Sakurai on Creating Games: Work Attitude (23)

Masahiro Sakurai, the creator of the Kirby and Super Smash Bros. series, shares a wealth of game-development know-how on his YouTube channel “Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games”. This article summarizes and restructures the content of that channel by topic.

That said, a summary is only an entry point. So much of the value — Sakurai’s own words, his real-world examples, his pacing, and the footage itself — can only be gotten from the videos. So please don’t stop at reading the article; I strongly encourage you to also watch the original videos embedded under each topic.

In particular, the “Work Attitude” category is notable for how much of it applies universally — not just to game-making but to everyone who makes things and works. Here we bring together the key points of all 3 videos (23 individual topics), structured in 3 parts following the 3 source videos. Each part opens with its explanatory video, so please watch along.

Part 1: The work of play isn’t play, writing proposals (#01–#10)

The videos Sakurai released over about two years from 2022 number around 260. It’s supposed to be talk about game-making, yet listening, there are many moments where you feel this is a pro’s work philosophy that applies to everyone who makes things and works in a team. In this Part 1 we look at 10 of the most universal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DilMfcXduL8

1. The work of play isn’t play

Asked “why do you make games?”, most people would answer “because I love games.” That matters too, of course, but Sakurai’s answer is a bit different: the top reason is “because it’s the work I’m best at.” Loving it comes second, rather.

Game-making is work that produces play, but the work itself isn’t play. Making it just as a hobby is fine, but once you put it on sale and money is involved, you must always think of it as “work.” Small indies tend to make works they love, but once you take money, even an indie is a pro, and behaving deftly per demand matters.

This is easy to feel when working in a team. It’s an everyday thing for staff to handle a game that doesn’t match their taste — an artist who loves cute things may keep making detailed textures of zombies and cockroaches. Even so, as work you must deftly handle even the opposite of your taste. That said, it’s best to enjoy any work, so finding fun and worth within it matters too, Sakurai adds.

So if you become a director or game designer who plans from scratch, can you make what you love? Not necessarily, in fact. Sakurai himself decides the games he makes with no relation to his own taste. Someone good at games deliberately makes Kirby’s Dream Land, specialized for beginners; bad at falling-block puzzles, he makes Meteos. Whatever genre he’s shown, he treats it as a “challenge” and tries to make the best thing.

And the final goal common to all makers of diverse games is to entertain the player. When you’re stuck or lost in development, return here first. There are production circumstances and difficulties, but make the players’ enjoyment the motive for your actions — that’s Sakurai’s message.

2. A pitch is speed

Not just games — making something in a team always brings moments of pitching ideas. Even outside team production, you’ll often have chances to convey what you made.

The one key Sakurai, relatively good at pitching, gives is: a pitch is speed. Trim the fat and convey only what’s needed. Diagrams are necessary, but keep them simple.

But shorter isn’t always better. What matters is how densely and rhythmically you can advance within limited time. Avoid a long, dragging pitch and deliver the key points swiftly. That, in the end, is the knack for being most memorable.

3. Can you explain it to the customer?

Game-making proceeds against a computer that doesn’t take reason, with vast manpower. So contradictions inevitably arise between what you want to do and what you can do. A spec that comes up from the person compiling it can be convenient for development but unkind to the player — not rare.

At such times, what Sakurai often says is “Are you going to go around explaining that to the players?” To the player, the maker’s circumstances are none of their business. Good and bad can’t be split into 0 and 1, but still the production side’s circumstances don’t matter to the player.

The maker themselves should originally be a player of some game too. So they should understand the feel of playing — yet on the making side, with too many challenges to clear, their awareness drifts from the player’s view. That’s the pitfall.

What matters is always holding the player-based viewpoint. There are technical walls, and the right answer isn’t always one due to taste. Even so, the foremost party to prioritize is the customer — the player. If it seems unkind, consider other hands, consult not just planning but programmers too, and reconcile ideal and tech. That’s crucial.

4. Changing the spec

A spec change is both something to avoid as much as possible and something to do flexibly. This two-sidedness is the trouble.

Change a spec and what you’ve made so far is wasted, and the dev path tends to take a detour. It costs, and motivation may drop. So “change the spec because it’s not fun” should be avoided as much as possible; fun should be foreseen from the planning stage.

On the other hand, however meticulously you plan, there are things you can’t know until you actually make it. To get the finished form into a showable state, you can only make it in the end, and trying to perfect the pre-materials and assumptions can become the absurdity of that prep alone taking one game’s worth of effort.

Here Sakurai strongly says: speak up the moment you notice a problem. Once you’ve decided to change a spec, there’s no point continuing while holding the problem. For a staffer who noticed a problem to say afterward “I thought so” is a no. Share with everyone, without omission, the moment you notice. Players can’t change things even with a problem, but dev staff have a chance to change the spec.

A deliverable is a combination of many elements. Even moving one enemy needs spec, design, model, motion, effects, program, script, SFX. If upstream is late or the whole schedule is jammed, hands stop instantly. That’s exactly why spec-change judgment is hard and can only be called case-by-case.

Note that Sakurai himself reaches conclusions on the spot without spending time on a born problem, because wavering wastes time. But correct judgment needs correct info, so he grasps everything known. And consulting is less of a loss the earlier it is. Development is always moving, so the speed of judgment directly connects to efficiency.

5. How to write a proposal

From here it leans toward “planning and game design,” but it’s applicable content. Sakurai’s recent proposal format is shared within what’s possible.

The example is the Smash Bros. Ultimate proposal. Made in PowerPoint, nearly every page in the same format: one photo or diagram, two lines of text. One explanation item is done with just this.

But the page count itself is high — over 200 pages. Even so, it flips fast like a manga, so the pitch doesn’t take much time. “A proposal should be thin” is often said, but Sakurai doesn’t necessarily agree. What matters is whether it’s clear, fun, and sound. If a dense pitch can be heard rhythmically, the page count itself isn’t the issue.

The proposal has major and minor categories, so you can tell roughly where in the whole you’re talking about. Nothing is harder than a pitch with no visible end.

Also, Sakurai says he doesn’t do pitches that just read text aloud. A pitch that puts long text on screen and reads it aloud irritates the listener, since they read ahead. Make it graspable at a glance, but in the end what’s written in the content matters most — a point not to forget.

6. Finish a proposal on high heat, fast

If the previous item was a proposal’s “format,” this is the knack of the “process” of finishing one.

First, as a premise, when writing a proposal, don’t dawdle. Nothing good comes of dragging. Quickly compile the outline, write out the items, and keep dropping them into pitch documents.

To do this well, prior planning talks. Sort the major and minor items firmly, and don’t make the text too long. Reinforce the image with photos. On the other hand, listing planning intent at length, or preparing graphs, research, or a Plan B, is unnecessary, he says. Conveying only what you think is needed, simply, is the basis.

It’s not about fewer pages, either. What’s asked is whether each page is compiled with appropriate information. And above all, the momentum of writing it out all at once while the will to make it is high matters. The later it gets, the more a proposal’s freshness drops.

That said, proposals have limits. The crucial fun is, surprisingly, what a proposal doesn’t show. For example, Monster Hunter is, at the planning level, a game of “hunt monsters and craft gear from their materials.” On paper there’s no flashy novelty, and only part of the real appeal comes across. That is, a game’s true fun is born in the “polishing.”

Still, there’s no work where there’s no proposal. Put out a proposal with momentum and bounce, so those funding or staffing it think “let’s give it a go.” And even if it doesn’t pass, don’t think “they have no eye for it.” The responsibility to convey the appeal lies with the planner.

7. Hardship fades, the work remains

Game development is a continuous, steady, vast task of stacking pebbles one by one on a computer that won’t do as you wish. What keeps it going is the thought that if many people play it, any hardship is rewarded.

This isn’t about the scale of sales. If players number 1,000, the effect against the effort is 1,000×; 10,000, then 10,000×. Not just games — much of the world holds up that way, supported by many people. Conversely, keep compromising to make it easy, and you’ll surely regret it later.

A bit surprising was a failure Sakurai still can’t forget. Though the hardships fade, the spots where he made a mistake in a work are hard to forget. For example, about a scene in Kirby’s Adventure’s ending, “this should have been a screen flash, not screen shake” still stays with him, he says.

Meanwhile, the works sold beyond his imagination. Smash Bros. Ultimate alone is at least 29 million-plus. That rivals Australia’s population, and all of the Smash series combined approaches the UK’s population. At this point, the hardship probably blows away.

But this isn’t about doing pointless hardship. It’s about maximizing efficiency and then striving to serve. Work while thinking of repaying buyers you’ve yet to meet. Hardship is forgotten once over, but the work remains forever. You’d want it to be as regret-free as possible.

8. A director is an “individual”

Many aim to be a director or game designer, and the question “how do I become one?” is constant. But per Sakurai, capable directors have few things in common. He has many acquaintances, but each does something completely different.

If forced to name a commonality, it’s that they’re sharp in sense, seeing things differently from others. Talking with them, many have views and ideas Sakurai wouldn’t even notice. They pick up some trifle without missing it when looking at one thing, or feel differently from others — in every aspect: visuals, gameplay, movement, story, how people feel.

So a director may be a bit of an oddball, he says. But to be clear, a degree of balance sense is needed too, as is the power to broadcast from yourself. As with games, the director’s job also asks for individuality only that person can put out.

9. Just do it!!

Anyone can face something and not get motivated, unable to start. Especially the moment of turning 0 into 1 — starting the engine from nothing — is truly hard.

The one, greatest solution Sakurai offers, usable by anyone, is “just do it.” Writing a plan or text — write it now. Drawing — just keep drawing. Need to go out — get ready and go now. Motivation comes later, so just move your hands first.

Sakurai asserts: training yourself, and getting close to success, ultimately come down to “the number of moves.” No success without output. Think about meaning later; first move your hands. Ingenuity like visualizing tasks can be thought about after you’ve started moving. Keep a little distance from the temptation of SNS and video sites. Many probably find this an uncomfortable truth.

10. Why I could keep the column going

Sakurai once ran a column in Weekly Famitsu. Its span was 18 years, 9 months, 640 entries — probably the world’s longest game-magazine column by a game creator, he says.

He began it while serving as the supervising director of the Kirby series, and later, when leaving HAL Laboratory, there was a spat with the editorial department — when he wrote about quitting the company, he was told “we can’t run this,” and such behind-the-scenes stories are revealed. There were times material nearly ran dry from busy development, but he kept deadlines and the column went on.

So why could it last so long? Three main reasons.

1. Output isn’t a burden. For Sakurai, a director, conveying something isn’t much of a load
2. Don’t overwork it. Each is written in about an hour, so there’s no strain
3. Don’t psych yourself up. Write casually, without “I must write” or “many are watching,” and without a sense of mission

All three are free of a sense of mission like “for the game industry.” Rather, psyching yourself up too much makes it painful and stops your hands. Any work is better thought about somewhat casually, and especially for something continued as a habit, making it enjoyable rather than an obligation is the secret to lasting.

And not to be missed: this very Famitsu column was the precursor to the YouTube show “Creating Games.” Without the habit of writing the column, he might never have thought to make the show. Further, that column began because he happened to meet an editor in the online game Final Fantasy XI. What connects to what is unknown — that’s the fun of it.

Part 2: Don’t rely on Plan B, raise the internal pressure (#11–#20)

Part 2 lines up more practical, in-depth work philosophy — how to advance planning, decision-making in a team. Useful not just for game development but for anyone doing making or planning work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubYmCCEWkAk

11. Don’t rely on Plan B

When writing a proposal or spec, you often waver — “which is more efficient,” “which is convenient for programming,” “which feels more fun.” You may want to present both and leave it to the other party.

So a common appearance in proposals is a Plan B that lists both options with “you could also do X.” But Sakurai says it’s better not to write a Plan B, especially in a proposal. Don’t double-submit options. Comprehensively, just pick the one you think is best.

Take proposals afterward. The feeling of “there’s a hand A and a hand B…” is understandable, but in a proposal it should be avoided. There’s always one ideal spec, and you make course corrections toward it for cost-effectiveness. That much suffices. For that, many proposals from within the team, and lending an ear to them, are needed too.

The planner writes the spec they think ideal. If there’s a problem, the team considers solutions. It’s possible to end up back at plan B, but what matters is the planner consistently putting out a single move they’ve thought through with responsibility from the start. This is effective for gaining experience too. A plan is the skeleton, the framework. Don’t spike it everywhere; make it crisp and coherent.

12. The trunk and branch tips of values

On the premise that “there are many ways of thinking,” Sakurai says “people are diverse, but in youth the differences may be small.”

Lump them as “people who play games” and what they do varies widely: those who keep buying home packages, those who play only a specific social game, those competing in versus FPS, those immersing in worlds via VR, those playing for health, those meeting friends in MMORPGs, those binging indies on PC. Even the same game fans, their essence differs entirely.

In the Famicom era, compared to now, everyone played similar things. With the diversification of values, that spread like branching, each settling where they like.

Here Sakurai touches on why Nintendo’s works sell well. High quality, of course, but they aren’t the cutting edge of hardware or tech. One reason, perhaps, is that they hit with younger audiences.

As people grow, values branch by experience, encounters, and triggers. The branched ends naturally narrow. But before branching, the trunk is thick. Think of younger audiences as on this trunk; the market before diversity arises is thick. And what they experience then may be passed to the next generation too.

This isn’t declaring “the reason Nintendo sells” (there are many more reasons); it’s that, amid spreading values, you should survey and be conscious of where to aim in game-making — not by your own likes and dislikes. Universal things, the royal road, and series entries hitting easily may be because they ride values people have formed.

Of course, the market at the branch tips is narrow, but the people out there may be the only ones who can enjoy it fervently. It’s not “let’s all aim for the trunk”; it’s that being conscious lets you target, too.

13. Make both input and output thick

To do good work, he feels it’s essential to make both input and output thick. Input is stimulus received from outside; output is what you put out from yourself. He recommends habituating these and making them routine.

Sakurai’s input centers on enjoying other games and visual works. He plays as many titles as possible. Sometimes too busy to touch them, but he plays anyway. Rather than playing one forever, he touches more titles. But he doesn’t aim to see the ending. It’s to grasp the scale of today’s games and not lose to it.

Output is broadcasting from yourself: the 18-years-9-months Famitsu column, info on the dev-site daily report, the “Shot of the Day” (dev screenshots) he posted on Twitter, and this show. All are examples of an output habit.

Take in a lot, put out a lot. Doing both actively seems to enable good work. But the form of input varies by person; you don’t have to force yourself to play games. Even seeing the same thing, feeling and ruminating on various things differs greatly. Don’t let things flow in one ear and out the other.

14. Raise the internal pressure to the boiling point

If you’re starting something from 0, like a proposal, Sakurai recommends absolutely not talking to anyone midway. Hold it in and keep writing the plan in your heart. This is the idea of “internal pressure,” which Sakurai believes in and practices.

Internal pressure is the pressure trying to expand outward, like inflating a balloon. A pressure cooker may be the closer analogy. A plan keeps expanding in your head, but people get satisfied by talking to people. That is, talking releases the pressure, and the content’s force also drains.

He understands there are group-ideation methods like brainstorming. But writing a plan needs force. The feeling of “I want to” and “let’s do it” makes a proposal feel the pressure. A spec held in and written up without telling anyone has higher heat, surely. If you need to consult, do it after compiling the proposal. First, why not throw yourself in while facing yourself?

This applies to SNS too. Avoid venting your material or work progress on SNS. First hold it in hard, grow the internal pressure, and slam that momentum into the work. Making it while imagining how the audience will feel is recommended too. Imagining the customer’s reaction and points of awe, you can probably push harder.

15. The meaningless majority vote

When opinions split on a plan or spec, you want to rely on a majority vote, but it’s best to avoid it as much as possible. In making a work, a majority vote is essentially meaningless.

A majority vote is democratic, and we tend to think what many want is correct. But for a work it isn’t so. A spec many took negatively at planning often turns out fun once actually made.

In a story Sakurai heard, when Metal Gear Solid 3 proposed “you get injured and treat it,” only four staff agreed. Anyone who’s played the finished game should understand its fun.

What comes up by majority vote is the safest — that is, mediocre. For team operations that can be best, but for a game’s or work’s content, it’s often better for a core person like the director to decide solo, with responsibility.

But the person with decision power needs balance sense too. Someone who keeps saying unreasonable things with thin grounds becomes just a troublesome dictator. The person in charge needs correct info to judge well, so staff should lay out problems and candidate solutions in full.

Incidentally, Sakurai too sometimes takes a team vote. For the maid-outfit design of Smash’s Mii Fighter, he himself was thinking A or B, and as a diversion took a staff vote. The product became A, but by director’s call he made just the socks white, since varying the brightness of the skin more makes movement easier to see.

16. The power of suggestion

When Sakurai was a slow runner in middle school, he once suddenly took first place. The method might be a winning formula in races.

First, get to the start line and ready up. At that time, suggest to yourself that something terribly frightening is chasing from behind at high speed. In Sakurai’s case, he imagined something like heavy machinery over 3 meters tall, packed with rotating grinders. At the start signal, dash full-out, fleeing desperately as it closes to a distance where your legs might be ground off. Then, before you know it, you’ve crossed the finish tape — fleeing makes you fast.

You may find it ridiculous. Sakurai thinks so too. But the power of suggestion isn’t to be underestimated. Mindset matters in anything, and the point is direction. Rather than simply heading for a goal, thinking the deadline or end is closing from behind is fairly effective, he says.

For any work, “I can land anytime” gets it done slower than “I must finish in X more hours.” When Sakurai was last in middle school, he ran as if chasing his own shadow, but that’s no good. Effect differs greatly by person and situation, so half of this is an aside, but a “fleeing from something” suggestion may be more effective than a “heading toward something” one.

17. A concept is to be upheld

Game-making generally lasts long. With long development you tire, and you can actually lose sight of which part is fun and how. But never bend the concept you set at the start. “Never lose sight of it” may be the better way to put it.

When planning, you naturally think of some concept. Broken down: “the fun of launching the opponent,” “showing a deep story via three-dimensional scenario structure,” “the exhilaration of just blasting straight down a road.” That is, a concept is the core that directs a game’s appeal.

Changing direction midway because the game has drifted from the assumption isn’t recommended. A concept is like a lighthouse’s flame. Even if a storm comes or it dissolves into darkness, always keep aiming for that direction. Otherwise you wander, and once lost you sink deeper.

There’s a method of advancing development and flexibly tuning per accidental fun that emerges. That may be fairly common. There’s scrap-and-build too. But that risks wasting much production material — you may scrap months of an artist’s or programmer’s work. It costs, and staff motivation drops. He even says you shouldn’t advance a project at least until the director can clearly see the lighthouse flame.

Honestly, with new projects the appeal often isn’t clear to staff until you make it. However much you preach the fun in a proposal, that alone doesn’t convey the game’s goodness. He’s even been told “I finally understood what you wanted after it was finished.” That’s exactly why at least the director should advance the direction set at the start without wavering. Go straight and you fully use the resources staff make.

18. Competition and abundance

This applies to all kinds of work too. As a fact, there are very many people who want to make games. The games born worldwide alone are countless, and the people involved in making them are far more.

Putting it a bit harshly, Sakurai says: if you’re making games and want to quit, feel free to step away. Even if one person quits, there are heaps who want to make games. Like it or not, fierce competition with various people and teams is happening. Games especially take time to play, so it’s a scramble for the player’s time.

Making a game you think is fun is fine. But putting it out commercially, you must be conscious that competition is happening. And not just current latest works — you’re competing with works born in the past too. Especially with subscriptions, it inevitably becomes a battle with past works.

On the other hand, from the player’s or customer’s standpoint, nothing is happier. So many people make so many games, and you choose and play what you like. What a great era. You can play games because there are people who make them.

Sakurai, knowing game-making’s hardships well, says he’s grateful to many game titles. Everything you use and every service takes more effort than you’d think. Can I really enjoy that effort at this price? he often thinks. Many who make games stepped onto the path from the fun and emotion of playing others’ games. What someone made while suffering delights someone else. That a fun world is built even amid competition is worth being conscious of.

19. What you say comes true

Don’t underestimate the power of words. Sakurai says “what you say comes to be that way.”

Of course, saying “it’ll definitely rain tomorrow” or “I’ll become an Olympian” is meaningless. But, for example, saying negative things — “money keeps disappearing,” “working is pointless,” “every day is boring” — or posting them on SNS, each time, makes them actually come to be, he thinks. Conversely, saying positive things may bring fortune around.

…Put like fortune-telling, it sounds rather fishy. Sakurai admits as much. What he means isn’t that; it’s that what you say and think shapes your attitude. Invisible and uncertain in effect, it’s hard to underestimate.

What’s interesting is that this isn’t about a negative mindset being bad. Holding negativity is fine — it’s not “let’s be positive.” In a sense, negativity may be a chance for proactiveness more than mere positivity. Think “work is pointless”? Then think about what makes for better work. “Every day is boring”? Then think about doing something more unusual. It easily becomes fuel with a concrete direction.

You roll in the direction you talk. When throwing yourself into something, “I can still do more” is a valid way to fire up. As with the earlier suggestion talk, in the end the one who moves wins. Say “I’ll go,” “I’ll do it,” “I’ll get out,” and you move in some forward direction.

20. The echo chamber

An echo chamber originally means a reverberation room — a room where sound, when made, bounces back like an echo or reverb. By extension, it’s the name for a self-reinforcement phenomenon on SNS and the like.

For example, you post some opinion on SNS. Then many who agree appear. By that, you self-reinforce “my claim is right.” Actually there are people who don’t agree, with other opinions, who oppose — yet your view of the world becomes all-agreement, affirming “I’m right.” In a closed world, you become unable to accept other opinions and views.

As this progresses, the points to solve can become hard to see, and you may trouble others. It’s prone to happen in game planning and evaluation too — you could call it an everyday thing.

Sakurai asks of this topic: “So what is my claim, exactly?” Does he want to call for looking at the game he made with fairer eyes, or is he saying this in self-defense because he hates being opposed? Either way, taking in only opinions you can agree with itself leads to an echo chamber.

Note that his talk this time just states facts flatly and is neither. But the echo chamber can affect a work. Whether it rounds off or sharpens is unclear, but without objectivity, it surely becomes poorly balanced.

That said, in game-making, steering hard in a wildly biased direction may be enjoyable in its own right — far better than being swayed by others. Hearing problems from staff and flexibly matching the situation matters, but an identity pushed in a specific direction can have a force nothing else can replace. In any case, taking balance in the end matters. Beware the echo chamber.

Part 3: How to generate ideas, never pick a fight (#21–#23)

This is the third video of the category, the last three topics. It centers on how to generate ideas and human relations in a team — useful to anyone, not just game development.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbrON900-0s

21. When ideas won’t come

You have to come up with some idea, but it just won’t come. What do you do? There’s the “deliberately sleep” approach, but in Sakurai’s case he usually thinks and thinks and somehow squeezes one out. He introduces that method, even if half in jest.

First, define the problem’s theme in some form. Simple is fine. As an example: “how to put out a fire in a certain ruin.”

Next, repeat trial and error in your head endlessly. Douse with water. No water nearby, so no good. Cut off the air. Can’t cut it off, so no good. Cover with sand. No sand either, but maybe dirt works. Put it out with an explosion. Too much collateral damage. Cover with a bucket. The fire isn’t small, but maybe a big bucket works.

This way, you find threads in many patterns. Don’t miss thin threads like “maybe dirt works” or “a big bucket,” and dig further. Not stopping the association matters. Even if feasibility is low, putting them out is the priority. Win on number; culling comes after.

This way, you at least escape the head-clutching state of “no ideas,” and better improvements come into view. Since it’s all in your head, no one’s listening, so casting a wide net like an aside may draw out some idea.

The point is having a “problem theme” first. Thinking from nothing loses you the foothold. Grasp what the problem is, then approach the way to solve it — that’s the recommendation.

22. Never pick a fight

Game development is usually teamwork. Needless to say for dispatch-style work, but even otherwise, you or someone changing affiliation and rotating in and out is an everyday thing.

So you must be careful that the people here now may be working in the same industry in the future. Fight with team members, cause them trouble, or leave a mess behind, and you might join up on a totally unrelated project years later. This industry is narrower than you think.

So you mustn’t fight, and don’t badmouth people. Make an enemy and that person carries a bad reputation of you, and you lose your place. Unless you leave the industry, such behavior almost always comes back to you.

Sometimes another director consults Sakurai: “So-and-so who worked under you is interviewing — how are they?” At such times he can be at a loss for an answer. Of course he doesn’t badmouth and protects people, though.

That said, Sakurai doesn’t say “be an adult and endure.” Returning what you think straight often works to the plus. But you’d better think you make the mood of the work. There’ll be disagreeable people and bad fits, but conversely you may just not see that you’re supported by people with no problems at all.

Leaving where the air doesn’t fit is OK. Putting out constructive opinions straight is OK. But since it eventually comes back to you, stop thinking people are bad.

23. The top is the bottom, the bottom is the top

Teams and work colleagues should be a cooperative structure to push toward one goal — a thought Sakurai cherishes, which he also wrote in his column.

A director, producer, or leader isn’t higher than the surrounding staff in the team. They’re merely in the position of asking people for things and carrying the work to completion; their height is no different from other staff. If anything, the one who first proposes doing something can do nothing without people’s cooperation.

In the work flow, the director is indeed the most upstream. In the sense of instructions, it flows top to bottom. But in reality, since you ask staff to do the work, it’s also bottom to top.

This is easy to grasp by thinking of the customer-maker relationship. The maker doesn’t say “I made it, buy it”; the customer says “I’ll buy it for you.” In the distribution flow the customer is downstream, but in the sense of choice and payment, they’re upstream. The king isn’t the maker; it’s the customer.

If staff are employed by the company, there’s a duty to obey the company itself, but among the equally-employed there’s no up and down. Director or staff, you need neither be arrogant nor servile. A customer who’s arrogant because their position is higher is disliked, right? Whatever your position, an arrogant attitude is disliked as a person. So whether boss or leader, respect for those around you is needed.

What people in a team should do is cooperate and aim for a better completion. Everyone in the team is a comrade; even if they sometimes quarrel, they aren’t enemies.

Incidentally, Sakurai basically uses honorifics and polite speech with names. Same for a newcomer younger and just joined. Conversely, he may not be too humble even in external emails. “The top is the bottom, the bottom is the top.” Especially those in leader or director positions will want to remember these words.

Summary

We’ve now gone through all 3 videos and 23 topics of the “Work Attitude” category. Finally, let’s recap the key points of each part (= each source summary video) by individual topic.

Part 1: The work of play isn’t play, writing proposals (#01–#10)

Part 2: Don’t rely on Plan B, raise the internal pressure (#11–#20)

Part 3: How to generate ideas, never pick a fight (#21–#23)

There’s a lot here, but I hope you’ll revisit it starting from whichever part caught your interest. Please also check out the related categories.