EGD 019: Defining a Strong Mission and Principles with Martial Valéry Co-Founder and COO Oh BiBi

In today’s episode, I’m having a chat with Martial Valéry. He is the Co-Founder and COO of Oh Bibi, a mobile games company based out of Paris, France.

Martial and his co-founders have been experimenting with a flat organization model since the founding of the company. Through trial and error, they have identified a model that works. 

In July 2019, Martial posted a presentation on Linkedin, which highlighted their “laborious process towards a flatter organization”. The LinkedIn discussion can be found here and Martial’s presentation is available from below.

Topics that we discuss in this episode include:

• You have a very inspiring presentation that you shared on LinkedIn this summer, talking about your approach to organization design. Why did you create that presentation?
• Where did the management and organization evolution start from at Oh Bibi?
• Why was the management in your case to be blamed for people leaving?
• Then you invented something called Delegation Poker, can you explain that?
• By delegating and letting people do what they are best at seems to have been your solution. How do you still set criteria for killing a game, retention benchmarks for soft launch?
• You mention that mission and principles where key to the success of the organization setup, can you tell me what the defining mission and principles are?
• How did you talk through the changes in the management and how did you discuss it with your board and investors?
• If you would be a new company with ten people, how would you organize things before the growth starts?
• A flat organization surfaces people’s skills, abilities and strengths, and in a way it enables a meritocratic system. Doesn’t that cause a hierarchy in the back of people’s minds?

You can listen to the episode on:

• Listen on Apple iTunes
• Listen on Spotify
• Listen on Stitcher
• More links to your favorite Podcast apps, click here

To hear more about how a flat organization can work for a games company, head on over to an earlier episode, the EGD 005: Flat organization in a games company with Jami Laes Founder and CEO of Futureplay Games.