Feedback & Performance Evaluation | ft. Ben Carcich & Aaron Smith from Building Better Games

GameMakers

Feedback and performance evaluation for employees is one of a company's most challenging, political, and sensitive topics. However, without this practice done well, it will be tough to hold performance standards or see improvement in a team or company. I would argue that if you are not doing this well, your team/company is doomed over the long term. I discuss with industry experts and ex-Riot production leaders Ben Carcich and Aaron Smith from Valarin who are some of the most thoughtful and deep thinkers on leadership, production, and best practices. OUTLINE: 0:00 Intro 3:50 Why feedback and performance evaluation is so bad at companies, toxic kindness 10:16 How to flip the script on feedback, why feedback is viewed negatively 14:45 Misunderstanding of psychological safety 19:40 Formal systems vs. informal systems 27:00 What did you say when you told them? 30:15 Why informal systems are more effective 30:45 How to optimize feedback delivery, shit sandwich and Impact model 40:00 How to proactively prevent having to give feedback, importance of setting expectations 45:44 Reducing feedback because feedback is overhead 48:40 Some people just can’t give feedback 53:18 Techniques to train people to give feedback - this takes time! 56:45 Time + risk of training someone to give feedback, are you creating a team-wide problem? 57:17 Performance evaluation 58:15 Importance of performance evaluation and how it can be counter-productive 1:00:40 Thinking about performance evaluation from foundational objectives 1:07:00 How to setup a performance evaluation system for your company 1:12:00 Different types of performance evaluation systems: Skills vs. performance targets vs. OKRs vs. stack ranking 1:28:58 Start, Stop, Continue 1:31:40 How to keep performance evaluation systems uniform 1:46:10 Final words of advice and contacting Ben and Aaron 👇 EPISODE LINKS: - Building Better Games: https://www.buildingbettergames.gg/ - Building Better Games podcast: https://pod.link/1559448378 - Ben Carcich: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjamin-... - Aaron Smith: https://www.linkedin.com/in/doublearo... SUBSCRIBE TO GAMEMAKERS: - Spotify Podcast: https://spoti.fi/3Cpyq7i - Newsletter: https://gamemakers.substack.com/ 😃 —CONNECT WITH ME! — • MY INSTAGRAM → @jokim1 • TWITTER → @jokim1 • LINKEDIN → https://www.linkedin.com/in/jokim/ — POPULAR CONTENT — 🤑 Economy of the Metaverse with Tim Sweeney • Economy of the Me... ℹ️ How to Build the Amazon of Game Companies • Building the Amaz... 🔮 Gaming Trends | A Look Ahead at 2021 • Mobile Gaming Tre... 🖥️ The Future of PC Gaming • Future of PC Gami... 🔴 Games Industry M&A • Games Industry M&... 🔴 Netcode for Multiplayer Games • Netcode for Multi... 🔴 IDFA Deprecation Product Impact • Apple IDFA Deprec... 🔴 Trip Hawkins on the New High Score • Trip Hawkins | Th... 🔴 LiveOps F2P Best Practices • LiveOps - F2P Sal...