#Leadership in business

[darrenwalleyconsultancy]

Leadership and Management

Photo by GR Stocks Is there a difference between leadership and management? Some of you may agree that you “lead” people and “manage” things. Or is leading and managing a dynamic and symbiotic relationship? Admiral Grace Hopper coined the phrase, “You manage things; you lead people.” a military background tried and tested that phrase. This article looks at the differences between Leading and…

[kylecorbett]

The Impact of Leadership Styles on Employee Motivation: Insights for Business Success

The Impact of Leadership Styles on Employee Motivation: Insights for Business Success Introduction: Leadership plays a crucial role in shaping employee motivation, engagement, and ultimately, the success of a business. Different leadership styles have varying effects on employee motivation, and understanding these impacts can empower managers to create a positive and motivating work environment.…

[spacedlexi]

"sounds nice... having a partner"

[thepersonalquotes]

Focus on how far you have come in liferather than looking at the accomplishments of others.

Lolly Daskal, The Leadership Gap: What Gets Between You and Your Greatness

[savagechickens]

Decisive.

And more leadership.

[thepersonalwords]

In five minutes you should know if people have confirmed, calculated & considered your vision.

Onyi Anyado

[potionwine]

Thinking about Margrace as Joshua's name post-Phoenix Gate.

Mar-grace.

In FFXVI the Undying choose their own names (Cyril explains this in-game), and many of them have names drawn from Final Fantasy XII, including their leader 'Margrace' himself, from Al-Cid Margrace. The page for Al-Cid notes that Margrace is likely an alternate form of the title 'margrave', an old title for military commanders on the border.

That aside. This is the name chosen (by the boy himself?) for the boy who should have rightfully been known henceforth as 'Your Grace', 'His Grace'.

Grace (style of address), from the Oxford English Dictionary:

With a possessive adjective: a title of respect, esp. for a person of royal or noble rank. Frequently (in 'your Grace') as a form of address. Now archaic or historical. Formerly (in England until the reign of Henry VIII and in Scotland until 1707) used for a monarch or prince; now replaced by Majesty or Highness. Even so, "Majesty" for the sovereign of England was not used exclusively; it arbitrarily alternated with both "Highness" and "Grace", even in official documents, until "Majesty" finally became the official style to the exclusion of others (source).

Grace (other meanings):

1. Divine favour, benevolence, or providence bringing about worldly benefit or advantage. 2. A person's lot, destiny, or fate; luck, fortune. 3. The quality of being pleasing; attractiveness, charm; esp. (in later use) refined elegance of manner, expression, form, or movement, esp. regarded as natural or effortless; gracefulness.

Whatever the etymology of margrave, the name Margrace in-game is probably meant to call to mind the meaning of 'mar' as in damaged, spoiled, ruined. All the grace that ever belonged to his family, his home, his birthright—marred, of course.

Mar+Grace, the last heir of the oldest unbroken ruling dynasty in the Twins at the time of the opening events of the game**.

The living ghost, carrying the desecrated corpse of his legacy in his new name. Introducing himself by his humiliation: "Hello, I am Margrace", "Hello, I am the ruined dignity of my house." "Call me Margrace", "Call me the wreckage of one fallen from divine favour." "My name is Margrace", "My name is blemished fortunes and diminished nobility".

It's appropriately brutal and dramatic for such a character, especially since the game is frustratingly silent on how Joshua personally feels about the loss of his duchy which is a rant for next time.

**Footnotes:

In the Year 860 (Prologue year/Phoenix Gate), Rosaria is about 260 years old (est. Y600). Older, if you count from the time of the Rose Alliance (est. Y550). The Rosfields have been on the Rosarian throne since the inception of the duchy in Y600, and prior to that House Rosfield was already known to be the chief of/the preeminent house of the Seven High Houses that united to found the duchy. House Rosfield has held ruling power for 260-310 years at a minimum.

For reference, England's longest-reigning dynasty was the Plantagenets, who held on for 300+ years. Rosfields aren't doing half bad!

Veldemarke would have been older had it not been overthrown by Barnabas; therefore Waloed is the youngest nation state at the time of the prologue (only 17 years old). Also we do not know much about the governance of Veldemarke, although as a 'kingdom' it was likely some type of monarchy.

Sanbreque was formed 100 years after Rosaria, and at any rate is not actually a hereditary monarchy. The Holy Emperor is voted into office by his fellow Cardinals, likely the five who form the Council of Elders. We are also explicitly told that Sylvestre 'won his throne' in 865; there is no indication either way that his predecessor emperor was a Lesage. The wording suggests the throne is not Sylvestre's by lineage or birthright. How this is supposed to relate to the concept of Sanbreque having a 'crown prince' (Dion) is unclear and contradictory, since an emperor by election should probably not have the authority to unilaterally decide on the succession of the throne, and his issue—legitimate or no—should not automatically be in the line of succession.

Dhalmekia is a republic with elected officials.

The Iron Kingdom apparently has a royal family, but nothing else is known apart from it being impotent and sidelined by their state religion.

The Northern Tribes likely do have hereditary rule, and Jill is referred to as a princess, but once again little is known.

Ergo—and I am ceaseless in this propaganda—Clive and Joshua are really, properly posh! Absolutely baffling that Anabella would allow anyone to put down the pedigree of her sons when they are so blue-blooded precisely because she is! For someone with such entrenched ideas of blood purity she should not stand for it, no matter how she feels about her eldest.

[madmonksandmaenads]

Something I have learned while reading about magic:

NEVER TRUST AN OCCULTIST WITH MONEY OR A DEADLINE.

[allisonperryart]

Told ya' I'd get back to posting more Carol and the End of the World eventually! Here's some colour keys of the boss' office: something we discussed early on was how the closed blinds in his office were representative of his mental state and feelings towards the end of the world - literally blocking Keppler out of his view, and we wanted that to be clearly reflected in the lighting of the space even when they weren't on-screen, which is what we were exploring here.

One of my favourite silly little details: a framed photo of Business Men Doing Business Things! Since the lineart I was provided was just a rough, it didn't have a design in the frame, so I just improvised, ha ha - pretty sure we changed it in the final design, though, so enjoy this little peek behind the curtains! Thanks for looking, and watch Carol & the End of the World on Netflix if you haven't already:

Showrunner: Dan Guterman BG design: Alex Myung Art direction: @ellemichalka

[usefulquotes7]

To impart a moral responsibility to exercise fairness in leadership builds greater leaders of strong character. Wayne Chirisa

[adrianicsea]

i acknowledge that it’s ultimately silly and frivolous and parasocial to be upset about the actions of a celebrity but like. god i used to think rob was SO so fucking cool and like… what happened? where did all of that passion go? saying the word “sellout” now may seem like a foregone conclusion or like “oh you’re just now getting that memo?” but like. god damn.

[presiding]

I'm not a new follower and I've been here long enough but i do have a relatively bad memory

So I've wanted to ask, what's your opinion on "Dishonored: death of the outsider"?

Right now I'm replaying Dishonored games not in the release order, i already finished DH2 and started Daud dlcs. Maybe I'll go for vanilla DH later

But thoughts about going through death of the outsider again makes me feel something that i can't explain... 😬

It has some interesting ideas but antagonists are underused. Locations repeat a lot. And Billie herself deserved SO much better than whatever is going on with her character

I'm genuinely debating if i should revisit *this* one or pretend that DH2 is the last game. I know that some people love DOTO but i can't find strength in me

love to chat about death of the outsider, ty for the ask!

i feel your pain. it's the one game i struggle to revisit. but! i was thinking about your points and how DotO has the feel of budget cuts.

it's been about a year since my last DotO post - so, essay time -

a measured response to common DotO criticisms

(the thousand bugs of dishonored 2 I had borne as I best could, but when doto ventured upon sidelining billie and retconning daud's arc I vowed revenge*

*can't resist a cask of amontillado joke

criticism is easy and creation is hard, so, if this isn't the type of response you wanted, you can read my other DotO posts:

how i'd write death of the outsider

that post i did after trying to play doto a third time and couldn't make it past the opening scene (you might like my tags on this re: your comment "makes me feel something i can't explain")

billie lurk as a nonprotagonist & misogynoir (more on this below...)

gonna leapfrog off your comments cause I agree!

antagonists are underused/locations repeat a lot.

who is steering the boat?

let's start up at the top; everything stems from there.

DotO was caught up in ownership/transition issues. here's an article about harvey smith and raphael colantanio at that time. if you didnt know, colantonio is the main founder of arkane (semi-related but just for fun look his appearance up then go through arkane's protags and tell me what you notice...).

quote from harvey smith re: DotO -

“Then, just as I move back, [Colantonio is] announcing that he’s leaving. Going forward, I’ll focus more and more on the Austin studio and what we’re going to do there. Death of the Outsider is my wrapping up with the guys in Lyon – the first half of that we planned together while I was living there, but the second half was worked on while I was living in Austin. I’ve been communicating with them through video conferences and stuff, so they carry a lot of the load of the second half of it.”

so the founder jumped ship and the co-creative director has to step away from his usual position (over to sinking ship Austin). meanwhile, DotO is still in development. i'm a big believer in people making art, and not companies (even in this article Smith acknowledges much of their "secret sauce" can be traceable to specific devs but i digress)

$$$ kaching - some speculation

on the note of founders - past this point in arkane's history (ie. the main founder stepping back), arkane would have been being primed for sale. this translates to high scrutiny on project expenditure (such as hiring cheaper early career staff, hiring less workers, denying your best staff raises causing them to leave and hiring cheaper workers in their place, etc) to make the company's EBITDA look more appealing to buyers (briefly, its the piece of paper that proves you're profitable). based on speculative timelines, from a purely $ perspective within the first year of dh2 being released is when you'd be looking to slim down your capitalised expenditure (aka: cutting staff while the revenue is at a peak to make number go brr and make your company look like a better investment) because to maximise the profit of a company's sale, you really have a great track record for a few years.

this is purely speculation based on timelines. companies are very careful to hide when they're doing this, ideally they want ~3 years of a great track record (and staff that will keep working their hardest).

big goals and no money

DotO was meant to be a two-part DLC like the Dh1 DLCs, so shout out to what could have been made if their original pitch had worked.

On locations & antagonists & budget - this dev's site discusses the Conservatory level in game AND specifies it was budget constraints being the reason for cutting off traversable area from that mission. Great link for comparing the original level & the DotO version, especially re: your point about reused assets/levels.

We could pick other examples here but this post is already long so -

Billie herself deserved SO much better than whatever is going on with her character

i would forgive this game anything if there was any good billie storywriting.

:')

its never just the writers

after revisiting articles to fact-check for this essay, i've seen a lot of articles blaming writers by name (you didn't do this anon which i love <3)

games are made by teams, and decision making is generally done top-down, so blaming individual contributors is shit. 1) writer's pay isn't good enough to cop this kind of abuse. 2) it's rarely in their control - you can write a beautiful scene only to have that level cut due to costs (etc), and then you need to work out how to make the story make sense. ideation & decision-making are separate and i guess 'this idea was [X]'s' should not be mistaken for 'this is the fault of [X]'s.'

on hiring fans (& imm-sim writing strategies)

the new writers [...] already had an idea of the world, as they’d seen it from the outside, as fans. “These are all people that knew this world we had created and they took it as canonical, as the gospel. Whereas, for us, it was bits and pieces we’d made up along the way.”

as someone who used to hire writers, and i promise this isn't in bad faith: don't hire fans unless your priority is cost then, sure, fans are likely to put in overtime (and not be in a position in their career where they can ask for higher remuneration - they'll pay the passion tax to be involved).

writers (esp new career writers) have to be open to receiving feedback assuming healthy/functional processes, and being a fan makes that harder because you care more. and, as a fan, you know what loose ends exist and that's where you'll naturally jump to, even though writers should start with target audience and branding, and build from there. if i expand on this i'll get offtopic so let's keep going!

DotO feels lifeless because it doesn't add anything to the DH universe, it only takes away by closing storylines without the satisfaction of closure. sure, stuff was added - the cult subplot, locations, some NPCs/enemies, etc. but they feel like part of the objectives, not part of the dishonored universe. you can feel the decision-making process when you play: there's a feeling that the priority was to finish the assets required for missions, instead of writing a story that feels immersive.

compared to standard videogame writing, where you can generally get away with "everything you touch and read relates to your objectives as the protagonist", as an imm-sim writer, you need to focus on:

how does this text build the universe so that the player feels like they're only seeing a small part of the world?

of course - this is difficult with budget/time concerns. i've said it before but this is part of why we rarely have games as rich as dishonored 1 & 2, because imm-sim design philosophy flies against the current videogame industry trends of microtransactions & cheap-to-make addictive mobile games. given a tight budget you focus on the high level story, but player immersion is a function of details.

most likely, dh2 was the end of an era. typing that out makes me sad.

what did the devs say about writing billie

*breathes deeply*

the death of the outsider protag was originally pitched as being about a regular human, someone not related to emily and corvo but instead an overseer or a brigmore witch. daud was also pitched.

this could have worked! really cool to have a nobody, or a heretic, or an overseer, be involved with the death of a god. and i've mentioned before that storywise DotO's protag could have been anyone (i think i made a joke about wyman? hah) and wouldn't change the story much, bar some daud bits.

quote from the same article:

eventually Arkane settled on Billie Lurk, Emily's companion from Dishonored 2. [...] Bakaba tells me that because Billie had already received her redemption arc in Dishonored 2, Death Of The Outsider's story could be about something more than that.

welp.

so there's two things here - a redemption arc claim, and DotO's actual story.

in addition to not being the first pick, the view was that billie's story was over. i question the 'redemption arc' claim - sure, billie helps the protag in dh2 but after her confession, if you tell her she's changed, she brushes it off and you part awkwardly without forgiving her... does that count? if a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it does it make a sound? if a character redeems themselves but the story never tells you, are they redeemed?

billie's role in dh2 isn't really that different to the dlcs, where she follows you around being Mr Exposition while withholding a LOT of information that could have actually helped the protag. given DotO's plot, going after the killer who shaped her doesn't scream 'reformed' either. ludonarratively speaking, the lack of chaos implies billie never changed from being a callous killer - which i'm not against, it would have been a cool story.

and! contrast this with daud who already had his redemption arc!

When first conceptualising Death Of The Outsider in around 2014, Smith and Duval knew they wanted two things: Billie Lurk being used to get to The Outsider himself, and closure for Dishonored villain (and later ally) Daud.

in the two DLCs, as we know, he comes to realise his actions sucked, and as the player you actively make things right (related: my post about ludonarrative dissonance in dh2). so if billie had "already received her redemption arc", why was this another daud story?

imo this isn't a budget issue but a misogynoir issue. "we want this story to be not about the protagonist so any random NPC will do, how about we go with billie lurk and get a black woman as a dishonored protag?" this logic, which is what i'm reading of the above two quotes, feels frustratingly tokenistic when she's an established character with a rich background. it's an example of surface level diversity because DotO is not about her by arkane's own admission. it's a similar vibe to the companies who say they have a diverse team but you check their staff page and all the people of colour have 'assistant' in their title and the board is all white, so it's not people of colour who are driving the business. maybe this was entirely by accident but these accidents add up to systematic failure - billie gets her own game but never her own story. it feels like she got assigned the caretaker role for these two guys. great.

for fairness, let's compare to dh2. corvo & emily are relatively hands-off protags in terms of their ongoing thoughts about their surroundings and the lore placement about them specifically is sparse, and this style continues in DotO. the issue is the core narrative: corvo & emily are both the protagonists of their story in the sense that dh2's story reflects their goals ("take back what's yours"), whereas Billie is an established character who has arguably little reason to go along with each mission. worse, the main plotline she's literally forced into going along with. in the opening scene billie gets assaulted and still helps the guy who assaulted her.

fundamentally, DotO's narrative is not about billie but about daud and the outsider, and this article makes clear that was by design.

whats the takeaway

DotO is the weakest entry in the Dishonored series for most people, and blaming budget & a corporate changeover makes me feel... uh well it doesn't really help me tbh but your mileage may vary. it does interest me to think about what we could have had!

for me, my opinion is that if writing billie was a priority (link to my own post where i describe the feeling of playing doto as someone interested in billie) arkane would have made it a priority, even amidst constraints. billie's redemption arc was not resolved imo, and putting her in a game without a chaos system feels like as much a backwards slide for her as daud's plotline to kill the outsider was for his arc.

we absolutely 🤝 on not being in a rush to play the game again.

on the upside. dishonored 2 is a really wonderful game and i love it very much.

[thesapphireprincess]

Guys… I was watching a video and I learned that Harvard has a bunch of free courses on their website. I honestly did not know this. I find this to be so interesting omg. I’m not sure which one to start first but I think I might start with designing organizational structure since I’ve been wondering how to have more structure in my business. I think all of these are worth the time, it’s an mental investment! Actually learning something. And plus it’s free education provided by an Ivy League university.

I’ve been guilty of watching motivational videos and then skipping the videos that are actually teaching something rewarding! Definitely let me know if you’re interested in this type of information. I also really want to expand my vocabulary. I recently stopped using slang and sometimes it pops back up but I’m trying to become more articulate! Let’s take advantage of these free resources! No rush, take your time. Let me know if this is something you’re interested in!

[thepersonalquotes]

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.

T.S. Eliot

[carrotkicks]

hi hi hi please do share ur reverse au thoughts. especially would like to hear about fukuzawa :]

I think Fukuzawa's not unlike his canon version. He's honorbound and whatnot. There's this whole thing during the very beginning of the main storyline he's trying to avoid getting involved with the ADA, out of respect to his old buddy Mori, of course that goes down the drain when the mafia and ada eventually get pitted against each other.

Misc thoughts:

Fukuzawa eventually joins the Port Mafia as a hit man, Untold Origins never happened so he eventually became disillusioned with his moral code. And being in the mafia kinda messes up your moral code.

He starts climbing up the ranks of the Port Mafia, gets to around the same level as Hirotsu.

He and Mori do their Double Black thing a little later, Natsume approaches them specifically because of their prominence in the Underworld

he meets Ranpo, when the kid's gotten himself involved trying to "solve" one of the Port Mafia's hit jobs. Fukuzawa saves him from trouble because 'he's just a dumb misguided kid, he doesn't deserve to get hurt. Ranpo immediately latches onto him and eventually helps with some thing he's been working on and he's like. Well i guess I have a son now.

Eventually he makes it up to being the Old Boss's personal bodyguard

Asassination time with Fukuzawa and Ranpo!

[thepersonalwords]

A person who values their goals actually values their achievements.

Onyi Anyado