Managers Enable their Employees to Achieve their Goals (Criticism)

by Kahzgul, Wednesday, January 17, 2018, 16:12 (2291 days ago) @ Cody Miller

Managers also need to force creative decisions. Part of the reason the supercut was poorly received is that Jason Jones was changing his mind about the story very late in the process.

Imagine you are making a movie. You shoot it, edit it, do the sound mix, and are now starting to do the color grading. Now, the Executive Producer tells you he wants to change things… scrap this and that. We need to change the story and reshoot. And by the way, everybody is asking for a cut of the film yesterday.

So you cobble together what you can, but of course it sucks because everything is placeholder and improvised because you haven't reshot anything yet. It's a jumbled mess and people go wtf?

Would you fire the editor in this situation? Who is really to blame for this?

Well, Bungie got rid of the editor instead of getting the exec producer in line.

I agree with you, of course. The exec producer is absolutely to blame here. This is a management problem. The Manager is not clear in the goals of the company, and is not providing their employees with realistic goals and timetables. It's okay to be unhappy with the results of your team's work, but it's not okay to move the goalposts and then blame the team for not having enough time to change things. You're steering a giant battleship, not a nimble dinghy. You need to set your course early on and then never waver if you want to hit your targets at full steam.