Ask Iwata is a fairly unique biography, as far as biographies go. Satoru Iwata was the beloved Global President of Nintendo Corporation Limited. It’s a posthumous memoir, but one written based not on lengthy engagements with professional journalists—like those of the Steve Jobs or Elon Musk memoirs, or corporate insider tell-alls like Going Infinite—but from a series of Q&As that he conducted as the president of the company, in a well-received set of interviews by the same name. The book’s authors put this together as a juxtaposition of a biography and a tribute, and they tried to approximate the personality and the voice of Iwata in chronicling the man’s life and career.
So it’s an unusual premise for a book, but it works because Iwata was such a humble, down-to-earth executive. I started to read Ask Iwata after finishing another biography from an Nintendo executive, Disrupting the Game by Reggie Fils-Aimé, as a bit of a palate cleanser. Even though the men were close colleagues and friends, their approach to their roles made for a stark contrast. Fils-Aimé climbed the corporate ladder, reveled in marketing and showmanship, and his book showcased his career journey, sprinkled with professional advice and anecdotes. Iwata started as a programmer at HAL Laboratory, but shifted to Nintendo as he grew in stature and tenure, keeping his technical chops1 through all his promotions en route to the global president.
Maybe because I share Iwata’s background in programming, but I appreciated his management approach: a style that emphasized curiosity and team support, appreciating the technical details even as he spent most of his time making important business decisions. Here’s a game programmer, who despite being introverted and shy and humble about his capabilities, was able to lead successful launches of everything from the Nintendo DS to the Wii to multitudes of Pokémon games and quirky titles like Wii Sports and Brain Age. He didn’t mind staying in the background to let others shine, yet he was always ready to give a necessary presentation or speech—all the while admitting that these public appearances stressed him out and required tons of mental preparation.
I expected Ask Iwata to read like a regular memoir, so I was surprised at how much ink the book spends on how to manage people. He freely admitted that he didn’t know much about people management when he started as an engineer at HAL, but as he rose through the ranks, he developed and fine-tuned his thinking around establishing relationships, his goals for his team, how to establish a fun work environment, etc. I found myself nodding along, agreeing with his observations and recommendations. For instance, he talks about his job interview principle—to lead with the easiest questions so candidates feel at ease and engage with their best foot forward—which is exactly how I’ve conducted my interviews for the past decade. And I realized halfway through the book that I’ve come to many of the same conclusions from my accumulated experiences, though my career is nowhere near as impactful or influential.
On some level, I suspect it’s the shared sense of programming instincts that has me enamored with Iwata’s approach in running Nintendo during his time as global president. He had a knack for creating these predictable, scalable systems for managing organizations. Having tried myself numerous times to achieve similar outcomes on a much smaller scale, I can attest and empathize with the difficulty of establishing this type of principled culture—as well as the rarity of having someone be so intentional in their approach to running their team at the executive levels.
As a management book, Ask Iwata is an easy recommendation. But some of its insights are very specific to Nintendo’s brand of games, and to make use of its advice requires buying into Iwata’s worldview on how people behave and work. As a piece of video game history, Ask Iwata is limited to its singular perspective, and is less exciting than many other books that talk through the dynamics of the gaming industry by accessing rare oral histories from industry luminaries. I came to the book expecting to get an insider’s look at Nintendo, but was pleasantly surprised to instead find the teachings of a great boss.
He famously helped debug and code review major Nintendo titles like Pokémon and Smash Bros.↩
