Author Archives | Liza Wood

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After a dozen years leading video game development projects in a variety of roles, I decided to pursue a Master of Data Science at the University of British Columbia. Studying data science doesn’t mean I’m moving away from leading people. Growing data science teams need collaborative, pragmatic, Agile leadership to connect data to all areas of the business. I would like to share that point of view, along with my experiences, on this blog.

Creatives And Project Managers

November 23, 2013

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Calendar of Work Hard, Training, Beer

Yesterday, two Art Directors and I had a brief discussion about how to plan for regular training for our art teams. Do we enter it as a task in our production management software? Or do we ensure we have enough slack in our schedule and let the artists self-organize for the training time? One Art […]

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Performance Reviews From A Manager’s Perspective

November 22, 2013

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performance evaluations
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Dealing With The Here And Now

November 21, 2013

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snowplow pushing snow down a street

As a leader, it is really important to deal with the here and now… in the here and now. Famous leaders are celebrated for being “forward thinking”, “visionary” or “strategic”. While thinking ahead is a critical skill for great leaders, it cannot be at the expense of dealing with things in the here and now. […]

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Massively Multiplayer… Thumb Wrestling!

November 20, 2013

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Why Wearing Two Hats Is A Bad Idea

November 19, 2013

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Mural of the two faces of the Roman god Janus

In many companies and industries there has been a trend to combine “management” roles in an effort to reduce costs or improve efficiency. Personally, I first noticed this trend with combining project management and functional management roles. The reasoning is that any competent manager should be able to handle the project management duties for their […]

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Standout: A Review of Marcus Buckingham’s Book

November 18, 2013

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Because it speaks so much to my values, my all-time favourite management/leadership book is First, Break All The Rules by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman. It’s not so much that I am a rebel, breaking rules whenever I want. It’s because the book is based on a 25-year Gallup study on what great managers do: […]

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