From Board Game To Board Room - 5 Valuable Lessons From a Ten Year Old
Have you ever found yourself doing something in your business because ‘that’s what everyone does’?
I believe it is essential to know why we do what we do: the principles beneath the method.
I discovered first hand what happens when you use someone else’s strategy without fully understanding the principles that inform it while playing a family board game.
Part of our lock-down routine is playing Monopoly Jnr before bed.
Time was my eldest would complain about not getting to play the full version — (we have the Edinburgh Edition) — the junior version being to pedestrian for my little wheeler dealer entrepre-nerd.
Monopoly goes on for hours, as you may know, and this is why I will only agree to the easier one at bedtime. Otherwise I get cranky.
But I am always impressed at how he ruthlessly beats me and his little brother time and again at what is basically a game of chance.
And it’s all down to having solid principles.
The other night I thought I would copy his tactics and I lost. Why? Because I was only looking at his external actions and forgetting about the principles driving them.
So I thought a bit deeper and looked at why he was so successful and came up with these tips:
Play to win
My ten year old always plays to win. He has some great strategies that assist him, even though there is not a lot you can do other than go with the roll of the dice. But his confidence in his ability to win somehow skews the odds in his favour.
2. Pay for what you value.
He is so ruthless, if you land on a property he wants he will badger you until you agree to sell it to him instead, barking ‘£3, £4, I’ll give you £10!’
Because he knows which properties are worth it - to him.
Often he won’t have the best properties on the board, often preferring the slightly cheaper green spaces to the dark blues ones - Park lane and Mayfair.
But he knows what he wants- and is willing to pay.
So many people want cheap or free, but you get what you pay for. You also value what you pay for, which means you get more out of it.
3. Be guided by your own principles - not others.
I started off the game rolling a three, which meant I got a chance card. This card said I could go to any space on the board and buy it.
So I thought - I’ll do what he does and buy the green ones.
And what happened? I lost of course. Because I followed the tactics which had led to success. But without my son’s reasoning behind it - his guiding principles if you will - I made a bad choice.
I wasn’t using my own inner compass as a guide. Sure this is just a kid’s board game, but it taught me a valuable lesson: don’t just look at what people are doing and try to emulate it.
You see businesses do this all the time. So and so does this so it must be a good idea…
The truth is, if a business is built on solid principles, the strategies are informed by that. Not the other way round. You can’t start off by copying others and hoping to achieve the same results.
Not long term anyway.
4. Be in it for the long haul.
The rules say that the game ends when the first person loses all their cash.
My son always compells us to play on - liquidating property if need be to stay in the game, and keeping on.
5. Have passion
He wants it more than me or his brother. He's focused, single minded and never gives up even when i’ve got bored and gone off to fold laundry.
When he grows up he'll have to learn the nuances - when to concede, when to stick fast. In the real world of work he will need to refine his strategy, but with the underlying foundations — knowing his own mind, fuelled by passion and desire to win, he is off to a good start.
What principles guide your business?
Is your business strategy informed by a strong sense of core values?
It's always worth taking time to revisit what's really important to your business.
And this will help you figure out what makes you unique, which helps you attract the right customer.
If you need content that communicates this effectively to your ideal audience, let me know. Rachel@rachelhunterwriting.co.uk