An Open Letter To Studio CEOs in Vancouver to Work on a New Way to Manage Employees and Productivity.

3 years…it’s been 3 years watching this sordid scenario unfold again and again. This first time was as covid was waning and people started to return to normal working routines: “Mass Layoffs” the article read. I assumed that someone with the ability and elevated thought patterns that would put this to the right, considering how many lives are affected by this type of action – I’m of the opinion that in a civilized world, this sort of crap is not acceptable in any way, shape or form. It isn’t, but it’s not like there’s no one with the skill or ability – it’s that there’s no one who either gives a shit or that is willing to act in a way that is selfless for the benefit of mankind, as there is nothing in it for them. This bullshit ends here. I have been working on understanding the issue since August last year, as it’s then that I understood that no help is forthcoming and that if it is to change, it will only occur if someone takes onus and puts together a plan to affect change. There have been many who have approached this problem and written very elegant solution strategies, but they have fallen on deaf ears – there are many who benefit from things being the way they are and would do much to keep it that way. This is also in the research I have compiled, but research is only as good as the people who actually decide to implement it. Unimplemented research is worth…nothing, irrespective of how much you spent on acquiring it. This is the oddity that is associated with information, especially as we are in an age where information is freely distributed, as “there is no knowledge that is not power” but the corollary to that being the limitations posed by the addition of the word “power”, because if no force is applied, nothing happens and is why power (electrical, political, etc) only exists while it is being used – but the lack of affecting change in a necessary way means that there are drawbacks to not using knowledge…and these compound over days, months, years into a final tally that is too depressing to comprehend.

As mentioned previously, I have compiled research on seeing exactly what the problem is – but releasing this just in general is not a good idea and will only hamper my way into sorting things out, as there is information that most will have forgotten about and is really quite damning – all that will happen is there will be public outcry online, might get spoken about in the media and we are then back to where we started, with the need for someone to implement it, but at that stage with brand new bruises to egos that will make solving the problem even more of a challenge. No. This ends here.

I am offering myself as a means to find a solution here, what follows in this letter is an example of a solution I found unknowingly for this problem while researching another, years earlier. I will also include the actual solution and my way of implementing it as this is too important to keep to myself. If you have the ability and the will to do this, you will understand enough to attempt it through my letter. To all those who have actually worked with me and know my caliber, who would very quickly arrange something: please know that I am deeply grateful for your consideration and friendship, but no one is going to take this seriously enough to affect any type of change unless I do this in a place where I am unknown and have no allies – this is the scientific method, it has to work because it works and not due to any amount of buffering from outside or anywhere else. For this reason, I am only going to accept meetings in Vancouver, Canada. The other reasons being examples like company size, the control factor to this experiment is the relative size of the operation, as scale does matter here. Another thing is industry – while technically anything will do where you have people coming together with vastly different specialisations to develop a single, compound aspect of value. Real estate would be a possibility if I could actually live to around 300 years old, but I can’t so it isn’t. No, I am looking at the video game development sector due to the relatively quick turn-around time and the fact that their technology use might as well be real estate in the no-too-distant future. This would hit at the heart of who I am aiming to benefit – my mother is an artist, so what is going on with artists makes me particularly angry and I would do much selflessly to change the status quo here, I have the skill and experience to do so, but, more importantly, the plan too. I am a habitual asymmetric, problem solver – I have had to be, as I have near-constantly worked in places where I do not speak the local language and I almost always have to fit in with local customs to affect anything, much of the time making it so that someone else feels like it was all their achievement. This suits me fine, as long as it gets implemented, I do not require any sort of pat on the back or credit to my name, as my pride comes from being particularly hard on myself and still achieving success…and little else matters.

Speaking about asymmetric problem solving, I have even seen this term used in templates for resumes – meanwhile “back at the ranch” most wouldn’t know asymmetric problem solving, even if they damn-well slept with it. I am going to give you an example of hardline, asymmetric problem-solving here in this letter, so that you actually know for once what it is. Right, let’s get started…

To understand more clearly what I am suggesting, it helps to know the lens with which I see the world. One such point is the fact that I feel the closest man is ever going to get to having the power of true divination, is through a combined, working knowledge of economy and the innumerable valves that open and close for it to function normally, and other being history, but not the dates on which something occurred (this is useless information) but with an empathetic, boots-on-the-ground understanding of why people did what they did, discounting the idea of right or wrong completely. If this sounds a little severe, I also keep to heart the fact that humans never change, only people can, but even then, the input has to change, for the output to follow suite – this is not negotiable. Lastly, never form an opinion on something you have no grasp of, as it clouds your judgement and ability to see things for what they truly are – your mind being real-estate of it’s own and the less it is cluttered with crap notions of things, the more you can utilise to your own ends. Most importantly, we live in a balanced universe, whether or not it is expanding is completely irrelevant to our scale in which we experience reality. You cannot have something for nothing, as well as you cannot have something taken away and not have it be replaced almost automatically over time to an equal value. Being your own chartered accountant in this field of fluctuating value in your life involves one skill – gratuity as a mindset.

Asymmetric problem-solving starts in the same way, every single time – normal problem solving sees effect and draws a line to it’s cause and starts working there, but I first look at the dynamic and the environment within which the problem occurred, as looking at the cause is nearly always pointless – if there was a solution that direction, it would have been found already by a figurative “first-responder”. In mathematics there is quantization or breaking things apart into constituents or groups instead of having the chaos of interconnectivity that is human society and the events that occur everywhere therein. The point of the quantization is to create single-chords from which to pull this issue apart, much like a knot. So let’s start with what to throw out that needs no further consideration as it is not part of the problem at all, our problem we are solving is: “the way and structures in which people work, that cause layoffs to be an answer at all”. It is worth noting as well, I have come across problems of this sort before, namely ones created by no one in particular, but they exist as no one has bothered to check up on it in a way of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, but this saying while practical fails to acknowledge the nuance with which this is applied, as humans are able to put up with a lot of inconvenience if they don’t have to take responsibility for it. It is also particularly worth noting that these problems, having compounded over a very long period of time, tend to come apart in “snaps”, as in you are busy implementing remedial action on one side, suddenly as you are working part of the knot snaps loose and you are then dealing with both simultaneously. These kinds of problems are fraught with this type of thing and I expect many such occurrences here, therefore I know some reading this will be younger and/or have less experience in dealing with miscellaneous crap in high pressure situations, your heart is in the right place, but rather sit this one out until the first trial is complete and take it from there when serious mistakes have been made and can be learnt from. While I am at it, history shows that when ever there was a new idea afoot, there have always been antagonists, breaking friendships and families apart alike. I say this as, if you are similarly charged to find a solution, but at the same time enjoy an active social life with a lot of friends – my advice here is to sit this one out as well as you are at high risk to lose many friends due to this. Many people have opinions they cannot substantiate and even if they are wrong they will continue as if they are correct – this is normal human behaviour when seen through a broad lens, I am advising it as I know that because this has consequences that are far-reaching, I am expecting a lot of push-back for doing this – ironic though that the studio where I will end up doing this experiences only the positives, either for being open-minded enough to even accomplish it or for doing so and being ahead of their time. That’s marketing for you. It’s not like I’m immune, but a year or two ago a girl behind the counter struck up a conversation with me and after divulging a little of my history, she said I was a sigma male (like the addition symbol). After I got home, I researched the term and concept. Most blanket statements are hilariously erroneous, but this one – surprisingly – accurately described my entire work history and basic personality. So it appears that that’s where I fit into society, and it’s not like I am unaffected, it’s just not a factor in how I approach life, especially when working.

The first chord to discount is that of the CEO. Online appeals to CEO’s to do something about layoffs are more harm than good by far. They are also human and so do feel bad for those affected, but this is not their arena nor specialisation and here I can talk from experience having had an office with staff. The CEO / board of directors have one single task that is easily quantized from the rest: “DO NOT let the company tank!” or more formally, make decisions that cause the company to prosper and not lose value. That is it, that is their job and the people who work there is not their concern at all. Their factors are aligned with B2B communications, projected value generation and planning for the same, competition mitigation, etc. Like the captain of a ship that sees that they have been blown off course, realises that to save the ship, they need to “hard a starboard!” (which means turn right, but they don’t like saying that) and as someone who has been in a situation where they found themselves hanging from the railing of the boat, feet dangling meters above the water’s surface, as the boat turns hard into the harbour before a storm surge, I know that it can get dicey in terms of the metaphor as well as the position as the company’s head equally. They are completely absolved according to my research and their position is neither the cause nor solution on their own. Back to the metaphor, when the ship turns hard, stuff comes flying off the ship if the “batten down the hatches” appeal has been ignored. The flotsam in this case is people and their continued employment, but this does lead us to what exactly does the “batten down” infer and what exactly are “the hatches” as that is likely the prowling grounds of the quarry we are after. Most people think that deciding who to hire and fire are the realm of human resources, or HR, but…

The second chord to discount is that of HR. This field is an enigma to me and is full of concepts and areas of study that my mind does not easily consume, such as psychology, legal, accounting and even sometimes marketing (the latter I do understand, quite well actually, but how it fits into the rest I am ok with not knowing). I know that if you don’t have this department in your company, that once you hit a certain threshold with regard to employment numbers, you are going to find yourself heading for disaster and likely liquidation. The fact that you have people in your company is an aspect that urgently requires autonomous management as soon as your company can expand to afford the expense of incorporating it. My experience involves having an office with staff, but realising that I need to either expand with HR and develop roots or continue the lone wolf consultant bit - the expansion and being rooted in place was too much for me at the time, so I outsourced as much as I could and continued in the way in which I was most comfortable, to my style of working – especially as my way of working involved travelling to different countries near continuously, the office idea was just not workable for my personality type. HR do much of the hiring and firing, but unless they are doing so for HR itself, they only do so at the behest of other departments and their management structures. What I have planned for a solution is outside the scope of HR and anything they do, but I can say that they are also neither the problem nor solution…but they might form part of the scaffold the solution is propped up with. This we will only know after the first trial is run.

The problem we are having is also not exactly management in general nor the people working in those positions, as outside of the artists or people working at a grassroots level minus the departments I have mentioned, that’s all that is left. Our crosshairs do not lie, but in asymmetric fashion we need to look with a lens so wide it seems to distort the image – it doesn’t, it’s just a tremendous amount of information that you need to look at, each part in turn – hence this has taken months to do. The lens is so wide it also incorporates the aspects that have made this situation worse, like developments in various governments, the education sector, but I have decided to keep that unpublished as well as it is going to hamper this more than help – considering people read only what they need to further their own agendas, I refuse to do their work for them. It’s also worth noting that if you read any of this and feel I am stepping on your toes, don’t comment unless you have the facts black and white in front of you as I do, I will come out aggressively with guns blazing – happily shattering friendships left, right and center to see this thing through. An altruistic hard edge I may be, but after 3 years of seeing this, I am not about to screw around and make nice. You have been warned.

The solution and my understanding of it is something I need you to understand clearly, thus I am going through the effort of manually spending the time to write it all down in order for you to be able to extrapolate and do the math when we get to the solution – it all starts far back to logs of 150 years old I was reading while researching another thing in Belgium at one of my client’s properties which was a malting that still has industrial revolution equipment in it – simply gorgeous! Then I was trying to figure out why it is so difficult for people today, with all the technology they have and understanding of science, to equate the types of beers made in days long past. It is an interesting bit and relates to how I found this solution, as our issue starts during the industrial revolution as well. To make a long story short, brewers then brewed according to a very different workflow, now lost to time mostly along with the guilds, but by substituting another very old workflow with the required augmentation – an architectural one in specific – I found a way to bring that ability back. The first time I tried my solution, I sat on skype with a friend across the globe from me, he implemented my suggestions and subsequently won silver medal in his country of origin…and I wasn’t even there. Knowledge is power indeed, then came covid of which no one had knowledge, and now we are here. Those logs I was reading to get there though now are a window into a world that I needed to see myself, despite that at the time I felt that what I was reading was simply curiosities of bygone eras, which I am a big fan of, and I go to museums and other such places whenever I can, critically if my research points to things I can learn there. The language I first learnt in life was a very old version of Dutch that has nuances of port cities in it. Pretty useless for most conceivable tasks in a modern world, unless you are trying to speak Dutch or Flemish…or you happen to need to read old, handwritten logs in Belgium, the handwriting causing google translate to rebel at every attempt. What I read and found interesting was the way in which people referred to each other, they used terms found only in farming as far as I know, such as “first hand” to refer to someone without using a name. At the time I thought this was a case of familiarity, the way friends might refer to one another, despite how incongruous it was when you see how formal the people today are there in a working environment. I was wrong, looking at it with the information I have now, they were being serious. Just like today. What I was actually witnessing is the proto-office culture, the hierarchies being formed as they would have been on a farm, but unlike today, the farm would be owned – at least in Europe – by a lord or some other nobleman. It’s that culture we are busy propagating. It seemed to work well for them though, what has changed that makes it so unsuitable for us? This is best described with an image.

Communication. How fundamentally jarring the difference was back then as compared to now is something I don’t think many comprehend. It is unworkable. A quick comparison to the two that I have experienced was during the same line of investigation that I was busy with at the time. Today, it makes complete sense for someone to be elevated to manager position if they have worked as a grassroots position for long enough. This is nonsense actually. You can be taught to do anything; we have known this since the time of the Romans at least and it is a fact the military makes use of regularly with military academies and the popularity of business administration educations. Back then however, it was necessity, as the means of communication was easily intercepted, you had to be sure the person on the receiving end understood while no one else did, especially in circumstances where there was a transfer of information that empowered one to do a task with specificity. Back during the industrial revolution, this was a near constant reality. I had the information in my head to utilise anything that I read with modern precision, but I could not for the life of me understand the things they wrote, it was in a code of sorts, but written in normal language. Only by sensing the cadence between different notes relating to the same sort of task could I see that there is in fact a code. The notes change abruptly around the onset of WW1, subsequently so do the logs, but that isn’t hard to imagine why in Belgium.

So communication is the dividing factor, but in an age where our means to communicate and our ways of automation has risen to levels that our ancestors would have attributed as “Godlike”, our general implementation of any sort of communication with other humans has devolved, with individualism and similar mindsets becoming plague-like in parts of western Europe. I hope that now you are starting to see the actual issue at hand here. We communicate so fast though that the structural systems we use are at the center of why the layoffs are a solution. We have even tried to prop up our old way of doing things by introducing unnatural elements that further toxify working environments, like office cubicles. This is madness. We are a social species, the way to profitability is through channeling negative stress levels into positive ones (destressing the working environment is also not a good idea, as uncertainty is a natural human requirement too) The benefits of changing will come as well, but first let’s look at the actual workflow I have planned.

The solution, at least at the level we will be starting at, is not theoretical, as it is something I have done as well, if under a lot of duress at the time, but it worked so well, it’s that experience that gave me the confidence to propose it here after I did the initial research. I will also explain the dynamics I saw taking place, potentially making this very exciting to implement in terms of office ergonomics and for those researching it.

Currently the model is that of departments, each department specialising in a certain activity, with the value then travelling up the chain of command. This sounds reasonable on paper, but it is the central cause for requiring meetings on a particular subject where two departments connect, and any communication where more than two humans need to come to an understanding about how they are to interpret the other’s work. It is the central reason why there are external companies specialising in a certain set of tasks or product, especially when there is no reason that the same aspect of value can be done in house, under the same umbrella. It is because when it is done under the same umbrella, it takes far more to do so – because the structural systems in place are so incredibly shit and outdated.

The Development Node

I’m the first to admit that my naming conventions need some work, but this will have to do for now.

When you have a development and there are many different specialities at play, the actual work occurs inter-department as the pieces are then fit together. There are many industries where this is a reality but I am posing this for the first trial, especially with regard to who I am doing this for, so software sector, video game development. First my experience though:

I was on a site visit and had checked into my hotel already. When I got to the site there was no sign of the client and apparently had not been for quite some time, but luckily the one sending the payment cheques was an accounting firm that had received no word of stopping any of the payments as long as the in-charge of whichever account was being held was the one to issue the invoice. Outside of that there was chaos, no one knew what to do, stuff kept being delivered that the receiver wasn’t sure who that goes to…a lot of fun. Also, the sites I worked on designing were generally 100 acres or more average. So we are talking about a lot of everything happening at a near constant “wrong time”. I wasn’t at risk of losing anything and so could have walked away from that site easily…but of course I don’t function that way, especially when I see the solution no one else seems to or when my notion of a balanced universe comes into play in my head. What I did is a dragged everyone – I mean everyone, architecture firm intern, head electrician, civil engineer, you name it, anyone that could make a decision or form a workable part of a decision, was dragged into a prefab field office, around a large table meant for meetings with the client. I was able to do this as everyone had to cross my “fiefdom” (being everything outside the buildings) to do any work and affect anything. I was also the head of my own company, so didn’t have to call the office for anything, which was unique on that site at the time. I forced everyone to sit there and do their work, smoothing things over by ordering coffee and lunch from time to time. Very quickly it emerged that they were no longer on the phone to different people…they were all in the same room or at least someone who could answer any question they had was, which led to seeming chaos if you had just walked in, but it was everyone who was communicating and working simultaneously. And the pace at which things were completed and done went up exponentially, likely following logarithmic-looking graphs if I had plotted them. I spent 2 weeks there when I was only supposed to be there for a day or two, but I also am partial to learning something new, so I hung out some more after it seemed on the fourth day that I would no longer be needed. An activity I remember though that stood out is the interaction with the creatives. I found myself sitting in my hotel room at night searching google images for ideas that reflect the architectural style the guys were using for whatever they were doing. In that area it was a very supportive role, especially when I noticed how much the people in question needed outside approval of what they were doing. If a stream of ideas was what was required, I was happy to oblige them. It is this whole manner of working, a manner that is natural and productive for our species, that I want to bring into the mainstream.

Instead of departments, you have nodes – people around a table that are able to freely communicate as and when required with no restrictions. If someone needs to complete a certain activity that requires quieter focus for a time, they can sit on a separate table nearby and do so, but not out of earshot. Each person brings a different speciality, the sum of which would be all the skills needed to complete the project. On large developments, sets of these nodes do certain chunks of the development and as the development advances and sections are completed, they are shared to a node that is tasked with fitting certain parts together. Nothing travels up a chain of command and loses time. There is no command apart from those who are responsible for the final inspection, such as positions like a Creative Director for example. The nodal way of working is reliant on the person in charge of the node, like a manager but is part of the work that is being done actively, with their own specialisation…so no corner office. That sort of crap doesn’t bother me, but it might do for many out there. I have understated my involvement in the example I gave – singing my own praises is not something I enjoy doing – in fact is one of the few things I deeply dislike - so am going to describe the position another way that would make sense to everyone.

Since coming to Canada, I have been trying my best to naturalise and become part of society, one of the ways is trying to understand the sports played here. Hockey is huge but is too foreign and will take time to come to understand the sport – NFL though, this is a different story. Like rugby which I grew up with, but with far less restrictive rules – the reason they need all that armour. One position in particular I feel a strange sort of kinship with is that of the running back. This position is one where if they have the ball and see a gap, they can take it. There is no off-side rule that I am aware of, but if there is, it is not nearly as restrictive as in rugby, once again. These guys are extremely quick, and if they are good, they can be the single reason a team wins games and the league. But I see them taking a lot of damage during a season – I can’t imagine they last very long as compared to a quarterback, simply due to the punishment they soak up getting the ball to the other side. That whole setup feels very familiar. The guy you are looking for in the node to handle it is like this position, but instead of taking the ball from the quarterback, or lining up to catch it, replace the ball with the concept of support within the node and you have a thorough understanding of what is required here. Initially, it definitely won’t be for everyone, probably only a select few who have the disposition to handle it. After that, more can be trained from those that either have the disposition or the ambition to do it successfully. This will not work where if you are there long enough in a node, you will be able to handle it and so are bumped up. Some people just work better being led and others are able to lead by example. There is no place here for those who lead by simply stating what is required of their subordinates, following it up with some indirect threat. That faction needs to die out anyway, the sooner the better.

Why would you take up this new way of working? What are the drawbacks?

I cannot understate from a business owner’s / CEO / Director’s position the amount of time saved nor the level of productivity enjoyed. Everyone is together, they can make as much noise as they like and it is ideas being formed in-situ with the grouping of people who normally are not together in a working environment, but are there with completely different specialities. It is so engaging, even if you are only watching events unfold. Also, remember that not all tasks take the same amount of time to complete, this inadvertently puts pressure on everyone to complete things in the time frame that is the shortest in the group and is not something that needs enforcing. It happens naturally – because that environment in some ways remind me of villages in Africa or India where I have witnessed, on special occasions, everyone gets together around a bonfire and sings to the beat of drums together, naturally, because it is natural. I remember talks that crossed the table of differences in culture that could be asked directly and educate the entire table…it solves a lot of problems that way, all the while saving time and making for a more efficient company model.

The downsides I suppose would be dependant on who you ask. For one, remote working is just not an option, at least in the long term, so hybrid could theoretically be possible, I just haven’t put any thought into it. What is an option and probably very necessary due to the pace set, is the 4 day week, if that appeals to anyone. Personally, I am a habitual workaholic, so none of those items makes me particularly excited. There are far more plus points here than there are negative ones, but for any business / studio owner, this would solve a great deal many problems, which I am sure they can extrapolate very well from here.

If you are reading this and are wondering how this benefits you exactly, you are likely an artist without any business experience – this next bit is for you then.

You see, to solve your problem, I have to either solve a problem for the companies you are likely to work for or I have to find a way to make things more efficient for them. I have opted to do both, so that I can be sure they will do it and stick to it, but this has taken time to unravel. If they are better able to plan and allocate resources, the stability within the structure means that you will end up keeping your job. As things are now, I saw that the company’s hire based on project, with the hiring process talking up stupid amounts of time due to the specificity involved in the project or position – this means that with the project’s completion they have no real way of quantifying your abilities without someone vouching for you – you are an artist, your speciality is far too nuanced for a company to process effectively, especially the bigger ones. This is also the factor of why many of these companies hire through existing employees. By putting you in a node, I have done 2 things: for one, you are in a functional unit so there is no point in time where your usefulness is questioned ever and you become an integral, structural part of the company as picking the unit apart which has worked well for one project for another is completely insane and no one is going to risk that. Secondly. I have put you in an environment that is guaranteed to inundate you with exposure, what will translate into inspiration due to the problems, solutions and all the rest of it that flies freely across the table, things that you generally don’t have access to and will empower you far more to implement your style in the work you are doing – especially since you don’t have to risk when asking for opinions, you are getting them all the time with a group of people who are squarely, legally in your court, rooting for you as you do them. You will end up growing extremely quickly, reaching top skill levels in a fraction of the time by virtue of the dynamics of your working environment. Along with the plan, the company will need some sort of marketing surety (this translates into what is known in north America as a “fall guy”) so they don’t lose face should it not work out, at least from their perspective. I am offering myself as both the initial implementer as well the marketing surety – I’ve done the research, all the way from the industrial revolution, 1930’s, depression, 1970’s cold war blues until now, all the statistics. This is literally the only thing I can do to alleviate your problem in a permanent fashion. To put you further at ease, I am a consultant with many years of experience in various fields – I once saved a client from years of litigation by spending the time and effort to understand that the problem centered around a bunch of geographically-challenged goats, which I then changed the aspects in my design to accommodate them and all was well. There is no problem that can be thrown at me that I cannot unravel, you have my word. It all does work and will work, though it may take a little time before it reaches you – but once it does, you will be far happier with life in general. That’s all I wanted to accomplish here.

To the enterprising CEO’s within Vancouver, who are open-minded about what the future looks like and similarly heading studios that deal with products that make use of my target demographic, please feel free to contact me via LinkedIn as I need some filter to assess the real requests from the crap – I see my avenues of contact getting spammed to death, especially the ones written in my resume (may have to change my number after this). Please simply send me a message personally or via your HR department on LinkedIn and I will respond promptly.

To sign off, writing “sincerely” at this point is both superfluous as well as inadequate – I have a better idea…