The Original Nintendo and Being Easy to Work With (4-8-26)

You can’t talk about Mario without talking about the original Nintendo console. This week is about how temperamental those original game cartridges were and being easy to work with. This entry is inspired by a nostalgic trip down memory lane that Jenna Alspaugh took me on.

The Nintendo console was launched in the 1980s with Super Mario as the flagship game. When the console worked, it was amazing! You were instantly transported to the mushroom kingdom to experience a new type of entertainment. The only problem is that the console didn’t always work immediately. Getting it to work was like performing a ritual for the video game gods and hoping for their blessing. You’d grab the video game cartridge, blow into it to clean it, insert it into the system, wiggle it just slightly, say a few more prayers, and then hit the power button. You’d repeat variations of this until it finally worked.

Let’s connect this to work. Whether or not you’ve ever played Super Mario, we’ve all likely ran into some version of having to put in a lot of extra effort just to make something work correctly. When have you interacted with processes or systems that were just difficult? When have you interacted with people who were just difficult? How did those make you feel? In both experiences, I’ve left those situations feeling frustrated and wondering if it was worth it or not. Also, I felt less inclined to use that service or partner with that person again. Also, since we are being honest, have you had times where you were being the difficult person? (sheepishly raises his hand) While it’s true that bumps and mistakes are going to happen, we can also ensure we are doing things to make it as easy as possible for customers and partners to work with us.

The challenge: How can we make it easier for customers to interact with our products and solutions? How can we make it easier for individuals to partner with us?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

1-Up Mushrooms, Extra Lives, and Extra Chances (4-1-26)

Last week was about balancing where you are and lofty goals. This week is about 1-up mushrooms, extra lives, and the power of having extra chances.

If you’ve never played the Super Mario games, it’s important to know that in many of the games you have limited lives. Once you exhaust those lives, the game is done. With this in mind, imagine playing Mario and you are on your last life. If you make a mistake, it is game over. How do you feel? I’m assuming you feel a bit anxious, less likely to take risks, worried about failure, etc. Now imagine, that you have found some of the beautiful green 1-up mushrooms. All of a sudden you have multiple lives. Your chances aren’t unlimited, but you have more than just one. How do you feel now? I’m assuming you’d feel a little more relaxed, more willing to explore and experiment, and in a better mental place to do well in the game.

Let’s connect this to work. Have you ever been on a team or in a situation where you felt you were on your last life? You knew that if a mistake was made it would be punished harshly. It would be game over. What did that feel like? Did you do your best work in that situation? When I’ve been in those situations I’ve felt tense, hesitant to take risks, and kind of miserable. I did good work, but I definitely didn’t do my best work in that situation.

Now think about the teams and situations where you felt you had some extra lives. What did that feel like to you? Did you do your best work in these situations? For me, these are the situations where I knew I could take a risk. I knew I could make a mistake and it would be okay. I knew I had the opportunity to learn from these shortcomings and make it even better. It’s true that I had misses, and it’s true that my work product was FAR SUPERIOR.

At the end of the day, whether you feel like you have extra lives or not isn’t just about you. It’s also about leadership and culture. Leaders, whether formal or informal, go a long way in shaping the culture that dictates the norms and how the game is played.

The challenge- How will you create an environment where people feel like they have extra lives and extra chances?

Bonus thought- Just want to say I’m thankful for a leader, HiT crew, and broader market research culture that gives me the feeling of having extra lives, especially as my work is focused on AI. I feel every couple of months things change drastically and I realize that my initial thoughts were a miss. Without those extra lives, it would have been game over for me a long time ago. With those extra lives, we are building something incredible together.

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Mario, Power Moons, and Making Progress (3-18-26)

Last week was about how Mario contains multitudes. This week is about Mario, collecting Power Moons, and making progress.

Super Mario Odyssey is one of the most recent and one of my favorite Mario games. Your ultimate goal is to defeat Bowser. To do this, you need to progress through a variety of open world levels. The only way to move from one level to the next is to collect enough Power Moons to power your spaceship to fly to the next level. Here’s the thing though, these levels give you a lot of space to explore. You could spend hours jumping around, fighting bad guys, collecting coins, etc. without ever gathering the Power Moons you need to make progress.

Let’s connect this to work. Our Mario example was about how I could play a level for hours without ever getting anywhere. Has this ever happened to you at work? Have you ever come to the end of the day and realized you had done a lot of things, but didn’t actually do anything that enabled meaningful progress? Obviously, this never happens to me (he says while infusing the text with as much sarcasm as possible). It’s easy to get lost in email, conversations, meetings, etc. without ever actually moving the needle.

I’ve found the only way to avoid this is to be disciplined and intentional about consistently revisiting what my priorities are, where I am in relation to them, and what steps I need to take to make meaningful progress. Then, the most important part is working to make my calendar reflect my priorities. Have you ever looked at your calendar and realized it didn’t reflect your priorities? This never happens to me (#moresarcasm). The world is louder and more complex than ever before, if we aren’t clear on what we need to chase to make progress we will never move forward.

The challenge- How will you ensure you are gathering Power Moons to enable progress?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Mario Contains Multitudes (3-11-26)

Yesterday was March 10^th, often written as MAR10 aka Mario Day! In honor of that we are going to kick off a series inspired by the Super Mario universe. This week will be about Mario containing multitudes.

Many of you might be familiar with Super Mario. You most likely know him from his adventures saving the Mushroom Kingdom. I’m excited that you know that side of Mario, but he’s so much more than that. He is a true renaissance man. He is an Italian plumber and brother. He is the savior of the Mushroom Kingdom. He has been to the land of dinosaurs and to space. He is a doctor who has treated deadly viruses. He is an incredible go kart driver, a scratch golfer, star soccer player, homerun hitting baseball player, and a multi-event gold medalist in both the summer and winter Olympics.

What does this have to do with anything? When you first read this was about Mario, you likely thought about him jumping around, hopping on koopa troopas, and going down pipes. You likely didn’t think about all of the other things that Mario is and the other roles he plays. Now think about the people you work with. How do you view them? Do you primarily view them as employees? Do you view them as people who contain multiple aspects worth exploring?

The challenge: How can we see the multitudes in each other?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Seismic Chess and Preparing for a Shifting Board (3-4-26)

Last week was about chess, glorps, and dealing with obstacles. This week we will talk about seismic chess and preparing for shifts.

Cam has an older chess board that has been ripped in half. Instead of throwing it away, we now use this board to create new versions of the game. One of the iterations is seismic chess. In this game all of the normal rules apply, but there is a 5 minute timer. When the timer goes off, we shift one half of the board down and one half of the board up, so they are no longer a square but create a brand new shape. This timer keeps repeating until the game is over.

Anyway, I was playing the game with Cameron. I knew the rules. I knew the board would shift. Still, I hadn’t factored that into how I was playing the game. Everything was going fine until the timer went off. When it did the board shifted and all of a sudden I was at a major disadvantage. Cameron beat me in the next move. Now, I could complain and say he was lucky, but the truth is that he anticipated the shifting board better than I did.

How does this connect to work? Right now we are all playing the game the best way we know how. At the same time, AI, political environment, changing consumer demands, and so many other factors are combining and it’s only a matter of time before the entire board massively shifts. It’s hard to evolve. At the same time, if we aren’t making the right moves NOW then we will find ourselves in a place of disadvantage when the board moves. Here are a few things to think about. How might the game board change in the future? What are you doing now and how will that be impacted when the board moves? What could you do to put yourself in a better position?

The challenge: How will you prepare for the shifting board?

Bonus 1: I know I mainly used this metaphor to connect to work, but it can connect to life too. Think about the different ways your board could shift. Maybe you are getting older. Maybe you are retiring. Maybe you are starting a new family. Spending time to get ourselves right puts us in the best position to move with these shifts.

Bonus 2: I recently had a convo like this with my boss. I shared that I can feel the board shifting and that changes my job. Year 1 was all about casting a dream for where we are going with AI and building infrastructure. Year 2 was about making that dream tangible by leading product strategy. In year 3, the river is coming and it’s my job to help us navigate it so we ride the wave instead of being swept away. I’m trying to think through how I can continue to pivot.

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Feeling Overwhelmed and Taking Small Steps Forward (2-26-26)

Bonus blog about feeling overwhelmed and focusing on moving forward, no matter how small the step is. The Universe says someone needs this message today, so if it was you give the Universe a thank you.

I had some physical health related goals for myself related to working out, training for races, etc. I’m nowhere close to where I wanted to be in relation to those goals. The more I realized how far off I am the more I thought about how much I needed to do to catch up, which made me feel overwhelmed and paralyzed to the point that I stopped taking action toward my goals. Eventually I snapped out of it, when I asked, “What’s the smallest step forward I can take?” I took my initial lifting routine and significantly cut it down. I took my running program and significantly cut it down. Then, something interesting happened. I wasn’t paralyzed anymore. I allowed myself to focus on just moving forward, so I started to take action. It may not be perfect, but taking steps forward is better than not moving. I’m now taking more consistent action in the right direction.

Let’s connect this to work. In our story, I described how the looming physical goals ended up leaving me overwhelmed and paralyzed. Have you ever felt that way at work? I had this exact experience at work this week. It is my job to enable and drive adoption of AI for our incredible market research community. I’ve been reading and listening to leaders talk about AI and the ideal state, and it just hit me hard for some reason. I saw the ideal state, and I saw how big and complicated the gap is to get there. The gap is a tech gap, a culture gap, a workflow gap, a new habit gap, and more. The questions of, “How do we close this gap fast enough? How do we find a way to catch something moving so fast?” began swirling and I started to notice that overwhelm and paralysis was trying to set in. Then I remembered, it’s not my job to be perfect. It’s not my job to solve all problems in one day and miraculously get ahead of a massive shift that no one really knows where it is going. It’s my job to find a way to help us all move forward in the right direction, even if those steps feel small. It is my job to consistently keep us moving forward, because sooner or later those steps will add up. Once I embraced that I need to keep taking steps forward, I could get more focused on identifying what those steps are and get moving again.

The challenge: If you are feeling paralyzed, will you remember you just need to move forward, even if the steps are small?

Bonus: Part of what helped me snap out of it on the work side was a friend who said something nice like, “You’re doing a pretty god job of keeping us moving.” Sometimes an affirming word is all you need.

Peace,

Andrew Embry

Chess, Glorps, and Work Obstacles (2-24-26)

Last week was about translating concepts into action. This week is about chess, glorps, and work obstacles.

One of the most popular versions of chess that Cam created is called Glorp, which is like normal chess with more obstacles thrown in to contend with. Glorps are additional pieces that are put on the board and are represented by the pokemon figures in the picture. They can’t take pieces. They are just there to take up space and block things. You can deal with glorps in 2 ways. First, you can choose to maneuver around them. Second, you are allowed to take a glorp the same way you take any other piece. The catch is that when you take a glorp you move it to another place on the board. Glorps aren’t ever allowed to leave the board, they are always present. This causes you to rethink your strategies and contend with how you will handle glorps throughout the game.

What does this have to do with work? Basically, glorp is just another word for obstacle. Just like the glorps in chess, obstacles will ALWAYS be present. When I play this version of chess, my entire strategy changes, because I know I will have to constantly contend with the glorps.

Now, think about work for a minute. How often do we plan ASSUMING we will have to contend with obstacles? Be honest. I don’t know about you, but I know I can be guilty of planning and assuming things will just work out. Too bad it never happens that way. Over time, I’ve come to realize that in many ways, our jobs aren’t our day-to-day tasks. Our jobs are finding ways to handle glorps (obstacles 😉). Similar to chess, sometimes the best move is to go around the obstacle. Sometimes, the best move is to take the obstacle head on. Even when you handle one glorp, the next blocker will always be just around the corner.

The challenge- How are you embracing and overcoming obstacles (glorps)?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Chess and Translating Conceptual Thinking into Action (2-18-26)

Last week we kicked off a series about how my kids play chess and examined how we can change the rules. This week is about translating conceptual thinking to action.

Cam and I sat down to play chess and he talked me through the different variations in the rules he made up. We would bring pieces back from the dead, have backstabber pieces where we controlled opponent pieces, and new pieces that would block parts of the board. As he explained them, I thought to myself that this was all relatively straight forward. Then, we started playing and Cam crushed me! It was then I realized that while I might have understood the rules, I was having difficult translating that to action. It took me several rounds before I began to internalize how I could apply these concepts differently to ultimately win.

Let’s make some connections. Have you ever had an experience like this at work? Maybe it looked like this. You had a beautiful process diagram, and everything felt like it made sense. Then, once you started executing the process you realized you were still unsure of how it worked. Or maybe it looks like this. You conceptually know how to leverage AI, but once you got to the tools you didn’t really know how to put that into action. I experience this all the time. I’ve found that it’s easy to get lost in overthinking. It’s easy to swirl around frameworks and process maps, talking about them until you feel everything is perfect. It’s important to do the thinking AND it’s also important to jump in as soon as you can to apply these concepts. The application is what forces you to turn those ideas into action, because thinking can only get you so far.

The challenge: How will you translate conceptual understanding into action?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Chess and the Power to Evolve Rules (2-11-26)

This week we are going to kick off a series inspired by how my kids play chess. This week is about chess and the power to evolve rules.

The other day Cameron asked me to sit down and play chess with him. When I did the first thing I asked was, “What rules are we playing by?” At this point you might be confused. If you’ve played chess, you know there is a standard set of rules that dictates how pieces move. This set of rules impacts how people strategize and play the game.

Cameron and Alice enjoy normal chess, and they have found a lot of joy in creating new versions. Each version begins with the normal rules of the game and then adds new twists ranging from the ability to bring pieces back from the dead to have traitors that take your own pieces. Every unique wrinkle changes the way you strategize and play the game. I ask what version they want to play, so I can also have a say in shaping the rules.

Let’s make two connections to work. First, how many times have you heard people at work say things like, “This is the process. This is the way we do things. This is just the environment we operate in.”? Have you been the one to say those things? I have. It happens to the best of us 😉 Often, when we think of work, we believe that the rules are fixed, but they don’t have to be. Cam and Alice have shown us that we can evolve the rules just like in chess. When we evolve the rules, we change the way we think about and play the game. Every process, every workflow, and every preconceived notion can and should be challenged. This is the only way to make progress.

Here is the second connection. The environment is changing faster than ever before. If we are not intentional about evolving the game we call work, then we will just have to blindly accept whatever new rules come our way. I’d much rather shape the rules and the game. What about you?

The challenge: How will you challenge the rules and shape the games you play?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Finding Lessons in Challenging Situations (Abominable Snow Race) 2-4-26

This is a one-off entry inspired by the Abominable Snow Race. It’s about finding lessons in challenging situations.

I managed to talk my entire family into doing the Abominable Snow Race this year. We did the 5k obstacle course race through the snowy wooded trails of Wisconsin. I can’t say it was exactly fun, BUT it was an adventure. Here are a few of the highlights/lowlights 😉

It was cold! At the start of the race we were at 0 degrees Fahrenheit, a lot worse than we thought it would be. The course also had more hills than anticipated.
The first mile was gorgeous. Beautiful wooded trails, lots of fresh snow to eat, and a few easy obstacles to warm up on. We even saw a local racing legend who does the race in a speedo every year. I don’t know if he is brave, tough, crazy, or all of the above.
By mile 2 things got rough. We were tired and cold. We were all a bit cranky. I kept telling the kids that we only had one really difficult thing left. We had to climb up this steep hill with a rope. We got about ¾ up the incline when we all went tumbling down. I skinned my knee and for a moment the kids thought we would be trapped in the woods forever living as forest monks. (actual quote)
Now we were at mile 2.5. We were taking a break, the kids gasping for breath, overwhelmed and unsure if they could make it. Out of nowhere this woman comes over to check out on us. She tells my kids she feels their pain and is suffering right along with them. She tells us she’s from North Carolina and NOT AT ALL READY for the cold or snow. We look at her face and a combo of sweat, ice, and tears had her mascara running down her face like war paint. The kids snap out of their moment and go walking along like they are perfectly fine, and the woman joins us, another duck in our row. We become a merry band of misfits, offering moral support as we wind through the woods for the last half mile of the race. The woman says how her kids would never be able to do this, which makes my kids feel incredible.
We crossed the finish line, and while it wasn’t pretty we made it. We were all angry, exhausted, and freezing. We had been through some things. Everyone was so grumpy we didn’t even talk for like 15 minutes. After we got some food in our belly we looked back and started laughing at the wild series of events. Also, I helped the kids see that even if it was hard, even if they struggled, they did something that day that most people wouldn’t even try to do.

Our lessons from the day

It’s possible to find humor and even joy in things that suck. It may not have all been fun at the time, but looking back, the entire experience is HILARIOUS! We have laughed so hard recounting the tales with folks.
Part of the reason why it was so hard is we assumed it wouldn’t be as hilly and as cold as it initially was. It’s a good lesson that being physically AND mentally prepared for the worst comes in handy.
It’s nice to have a reminder of what you are capable of. The race was a testament that we can do hard things. During future challenges one of our measuring sticks will be, “Is this as hard as the Abominable Snow Race?” Probably not. I’m so dang proud of my kiddos for doing this.
There are always people out there to commiserate with and help along. Our encounter with the woman was a cool one. She helped us and we helped her.
If you’re angry and hate the world, maybe you’re just tired, cold, and hungry. A good warm meal can solve a lot of problems 😉

Connection with work- Maybe you’re not trudging through cold and snow right now. I’d bet that you are facing some challenges. With this in mind, I imagine that some of the lessons we learned during our race are applicable to where you are too.

The challenge- What lessons will you take from the challenge you are currently in?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry