able to control their own work and time. All artists will go above and beyond, and many I have known have done so on a regular basis for years, but they will only do so enthusiastically if they are given the opportunity to be part of a process that elicits their feedback on how to get the work done. Cutting them out of this process entirely produces a team of reluctant drones — they will get the work done, but will never offer more of themselves than is being asked.

The larger impact of making uninformed promises is that eventually something will backfire. It could backfire in a big way — missing an important deadline for example. It could backfire in many smaller ways — having to go back to the requester and ask for more time, for example. Either of these happening, even once, can erode months worth of confidence building that may have been accomplished by exceeding expectations. Once people outside of the creative team see any lack of ability to deliver on promises, trust has been lost and the ability to make decisions will gradually be pulled away from the creative team, and that, by any measure, is a bad thing for a team that wants to excel creatively. Quite simply, you do not want the marketing director to be making decisions for the creative team — trust me on this it is bad news, I’ve seen it in action.

Self-help books and gurus often see a simple solution to the problem of saying yes too easily — to say no. But, as I will explore next time in this series, there is something worse than having a yes-man for a boss. After that I will continue with examining a couple ways that a team can benefit from having a good studio manager. Until then….

Stay free

~shs~

Links to the whole series
Adventures of a Studio Manager Ep.1
Adventures of a Studio Manager Ep.2

Alongside my posts relating to the development of art assets that I will be giving away here, I am also starting up a series of articles dedicated to explaining the intricacies of my weird little hybrid career. I will be focussing mostly on my experience as a Studio Manager, what I do, how my experiences can help you and your team, and most importantly, I will endeavor to prove that every studio full of creative people needs a great Studio Manager. This is partially self-serving because, frankly, I want to be doing this sort of job, or some mix of it, for a long while and I want you to want to hire me or someone like me one day to make your life easier. But, that is only part of it. The larger part of my mission here is that I have been on creative teams with no structure, no support, limited resources, and unfettered external access into our daily lives. As a designer on different teams I have lived with the pain and bitterness that comes with working in an environment that can best be described as chaos. I get it. I know how hard it can be. And, more than anything, I want life to be better for my fellow artists in this world.

But I’ve also seen what a great Studio Manager can do — I’ve learned from some of the best. I’ve seen how a team can blossom into a productive, efficient, proactive, balanced and happy team. The last two teams that I managed doubled their workload in a year and reduced overtime to almost zero. Designers went from always working behind deadline, making last-minute changes and spinning in circles over poorly-conceived reviews to nailing designs in first review, meeting deadlines ahead of schedule and having more immediate and direct access to real decision makers. I’ll get to how and why this happened as this series goes on. In short, though, I like to see what I do as the oil and the glue for the team. I keep the machine running smoothly, and I hold all the pieces together.

Every Studio Manager I have known has a different style — I have a very soft touch compared to most. Before I left the last place I worked for six years I questioned how portable my skills were, but having gone to a company that had no history of using a Studio Manager and basically had zero process when I joined, I see how important it can be in moving a team to the next level. I will over the next year talk your ear off about it. I originally backed into doing this 9 years ago, but now I feel like it is really my calling. Strange how life turns.

Now, getting to the beginning of talking about a Studio Manager’s benefits to a team, I feel it is important to define what a Studio Manager is, or at least the way I approach it. First off, I feel it is important to note that a Studio Manager is not an Art Director, Creative Director, or Lead Artist. I am not the person on the team that everyone reports to. I do not set the artistic direction, I do not make hiring decisions and I do not meet with the executive teams to discuss the direction of the team. I have always functioned best as more of a right-hand man — the leader on the battlefield whose job it is to make sure everything gets done at the ground level and let all of the artists look to the team lead for overall direction. Although much of my work involves shepherding projects through a process, I feel it is also important to note that I am not a project manager or a producer. A lot of what I do includes a hybrid of what people in those positions do, but I am firmly and solidly part of the art team and can do any of the jobs that each artist on our team does. I always makes decisions through the lens of a member of an art team, which is inherently different than the perspective a producer or project manager has.

Recently, a friend of mine who is an Art Director at a local game company asked me the simple question “So, what exactly does a Studio Manager do?” I had been asked this before and often found myself at a loss for words. However, I did come up with a response that I feel serves as an adequate introduction to this series. Here, almost verbatim, is what I said.

The details of what I have done have been different for every place I have worked… maybe the best way to illustrate is through an exercise.

Close your eyes and think of what the 3 main missions are for you and your lead artists. This would be different for each leader but they would probably be something akin to “making great art”, “mentoring my team”, etc.

Now, think of all the little day-to-day tasks that keep you from doing these things. All the tasks that you do up until 5:00 and realize that you haven’t done nearly enough of making great art and you’re going to be working all night. This could be anything — lengthy emails to outsource artists, sending files, gathering source material, archiving files, prepping screenshots for a magazine, updating the web site, scheduling projects, planning for vacations, filtering resumes, making budgets — anything that breaks the flow of the day. The list I am sure is endless. Most creatives I have known need nice hours-long chunks of uninterrupted time to be effective and this stuff can be a real killer. Any excessive lessening of the time you spend on your core mission as a team leader reduces your value and effectiveness to your team.

Now, imagine that all of that is gone — off your plate and off your lead artists’ plates, too. And it is being done by someone you trust will get it done, who will summarize the work for you regularly, who will keep things rolling when you are out and, given time, will know exactly when to get you involved. Most importantly, imagine that this person is also an artist (not a producer or a recruiter or an intern or an office manager) and will do all of this with an artist’s perspective. And, as a bonus, you have an extra hand on staff for crunch time.

That’s what I do. Times ten.

Stay free.

~shs~

Links to the whole series
Adventures of a Studio Manager Ep.1
Adventures of a Studio Manager Ep.2