Hutch Games
OPPORTUNITY
London based game studio, Hutch, prides itself on doing things differently. Teams at Hutch have the freedom and responsibility to make the best decisions for players, and the studio is committed to providing all their teams with this level of independence. Hutch is laser focused on designing the best cars for video games on mobile devices.
Hutch has been growing rapidly and as some of their more senior managers and leaders took on new responsibilities in their roles, they began searching for a more structured approach to managing their very autonomous teams.
“Hutch has grown rapidly over the last three years to over 100 staff, and we were facing a series of challenges culturally and operationally. As we’ve grown as a company, we've tried to be mindful and respond to opportunities without sacrificing our culture.”
– Andy Watson, COO Hutch
CHOOSING OVERTIME LEADER
After participating in our ScaleUp Management program in partnership with BackedVC, the COO of Hutch saw an opportunity to bring a similar program in-house. He found our programme to be particularly relevant to the challenges Hutch was facing. The course seemed a good fit due to its long term schedule, that allowed time to discuss various challenges and topics in depth.
Hutch is a rapidly scaling business that is grounded in it’s people and culture, so choosing a course that was centred around a coaching approach, self-learning and developing an understanding from the shared experience of the group was vital. And that’s exactly what we gave the Hutch team, a management program that we designed to fit those very needs of guiding leadership, protecting people and culture, and enabling organizational growth.
Solutions & Working with OverTime Leader
We designed an intensive leadership program grounded in the notion that the future of leadership is more hands-off than hands-on. We created opportunities for the team to reflect, learn, and experiment together, not only for their own leadership style but for stronger bonds as a team. We covered core topics such as:
Change management
Communication and influence
Facilitation and stakeholder management
Self-awareness
Driving performance
Each session was paired with a pre-thinking workbook, and each module had a short assignment so that they could test themselves and learn as we went through the program.
“The scale-up course seemed uniquely relevant to Hutch. Curated with specific topics and self-learning materials with a strong emphasis on coaching and learning from the group...It felt natural to bring the course in house, so the teams running projects could develop and nurture their leadership skills and further develop their own team cultures while learning from each other in a safe space”
– Andy Watson, COO Hutch
Results Achieved
Working with the Hutch team, we enabled them to find a leadership framework that maintained a balance of taking charge to guide their people, while also letting go and allowing those individuals the space to go off and create.
The OverTime leader team worked closely with those at Hutch to roadmap a sustainable culture that they could live and scale by without losing the integrity of their playful, people first, community culture.
The team left at the end of the course with a full toolbox of management approaches, a group of peers they could lean on, and a consistent approach to leadership as the company continued to grow.
Lessons Learned
This project's biggest challenge was to get the team centered around their culture, and make that culture so strong that it would remain in alignment even as Hutch continued to grow and scale. We enabled the Hutch team to have confidence in staying true to their culture as they continued to expand by focusing on the importance of communication, reflection, vulnerability within the team, and fostering a balance between taking control to give teams guidance while also letting go to allow for experimentation and creativity across the team.