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