On Game

1) Should I Play, or should I Go?

When the subject of Game is introduced into a business conversation, it is quite surprising to observe how People have a view on the topic in very black-and-white terms, i.e., are in favour of games or against. You would not see the same emotional reaction on Strategy, which is at the level of Game in terms of intellectual construction. Nobody says he or she is in favour or against Strategy as a subject. How come?

The first underlying wrong assumption is that Strategy is serious, and Game is not.

Let's deconstruct this myth

2) Game eats Culture for Breakfast

Everybody knows Peter Drucker's famous quote "Culture eats Strategy for Breakfast", which means that the most brilliant Plan will fail due to the resistance to change linked to Culture.

Mike Tyson had the same view when he declared in a more prosaic way: "Everybody has a Plan until they get punched in the Face".

In the evolution of species, precisely with the appearance of warm-blooded species, Game came before Culture, and soon became a safe way to train young animals before the dangerous, if not deadly experience of real life. However, even when they become adults, like the tigers below, mammals keep on playing until they die, which means that Play is deeply rooted in the brain of warm-blooded animals. Why Humans should be the exception to this atavistic habit?

In the same way, when you organize a quality game in a company, it is spectacular to observe how People become "natural" and authentic in their behaviours, which collapses the resistance to change linked to prejudices, or fear of change. We should never forget that for our ancestors who were in survival mode most of their time, Change = Danger !!

Consequently, even the most sceptical, even those who personally don't like them, recognize that Games are clever stratagems to pass messages, in particular when it comes to a subject where there is a lot of change management.

As an example, at Value Games, we are regularly confronted with change management challenges, where our games like Value Race are used to boost the speed of learning of complex topics like S&OP, End-To-End Planning, Supply Chain, and more broadly any cross-functional Transformation.

Consequently, if Games help to collapse cultural barriers when they are an obstacle to implement a new way of working, we can consider that they are as serious as strategy, at least regarding the Human Factor.

Yet, the second underlying wrong assumption is that Strategy is about Real Life, and Game is not.

Let's again deconstruct this second myth

3) Game is the inception of a created Future

Often when People talk about "Real Life", they mean "their current way of working", meaning the new way of working is theoretical, conceptual, or even worse, academic. I remember when I was introducing advanced S&OP (also called IBP) in Madone (fictitious name), a Global Food company, Phoenix, a regional President told me: "Alain, what you show is interesting, but it is not real life". "What do you mean by NOT real life, Phoenix?", "we don't do that in Madone, Alain !"....

On the 14th of October 1806, at the battle of Jena, The Prussian Staff assumed that the idea Napoléon will escalate the steep slopes of the Landgrafenberg, was NOT Real Life.

That's why he did it, and won this Historical Battle.

However, the severe defeat of the Prussian Army at the battle of Jena was a trigger to radically change its approach. At Auerstaedt, the twin battle of Jena, a famous officer was taken prisoner. His name was Carl von Clausewitz, the future author of "On War", one of the most important books on the theory of war, which had a major influence on the war doctrine of the Prussian army. One of the many breakthroughs brought by "On War" was to emphasize the crucial importance of the Human Factor in the art of war. Before "On War", the art of war was mostly seen as a technical topic about calculating the right resources to prepare for war. Clausewitz was the first to understand that the very nature of war was uncertainty, in particular linked to the Human Factor (as an example, following his intuition, Napoléon started the battle of Jena with a totally unexpected movement, escalating the steepy hill, which surprised the Prussian army, and destabilized it), and consequently, Clausewitz understood that the art of war should study the Human Factor in all its aspects, starting from the top, perfectly illustrated by a his most famous quote: "War is the continuation of politics by other means".

At the operational level, Clausewitz did not invent wargames, but certainly inspired them with his Human Factor doctrine, and one of its consequences which was the difficulty to predict what the enemy will do. During the same period, George Leopold von Reisswitz, a Prussian baron, invented the first Kriegsspiel, initially to entertain the King. But later on, his son Georg von Reisswitz improved the wargame to make it more realistic and presented it to Karl von Müffling, chief of the general staff at Berlin, who rapidly understood the power of the concept to educate Prussian officers. Consequently, Kriegspiels became an important part of the preparation of the officers and were used extensively in the Prussian War College, whose director between 1818 and 1830 was Carl von Clausewitz. In 1828, the young lieutenant Helmuth von Moltke founded the first wargame club of History, before becoming 30 years after Chief of staff of the Prussian Army during thirty years, and before becoming the uncle of ?Helmuth Johann Ludwig von Moltke, who commanded the German Army at the outbreak of World War I. A Moltke can hide another one !

The first real life application of the Kriegspiels was the battle of Sedan on the second of September 1870, a humiliating disaster on the French side, and obviously an absolute triumph on the Prussian side, which led Chancellor Otto von Bismarck to declare in a laconic way: without Jena, no Sedan.

4) Culture cooks Game for Dinner

In my view, a crucial element of the Prussian culture also explains why Kriegspiels grew during this period.

The French culture is strongly influenced by philosopher René Descartes, whose thought is well summarized in his famous Cogito Ergo Sum. Thanks to René Descartes, we prefer intellectual debates to practical experience, and are proud to see ourselves as Cartesian. Of course there are many exceptions to this archetype of French People, but like all archetypes, this is true for the majority of the French intelligentsia.

The German culture is strongly influenced by Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant, who was the first to demonstrate in his Critique of Pure Reason that Knowledge cannot be reached by pure rational thinking as Descartes thought, because the boundaries of Knowledge are Human Experience. Existence precedes Essence, as philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre wrote 160 years after Kant.

Given this cultural context, it is not a surprise that Kriegspiels, which enabled to close the loop between Theory and Practice in a quick way, grew so fast in Prussia during this period.

5) Don't Play what you can calculate

The narrative of the revolution of the Prussia War Doctrine between 1806 and 1870 shows us that Kriegspiels did not thrive in Prussia in isolation. First there was the cultural environment mentioned above. Second, after Jena humiliating defeat, there was a clear call to change radically the highly disciplined yet rigid and hierarchical Prussian way to conduct war, which led into a High Performing Army in 1870 based on High Agility through intensive drilling brought by the war games. We can summarize these dynamics with the below PDCA cycle:

But more importantly, the narrative of the revolution of the Prussia War Doctrine, shows us the key role of Leadership. Without Karl von Müffling and Helmuth von Moltke, Kriegspiels would not have taken such a pivotal role in the Prussian War Doctrine.?

At Value Games, we follow the same process with our Customers, i.e.

1. What is your Problem and What is NOT your Problem?
2. What is your New Way of Working to solve the Problem?
3. How a Game can bridge the gap between the Problem and your Desired Future?
4. How does Success look like?

These questions may look like common sense, but in our experience, they are extremely powerful if you rigorously go through them and avoid bringing solutions which don't really add value.

Joseph Orlicky, the father of MRP had this famous motto, called the Orlicky Principle:

Don't Forecast what you can Calculate

In the same way, at Value Games, we use the same principle: "Don't Play what you can calculate", which means, as an example, when you need to train People on things which can be calculated like Safety Stock, or Economic Order Quantity, you don't need to play them because they are technical topics with no uncertainty in terms of pedagogy. Eventually you may want to gamify the topic to make it more attractive, but it is NOT a Game, if you accept that a Game begins when there are minimum 2 players in mutual interaction.

On the other side, when you have a Problem which is full of uncertainty (like a crisis for instance) or complexity (any project were change management is crucial), or both, Games make a lot of sense, because you can use them like the Prussian Army used the Kriegspiels to train their officers in time of Peace.

6) The Art of Game

Game as a Business Science is probably where Supply Chain was 40 years ago, when it was introduced into Business. Game evolution as a Business Science will logically follow the same sequence as Supply Chain did, which means that today we are in the Age of Experimentation for Games.

Today, there is no "On Game", i.e. a Reference Book equivalent to Clausewitz "On War", Michael Porter "On Strategy", or Charles Fine "Clockspeed" on Supply Chain. The only equivalent is "Homo Ludens" by Johan Huizinga, published in 1938, but although the book is a masterpiece, it is more a reflection on Games in the Society, rather than a reference handbook for business. This is a chicken and the egg story. Existence precedes Essence.

So, if we go back to the preliminary Question "Should I Play, or should I Go ?", I believe the first bias a Leader needs to eliminate, is that his/her personal opinion on Games, is valid for all his/her Team! It is true that some People like Games, and some People don't like Games, but the Question is not : to be a Gamer or not to be a Gamer. The Question is: will a Game add value in our Project, and How ?

The Best Way to answer this Question is to give it a try and join one of our Value Race demonstrations !

To conclude, Game is a very powerful way to Explore possible Futures in a safe way, and Great Companies have the perfect balance between Exploitation and Exploration in their activities.

Today environment is pushing us to focus on Exploitation because we are in Times of War. But because we are in Times of War, we need to meditate Sun Tzu, author of the "Art of War", the other masterpiece about War with Clausewitz "On War", who said:

in peace prepare for war,

in war prepare for peace

So, beyond your day to day firefighting, are you preparing for peace, and how ?