Four Strategy Lessons from Ms. Pac-Man

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This article represents part three in a three-part series touching on the art and discipline of developing an engaging and nimble strategy.

Growing up on a farm in Hillsdale, Michigan, technology did not play a central role in my childhood. However, my father was drawn to computers, and I vividly remember the day that he brought home the Apple IIe. He set up the device in our living room, which felt extraordinary. As an elementary school student, I did not have a strong understanding of the future that this device would unlock. The games it unlocked were easy to understand and a lot of fun to play. I fell in love with Frogger, Burger Time, and Ms. Pac-Man. ?

Unlike some of my contemporaries, my aptitude for games halted there. While I enjoyed lazy afternoons with my cousins in those early years with the Apple IIe, playing tournaments to see who could get to the highest levels, by the time I went to university, it had been years since I’d played a video game.

However, on rare occasions, Ms. Pac-Man would reappear. There is a fantastic Mexican restaurant in a suburb of Detroit that my great-grandmother Isabelle loved called El Nibblenook. For years, while working at my first credit union, El Nibblenook became my husband Scott and my favorite spot for a Saturday night meal. The restaurant had a corner with a flat player-facing-player Ms. Pac-Man machine, and occasionally, we would jump in and play a game before a meal. I even enjoyed playing Ms. Pac-Man at a conference event for human resource professionals when one portion of the evening included an arcade experience. My colleagues were a bit surprised by my passion for the mazes and pellets.

When our family moved back to Michigan as part of earning the opportunity to lead Community Financial Credit Union in June 2022, we purchased a home. The basement still needed to be finished. Last year, we prioritized finishing the basement. As MacKenzie flipped into her teenage years, my maternal instinct signaled that it was time to create a safe space where she and her friends could come to our home and enjoy hanging out. Over the last year, we’ve been choosing options to bring the basement to life, and three weeks ago, after a long week, the Ms. Pac-Man machine I’d searched on-line hundreds of times made it to “purchase."?

Since the game arrived, I’ve enjoyed playing. And as with so many things in my life, playing Ms. Pac-Man highlighted some important lessons about credit union strategy.

As you head into 2025, here are four strategy insights inspired by Ms. Pac-Man:

(1) Execution. Execution. Execution. The best strategy in the world is only as good as what happens. Occasionally, I’ll sit down to play Ms. Pac-Man with enthusiasm and a solid plan to set a new high score. I then fumble with the joystick or get distracted by my phone, and suddenly, the plan flops. ?

As we roll out our strategic plans for 2025 and beyond, we have a responsibility as leaders to support execution. Execution relies upon resource allocation, exceptional project management, teamwork, and a commitment to accountability and measurement. Within our organizations, the stronger we become at execution, the more belief grows across the culture in strategy, fueling more strategic success.

According to Harvard Business Review’s “How to Move from Strategy to Execution” by Chamorro-Premuzic and Lovric, “Strategic clarity requires a further step — understanding what it will take to execute the strategy…One way to achieve this clarity is through a?pre-mortem?exercise, which allows executives to identify the soft underbelly of their strategy, and therefore their key execution risks.” This preparatory step can ensure that your strategy has the best chance at solid execution.

(2)?? Failure matters. When playing Ms. Pac-Man, you begin the game with three “lives.” As the game progresses, each board becomes a bit harder. The game speeds up. The “ghosts” who can harm you also speed up and become more adept. The mazes themselves become more complicated and challenging to navigate. My observation is that if I “die” on the first two boards, the likelihood of me reaching a new high score is very low.

As I lose, I notice things that help my next game improve. For example, on the pink “level one” board, the game moves slowly enough that it is possible to use the four “power pellets” to “eat” the ghosts several times, launching the game with a higher scoring start. Also, on the light blue “level two” board, I have learned that my success grows when I focus on the interior portion of the game board before moving to the exterior, including the energizer “power pellets,” which allow you to devour the ghosts and earn more points. I hate to lose. Each time I do, I take something away to improve the next game.

We’ve all heard that we should “fail forward,” yet failing sucks. “How to Learn from Your Failures” by Smith highlights, “Failure bruises the ego, that metaphorical seat of our self-esteem and self-importance. When we fail, we feel threatened—and that sense of threat can trigger a fight-or-flight response. ‘Fight’ in the context of failure looks like wholesale dismissal of the value of the task, or criticism of the people involved or the unfairness of the situation you faced. However, ‘flight’ might be the more common response to failure. When we flee failure, we disengage our attention from the task that threatens our sense of ourselves as effective people.”

As leaders, we can’t take away the “suck” of failing. We can make it more meaningful in the long-term and more informative and useful. Consider ways your credit union can share failure within a framework and elevate learning to improve the next set of outcomes. The more sharing the organization and senior leaders do, the more likely failure can be activated for learning instead of hidden and causing “fight or “flight.”

(3)?? Celebration inspires more success. In between each level there is a small video and song celebrating Ms. Pac-Man “leveling up.” The chipper music always inspires a bit of a dance from me. This small reward feels good and invites my enthusiasm for the next board.

Rewards and celebration matter to teams. In “Celebrate to Win” by Johnson, “Leading behavioral scientist, B.J. Fogg, explains the link between emotions and habits. Habit formation is not, as conventional wisdom claims, a matter of 21 days of consistent practice. Celebrating small wins stimulates dopamine release in the brain, a feel-good chemical that reinforces the learning experience and strengthens our sense of connection to those we work with. Change and growth are promoted through positive emotions more than through disciplined practice. Keep in mind that celebration is an experience and, in the workplace, it is most effective when shared with colleagues.”

In a world that can often be narrowly focused on delivering results, how might your credit union build in team rewards and individual recognition that fuels the team? 2025 might also be a good time to gather insights about these reward mechanisms to tune what works well and amplify those efforts while limiting the festivities that the team does not enjoy.

(4)?? Have fun. Despite the many lessons I’ve gleaned from playing, at the end of the day, Ms. Pac-Man is a game. It’s joyful to escape from my routine and discipline to do something with almost no consequence. We all need joy and find it in unique and sometimes surprising ways.

The work of our credit unions is serious. It is essential, especially now, when Americans need us most. Serious and important work can also be fun. Spend time with your leaders considering how you will support and multiply joy and fun throughout your organization as your strategy comes to life.

And fun can be a strategy as well. In “The Role of Fun in Workplace Health and Well-being” by Zhang and Henke, “Fun can also be linked to positive organizational outcomes such as increased employee attraction, higher commitment,?favorable job attitudes,?interpersonal trust, enhanced performance,?and a lower turnover rate.” Investing in fun could naturally grow your human capital strategy for years.

I’ve delighted in re-engaging with a game from my childhood this fall. The playfulness, the familiarity, the competition, and the mindless pursuit all add to the enjoyment. More, just like our credit unions, even on the hard days when I don’t make it as far on a level as I’d like, or my handling of the joystick fails at a crucial moment, or my reaction times feel slower than I think they should be, I know I can come back the next day and activate a renewed effort. Leadership and strategy rarely lead us down a straight and easily navigated path. When we keep returning to the path regardless of how bumpy, twisty, or obstacle-filled, we ensure that the promise of our cooperative finance movement sparks forward.

How will you bring a new light to your credit union’s strategic path in 2025?