Collaborate, Fail Fast & Pivot Often
Am I talking about my most recent start-up? Surprisingly, no.
I’m talking about the strongest and most life-relevant themes in the popular co-operative board game, Pandemic. I started playing Pandemic about 2 years ago (holy crap!) and it is far and away my favorite not only because the game is massively fun but through playing the game I developed a new perspective on “rules”(see title) that have been contritely regurgitated all over Silicon Valley for years.
What the heck are you talking about?
Great question, for those of you out there that do not play or generally read about board games, let me give you a quick synopsis. You and the other 2–3 players work together to cure 4 deadly diseases that plague the world— you usually lose and everyone in the world dies — there are obviously a bunch of complicated rules I could explain but thats really the gist.
Let me explain that the rules of this game are fairly simple, and I encourage anyone to run to your local amazon.com and pick up a copy and give it a try. This game is difficult because the scenarios you encounter while playing often cause your team to lose (ending humanity), and if you get too good at the game you can make these scenarios happen more frequently or more dramatically so the threat of ending humanity always looms large.
The amazing thing about this game(and the segue to the next section) is that even though the team loses and gets discouraged people want to keep starting over — this time will be different!
It probably won’t.
But who doesn’t want to save the world?!
The stakes are high, but not that high
If at first you don’t succeed….everyone in the world is not actually dead!
Pandemic offers you a chance to save the world — a world approximately the size of your IKEA coffee table — but still, the world. The high stakes atmosphere created by the impending doom of humanity makes the decisions in the game seem very important. Throughout the game you will be in scenarios where you have to choose between high risk behaviors and maintenance / control activities; there are ways to mitigate the risk of bad outcomes by being aware of external factors & conditions but ultimately you aren’t completely in control of your fate.
Hey! that sounds like a metaphor for life!
Definitely.
The difference between real life and playing a game is obviously that in your life your actions and decisions have real consequences. Playing a game like Pandemic that forces you to use the part of your brain that analyzes the numerous potential outcomes of any possible action prepares you to do the same as it applies IRL. This is extremely important, in our lives we are constantly faced with decisions from small — Should I have one more cookie ?— to large — Where should I go to college? Is now the right time to have a baby? — no matter the size each of these choices results in consequences. Because we are playing a game, we are more likely to be comfortable with taking larger risks than we are in real life, but practicing with insignificant decisions like “Do I save San Francisco or Paris?” allows us to be more willing to venture out of our natural comfort zones when deciding “Should I move to San Francisco or Paris?”.
The game doesn’t teach you only to predict and mitigate negative consequences, it allows you to cultivate the highly desired skill of learning to move on quickly, not get discouraged, and try again — this time will be different!
Fail fast.
Pivot often.
Working Together
We learn this is kindergarten for a reason
It is no surprise that by collaborating we can solve problems faster and more effectively, however there are many nuances to collaborating productively that only come with practice. Again, the stakes here are not so high that the strategies your team is working on will have lingering effects on your relationships or careers; this creates an atmosphere where creative problem solving can thrive.
To effectively collaborate we need to equally share our ideas, listen to others, and critically assess how strategies can be combined for the best possible scenario. It is always interesting to see which of these skills your friends naturally have and how they approach problem solving. For example, some team members will naturally take a leadership role — doing most of the talking and facilitating a decision actually being made; some folks will sit quietly and listen to all the ideas offered and then present a carefully thought through strategy. Each of these people is valuable and necessary; science has shown us that diverse teams are much more effective at solving difficult problems.
Because Pandemic is a game though, the person who gets to settle on the final decision of the move changes based on whose turn it is; this is a genius mechanic in that it forces the all of the team members to be cognizant of who is “in-charge” and what kind of move they are likely to be comfortable making; potentially. It also gives each person, regardless of their problem solving abilities, the ability to take the lead and have ownership of the solution and steer the strategy.
Speaking from personal experience, when I play Pandemic I almost always play on a two-person team with my boyfriend. It is amazing how allegorically our roles in the game mimic our approach to tasks in life — I typically focus on the risks (read: worries) of the bad outcomes while he usually zones in on the winning conditions and what tasks we can do to get closer to the win, even if that means taking a risk.
Collaborate.
Board Games: Buy Them
Pandemic is far from the only board game we own / play regularly in my house — and I can not stress enough how good for us getting our heads out of out technology and working on solving problems and being competitive with friends is. There are infinite lessons to be learned from games, far beyond what is described above.
Other games teach us how to be productively competitive, how to develop interpersonal relationships and do social engineering, how to manage resources and budgets,… the list is almost endless and I hope to write more about this is the future (along with some additional recommendations) so if you enjoyed this post please click the little ❤ or leave a note below! I guess you can also leave a note if you didn’t like it also — I’m happy to learn from feedback.
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