Don't let the game play you

Picture this: you see an opportunity that could be quite profitable, but lies outside the comfort zone of your organization’s traditional style. Rather than bring this up and suggest a change, you forget about the opportunity and decide not to risk a bad idea.

This is the old game keeping you from revitalizing yourself and revitalizing your company in the process.

What is the old game?

The old game is fear. It is feeling that you must defend what’s yours, that you must be secretive, untrusting and competitive.

The old game is unreasonable expectation. It is being unclear with directions, keeping departments in silos, being unwilling to change as the economy and times do outside.

The old game is entrenched and unseen. We mostly don’t acknowledge its rules, but we agree to play by them when we don’t agree on new rules of our own.

Where does the old game come from?

We have learned the old game from all sorts of places. In school, we were encouraged to compete with our fellow students. If you asked questions, you were thought of as a suck-up. The repetition of these ideals across such a substantial and influential period of our lives created an expectation that the rest of the world worked the same. And since we believed it, it became true.

Other games we play have similar rules. Name one professional sport where a player can win without there being a loser. As far as board games go, Monopoly teaches us to crush our opponents and take everything that remains.

Besides all this, there are the social games we play: the need to be perceived as the best, the most powerful, the most capable with the best clients and the biggest results. These are all zero sum games.

How do we change our game?

In my experience, the only way to shake ourselves loose of these old rules is to form new muscle memory with new rules that we create for ourselves. That is why I am so glad to be introducing my clients and prospective clients to FreshBiz.

FreshBiz is a simulation of the business world experienced as a board game. While playing, you will be asked to leave your old convictions behind and think beyond the confines of your current situation and methods. Simulations like these rewire your brain in powerful ways, preparing you for a paradigm shift and a new stage of success for your business.