Board games, not bored games

Monopoly

I grew up playing this game and I’ve got to say I never liked it. Why?

Think about the premise: you can only win by bankrupting everyone else. But, the game didn’t start this way. Its inventor, back in 1904 was a Washington feminist inventor, artist and poet, Lizzie Magie. And, her name for the game was “The Landlord’s Game”.

You could choose to play either of two versions of the rules. The “monopolist” rules you know well. The “anti-monopolist” version was designed to show how an economy that rewards wealth shared amongst individuals is better than one where wealth is held by a few. That version of the game ended when the poorest player doubled their starting economic position. Magie’s aim was to show people how rents enrich landlords and impoverish tenants and it was her form of social activism in response to the early 20th century practices of land grabbing and packing people into tenement slums.

Parker Brothers bought the game from Magie in the 1930s for $500 and they removed the ‘anti-monopolist’ version, leaving only the version we know today. And, you could say it’s become a monopoly of its own, by selling 275 million copies and printing 3 trillion dollars of “monopoly money” to date.

Question: In your organisation, what strategic ideas get pruned, or even perverted, when one set of interests prevail?

Holding onto the past

During our State Government election this year I had an election surprise that was a double-edged sword.

I tested COVID positive two nights before the election. This meant (a) I had to isolate and couldn’t vote in person; and (b) I was too late to lodge a postal vote.

Instead, the Electoral Commission arranged for me (well, not just me) to phone my vote in. I had to register online, prove I was COVID-isolating, and get an 8-digit code (so that I’d remain anonymous to the person who took my phone vote). Then, I phoned a number, gave my code and password, and a pleasant sounding woman took me through the process. That was the positive side.

The negative?

As we finished, it occurred to me to ask her, “How exactly are?you?doing this? What system are you using to lodge my vote?” You see, in Australia, we don’t have electronic or online voting.

Her answer surprised me.

“I’m doing it physically, just as if you were. I’m filling in your ballots in pencil, folding them and sealing them in envelopes. Then I lodge them in a ballot box, just as you’d do if you were in a polling station”.

It reminded me of ‘mechanical turks’, the fake chess-playing automatons of the 18th century. Napoleon and Benjamin Franklin were both fooled into believing they were playing a machine but, in reality, there was an actual grandmaster hidden in a box beneath, manipulating the moves.

In my case, there was a polite lady with a pencil and paper on the end of a phone line, using the height of 1920s technology.

Question: What outdated technologies should your organisation give up on, once and for all?

Drag and drop

I’ve often suspected that ideas travel in packs, and several clients this year talked with me about variants of this question: “What is it that truly differentiates executive teams from management teams?”

There are several dimensions to this, but one group made an insightful observation.

Each had, at one point or another, worked for a ‘bored’ team: where they felt executives were just going through the motions. But they noticed that when an executive team is truly engaged they don’t just make it their business to recognise outstanding capabilities, nor to understand it. They ask 4 questions about how to ‘drag and drop’ what’s special:

1. How do we?amplify?it, so it has greater impact?
2. How do we?replicate?it, so everyone can do it?
3. How do we?generalise?it, so as to find new applications?
4. How do we?codify?it as IP, so we can pass it on (including selling it)?

I’ve written in other 5MSMs about ‘secret sauce’ organisations — I believe that ALL successful businesses have something that is a unique, or at least distinctive, blend of perspective, capability and process.

Question: What is outstanding about your organisation, and how would you answer the 4 questions above?

I’m on holidays until January 16th, so the above are a ‘summer edition’ of past 5 Minute Strategic Mindset segments that have been popular with readers. I look forward to being back with you shortly, however, if you’ve enjoyed reading, please click the ‘like’ so it keeps the 5MSM pulse beating.

For those of you with Christian leanings, have an enjoyable festive season - for everyone, see you next Friday morning,

Andrew