U.S. President Harry S. Truman popularized the phrase, “The buck stops here.” The phrase refers to the fact that the President has to make tough decisions and will accept the responsibility for those decisions.
One of Riot’s key beliefs is that we empower smart people (from intern to CEO) to make decisions that increase player value. I have never heard anyone say “That’s not my problem” at Riot. And if I ever did, I would probably lose my shit because there is a pervasive, shared belief that Riot is our company.
Game development, like much of the entertainment industry, relies on creativity and technological innovations. There are near infinite opportunities to explore and problems to fix. Gone are the days when companies tell you what to do. Today, you choose what to do and that starts with aligning your strengths with how you work best and what you want to do. Once you figure out how you can best contribute to your company’s efforts, the next step is figuring out what opportunities and problems you are going to own.
Nicolo Laurent (@niiicolo), Riot’s head of international business, offers a good framework for ownership that I’ve been using: when encountering a valuable opportunity or a significant problem, the main thing to do is to identify an owner, if any.
Scenario A: Owner exists
- Default to trust and let the owner run with it (unless something smells fishy, then you have an obligation to say something about it)
- Position myself as support: share lessons learned, perspective, input, etc., but at a lower priority than my own priorities
Scenario B: Owner does not exist (Should I be the owner?)
- Evaluate this problem or opportunity against my other priorities
- If high priority, assuming I’m already super busy and hiring a strong leader to own will be more scalable for Riot, then go into recruiting mode: source, assess, close and onboard someone to own this problem or opportunity
- If low priority, put this problem in the icebox, where other awesome, valuable things to do (but not that valuable right now) sit
Ownership is not limited to opportunities and problems, you are expected to own your mistakes as well.
Last September, we held a company-wide event called “Fail and Tell” where speakers shared lessons learned from their failures. While it’s important to share our successes, it’s equally important to talk about stuff that doesn’t go so well. It’s hard to do excellent things unless we take risks. And it’s hard to take risks unless we talk openly, constructively, and without shame about failures and mistakes.
We need Rioters to be willing to take risks — that’s how we can achieve our ambitious goals.