Chess and Leveraging Strengths (5-1-18)

This will be the last in the series inspired by board games. We started with Checkers and making sacrifices, moved to Battleship and leveraging our knowledge, explored Chutes and Ladders and how we are playing on different boards, and last week was about Connect 4 and searching for connections. This week, I’d like us to think about chess and leveraging the strengths of the various chess pieces.

In case you’ve never played chess, the objective is to trap the opponent’s king in what is called checkmate. Each side has 16 pieces consisting of 8 pawns, 2 rooks, 2 knights, 2 bishops, 1 queen, and 1 king. For example, a bishop moves diagonally, while a knight moves in an L shape, jumping over pieces. All the pieces are different, and they all have value. If you want to be successful in chess you need to understand how the pieces move, so you can leverage their strengths.

You’re probably already seeing some of the connections already. There are all kinds of people in our lives and on our teams, and each of these individuals is gifted in different ways. If we want to capture the king and achieve our goal, we need to understand the players we have around us and leverage their strengths. To continue with the chess analogy, it doesn’t make sense to make everyone move diagonally like bishops. Maybe some people are knights, who use their knack for maneuvering to get around problems. Maybe some are pawns, who are always willing to be the first to step out front and plow the way forward. Maybe some are queens with the vision to move across the entire board. Think about yourself for a moment. How often have you been on teams where your context, experiences, skills, etc. have truly been leveraged? What was that like? I’ve been on some teams where I feel my uniqueness was valued and it made me feel incredible and as a result my work was great. I’ve also experienced the opposite and that was pretty crummy.

As we lead and work on teams, it’s up to us to figure out what others bring to the table and how we can help them be in a position to best leverage those strengths. Think of some of the people you work with. What do they bring that you can leverage to make you and the team better? Maybe it’s a skill they have, work experience, life experience, a point of view, etc. Do they know you value that in them? What are you doing to leverage this magic? (Seriously, challenge yourself to come up with a very tactical answer. If we’re being real with each other, if we can’t come up with a solid answer in like 5 seconds about what we are specifically doing to unleash the skills we all bring, we probably aren’t doing good enough in that area.)

The challenge: How are you helping people unleash and leverage their context, experiences, skills, etc.?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Connect 4 and Making Human Connections (4-25-18)

Last week was about Chutes and Ladders and recognizing that we all play on different boards. This week we are going to reflect on Connect 4 and searching for connections.

In case you’ve never played Connect 4, it’s kind of like Tic-Tac-Toe. The goal is to get 4 in a row. In order to do this, you have to look for connections. In this game, things can connect vertically, horizontally, and diagonally. Alice recently received this game for her 6^th birthday, and as she started playing she initially didn’t ever look for connections diagonally. Instead, she just focused on horizontal connections, and didn’t look further than this. This led to her missing opportunities. Over time, she’s learned to do a better job of looking for all kinds of different connections.

You might be wondering what this has to do with anything. I think that life is often like a long game of Connect 4, where one of the goals is to connect with other people. In Connect 4, you might make connections vertically, horizontally, or diagonally. I bring all of the above up, because it is our responsibility to always look for ways to connect with each other.

When it comes to connecting, there are some people I connect with faster than others. These are usually the people who most closely resemble me and where I am in life. While this is true, this doesn’t mean I should give up on connecting with other folks. What this means is I might have to look and work harder to find connections. Much like Alice, instead of only looking for horizontal connections I need to expand my thinking to find the diagonal, vertical, and other connections that exist. We are all people, so at a foundational level that’s a powerful enough connection to at least getting started. On top of all being human, as people we are all multi-dimensional. For example, maybe we connect, because we work for Lilly. Maybe we connect, because we are both parents. Maybe we connect, because we are both nerds, love food, enjoy writing, watch similar movies, are both the oldest in our families, have been on awkward dates, love music, worked in a family business, have been through some similar struggles, etc. I firmly believe that if we dig long enough, we can find a dimension we can connect on, and once we connect then the magic happens.

Something to ponder- I’m sure many of you have heard about what happened with two African American men who were wrongfully arrested for hanging out in Starbucks waiting for someone. You can click HERE if you haven’t heard their story. They were arrested, because a manager called the police to remove them. I’ve sat in Starbucks and other establishments waiting for friends before and never had issues. I can’t think of any of my white friends ever having issues. I talked about this with a few colleagues last week, and I view this as a lack of connectedness problem. I believe the manager called the police, because she saw these men as others and outsides, which to me suggests that she didn’t see connections with them. I wonder if she would have stopped first to think of how she might be connected to these men, would she have felt the need to call the police?

The challenge: Are you searching for all the ways you can connect? Are you letting things get in the way of seeing how you connect with others?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Chutes, Ladders, and Different Lives (4-18-18)

Last week we thought about leveraging knowledge and Battleship. This week we are going to reflect on the different lives we lead by thinking about Chutes (slides) and Ladders. Chutes and Ladders is a game to see who can get to the final square first. As you move around the board you’ll land on squares with ladders or chutes on them. Ladders are like shortcuts that help you advance. Chutes are the anti-shortcut that cause you to fall back spaces.

Let’s pretend you and I were going to play the game with a twist. Let’s pretend you and I played the same game, just on different boards. We’d still use the spinner and follow all of the same rules. The only difference is that you’d play on one board and I’d play on another. If this was the case, what would be the first thing you’d wonder about? I’m assuming you’d want to know if the boards are the same. I bet you’d be curious to see if my board had more chutes or more ladders than you.

You might be wondering where this is going. I’d say that life is a lot like a game of Chutes and Ladders, where we are all playing on different boards. Some boards have more ladders than others and maybe even ladders that are better shortcuts. Some boards have more chutes than others and maybe even chutes that make people fall further. There is no guarantee of success in this game (life). Just because a board has more ladders, it doesn’t guarantee success. Also, just because a board has more chutes, it doesn’t guarantee failure. At the same time, we can acknowledge that your board shapes your life and we can acknowledge that the more ladders you have the greater likelihood you have for success. In the game example above I had us imagine playing on different boards. What does your board(life) look like? What ladders do you have? What chutes do you have? Think about the people around you. How is your board similar to theirs? How is your board different? How does your board impact the way you live and experience life?

I’m a straight white male, married with kids, middle class, American, from a small town, fairly intelligent, some athleticism, average looks, relatively healthy, in a job where I make enough money that I don’t have to spend my time being anxious about money, from a home filled with love where my parents have been married for over 30 years. If I’m being honest with myself, those are a lot of ladders in my favor. It’s really tempting and really easy for me to look at other people and say, “They could easily be in my place if they only do X, Y, and Z.” The fact is it’s not that straight forward or simple. Yes, I work hard and have made a lot of the right choices in life, but I can’t deny that those ladders (many I don’t have control over) have helped me and will continue to help me. I can’t deny that some people have chutes that will never show up on my board. Does your hard work and the choices you make impact you? Yes. At the same time, your life’s chutes and ladders impact you too. As I reflect on my ladders and my experiences I think of the wisdom a friend once shared, “Don’t feel guilty about your experience. Just understand that is YOUR experience and not everyone lives the same way.” The more I can do this, the more I can understand the people around me, and the better human/friend/teammate I can be for them.

The challenge: Do you understand what your board looks like and how it shapes you? Are you taking the time to understand and appreciate other people’s boards and how they shape them?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Battleship, Taking Shots, and Leveraging Existing Knowledge (4-11-18)

Last week we kicked off a series inspired by board games with the classic game of checkers and making sacrifices. This week is about leveraging knowledge as we reflect on Battleship and taking shots.

When I was a little kid I played more than my fair share of Battleship. In case you haven’t played, it’s a two player game where your objective is to sink all of your opponent’s ships. There are two boards. You can see your board, but you can’t see your opponent’s board. Each board has a grid of letters on the left side and numbers on the top. You would call out a letter and number combination like B1. Your opponent would tell you if you missed or if you hit their ship. If you missed, then you knew you had to try another area. If you hit the ship, you knew that you needed to take shots in the nearby surrounding area. It might take you another shot or two to know exactly where the ship is, but you wouldn’t have to start over. You could leverage the knowledge you had and keep firing shots until the ship sank.

So how exactly does this connect with work? In some ways work (especially marketing) is like a game of Battleship. Essentially, you have a board and you are calling out shots (launching some kind of customer solution) and hoping that they hit (fulfill the need of a customer). In the very beginning you might be playing on a completely unknown board, like if you were entering a new disease state. However, we are usually playing on boards that we already know a lot about. Often, we are playing in situations where we can leverage 3^rd party data, previous learnings, and our own tribal knowledge as a starting point before launching a “shot”. In many situations we have already had a “hit” and need to build off of that instead of blindly searching for new ships to hit.

The question is how often do we search for this knowledge and leverage it before blindly launching solutions? Have you ever been in a situation where you’ve said, “Why are we reinventing everything? We already know X and Y, so why aren’t we starting there?” Have you ever been in a situation where you’ve heard someone say, “That was a miss a few years ago, so why are we revisiting it now?” I know that I’ve asked those things, and I’ve also been the one who has tried to reinvent the wheel. It’s easy to get caught up in the feeling that everything you do should be novel and amazing in order for it to be valuable and recognized. At the same time, starting from scratch isn’t very efficient. You know when to go explore vast new areas and when to leverage the knowledge you already have.

The challenge: Are you blindly launching shots or are you leveraging the knowledge that exists to be more efficient?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Checkers, Jumps, and Sacrifices (4-1-18)

This week I’d like to start a series inspired by board games. Hopefully it doesn’t leave you bored (<-see what I did there?). We’ll begin by thinking about checkers, jumps, trade-offs, and making sacrifices.

Recently, I taught Alice, who turned 6 yesterday, how to play checkers. It’s a great game, because it has strategy and it’s still fairly simple to play. In case you’ve never played, the objective is to capture all of the other team’s pieces. Essentially, when an opponent’s piece is in front of your piece you make your piece jump over it, and you remove the opponent’s piece from the board. When Alice plays, she loves jumping other pieces, but she HATES having her pieces jumped. She’ll do everything in her power to avoid being jumped, which often leads to her losing games. She loses games, because sometimes the best move on the board is to sacrifice one of her own pieces in order to set herself up in a more powerful position. Slowly, she is learning that sometimes the best move is a sacrifice. Sometimes the best move to make is to allow me to jump one of her pieces, so she can do a double jump and take away two of mine.

You might be wondering where this is going. I would argue that life and work are games of strategy. They are games of moves and countermoves, games about anticipating things and reacting. Much like Alice, it’s easy to become obsessed with jumping, constant activity, conquering, and going after everything that looks like an opportunity. However, sometimes, it doesn’t make sense to do that. Do you ever run yourself ragged trying to make every “jump” only to realize it’s left you in a weaker position? I know I have. Over time I’ve learned that sometimes I need to be willing to give certain things up. Over time, I’ve come to accept that sometimes I need to sacrifice something in order to be in the strongest position.

Now if we look at work, think about marketing as an example. Marketing is a game of strategic trade-offs. Working in research, I have access to reports and things that reveal all kinds of weaknesses and opportunities at any given moment. Essentially, there are always tons of jumps we could make. However, if you try to make every jump you lose. Instead, you have to sacrifice some things. Sometimes, you have to allow your competitors to have certain things, so you can stay focused on your strengths. Sometimes you have to refrain from spending time, energy, and effort in one area, so you can focus all of those things in a another area that will help you be victorious.

The challenge: Are you always going after every opportunity or are you intentionally making trade-offs?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry