How to deal with an indecisive creative director

What do you do?! Run away!

Nah… But seriously. It is a really tough problem to solve and might not be fully solvable. That’s because we’re talking about one person’s behaviour. It’s really hard to change your own behaviour, even when you want to. And trying to get someone else to change their behaviour is even harder.

I’m going to abbreviate creative director or CEO to CD for the rest of this post.

Where do you start?

Remind yourself why this is a bad situation. Try to list out explicitly all the negative results that you’re noticing due to the CD changing their mind. This helps with figuring out what you want to eliminate and change. In other words, your goals.

See if you can find a pattern in terms of WHAT items keep changing. This helps you understand the extent of the problem.

If it makes sense, talk to the CD to understand WHY they are changing their mind. This helps understand context. Be Jennuinely curious about what’s going on for them so you don’t shut down the conversation. In a dream world this conversation will kickstart the CD into changing their behaviour.

Next you want to try and reduce frequency and impact of the changes.

Reduce Frequency

Reducing frequency is the best way to tackle the issue. So we’ll start there.

• Get the CD more involved with day-to-day team processes and meetings:
  • Ask the CD for a daily update on priorities.
  • Send every little thing to the CD for approval. And don’t move on until you get that approval.
  • Get the CD in all team meetings for a month so they can:
    • see the team’s point of view
    • see repercussions of their choices
    • stop the team going off in a direction that they would never have approved.
• Improve processes for getting feedback from the CD and then implementing them.
  • Manage how feedback from the CD is coming in and when it comes in.
    • This might mean big feedback is only allowed once a month.
    • It also could mean getting daily feedback so that things are always going in the direction the CD wants.
  • Only allow “one” change per sprint, per discipline, per task? Per whatever makes sense.
  • Have a mandatory wait period on all or some types of changes. That is, don’t just instantly start on the new direction. Wait a week to see how the dust settles.
  • Similarly, when something new comes up, don’t start work until you have a new plan with a new timeline. That way you can see what resources (e.g. work hours for specific people) are being committed and can compare the new plan with the old plan to decide how it affects your big picture plan.
  • Ask as a team: If we say yes to this change, what do we need to say no to?
• If only certain types of items keep getting changed:
  • In your risk register, increase the risk likelihood for those items and anything dependent on those items.
  • Allow more lengthy buffers and processes for those items. That might mean assuming that you’ll do at least 4 iterations before locking down a direction.
  • If your team is big enough, you could split the team so that there’s a sub-team that works on the items that don’t change and another sub-team that does all the risky and changeable items. That way you’re getting some forward momentum, but also not ignoring all the risks.
  • Don’t forget: If these changeable items aren’t very important to the game, don’t do them at all.
• Establish stakeholder accountability for the CD to get them to change their behaviours.
  • Stakeholder accountability means repercussions for the CD themself, rather than for the project.
  • If there is someone higher up than the CD, stakeholder accountability might mean threatening or enforcing punishments like reduced bonus, bad performance review, and worse.
  • If there is no one higher up than the CD, stakeholder accountability might mean public or private remonstrations.
    • These remonstrations need to come from someone the CD respects and will listen to.
    • Even the most unpleasant people will have someone at a company they do actually respect. Find that person and get them on board with this stakeholder accountability plan.

That’s all my suggestions for reducing frequency. Maybe you’ve got some of your own that work? Let me know.

Reduce Impact

If you can’t reduce frequency, you can at least reduce the impact of the changes:

• Go back to prototyping. Then the CD will be able to see what the game feels like, but with crappy art and programming. If the game doesn’t feel right and you need to make big changes, then you won’t be throwing out final work that was time consuming to create.
  • It can be hard for some people to use their imagination with prototypes. So this might be something the CD will need to learn.
• Acknowledge that there are multiple ways to solve this problem and the CD isn’t sure which will work best. Then your team can plan for the variability like: not polishing unapproved assets, more review steps, and more.
• Fundamentally change something in your game. Choose a less risky game genre, theme, etc. Keep only one innovative gameplay mechanic.

You might need to try out multiple options to reduce both frequency and impact. Whatever you choose, you’ll need to give it time to succeed or fail and then iterate based on what you’ve learnt.

It’s not working!

When all else fails and nothing is working, what can you do?

• You could try to change your personal goals to reduce the impact on you as a person. For example, don’t set lofty goals like making a great game. Put your head down, live in the now, and get your own personal stuff done. And then look outside work for fulfillment.
• And if none of that is working and your mental health is a mess… reduce the frequency by quitting!
  • Obviously in today’s hiring climate this is an extreme option. But ultimately it might be the best way forward for you personally.
  • Before quitting, talk to HR if you have it and get them to see the seriousness of the issue.

Conclusions

In conclusion: this is a tough problem and one that can have serious implications on your mental health and the quality of the game you produce. Try to focus on what you can change, stay curious in talks, and be persistent. The solution is unlikely to be easy or the first one you try. Good luck, Frustrated Artist.

In these circumstances, it’s hard to keep up any momentum. But if you can reduce the frequency and impact of changes, then you and your team will eventually get closer to shipping your game.

Remember: This is general advice and it might not be right for you and your team, even if you’re the one who wrote in the question! For me to help better, it needs to be a dialog between me, and you, and your entire team. You can hire me to consult for you —> jennsand.com .

If you have a question for me, just fill in my form over here: jennsand.com/askjenn/