Games & Business: Do You Really Want To Play?

Business success is a relationship with the game of business.

Do you want to play that game?

Thoughts on Games & Business

All things in the hard are human made, and they are all games.

To the people caught up in them, they seem like life and death, and often they are life and death.

Lose the game, lose your life. Or lose the game, lose your liberty. Or, lose the game and your whole family will suffer, or die ...

In the so called civilised world, this is all pretty metaphorical.

You lose the game, and you lose your money. Your house, your status, but rarely your life, or even your freedom.

But there are always other games to play.

Should you have lost the game of banking so dreadfully that you actually end up in prison for it, you begin to play the prison game. In between the two, there was the game of the law, and that's definitely a law upon itself.

All games are that.

Laws upon themselves.

Rules of the game, those are the laws.

There are a lot of games a person can play. The homeless game, the cancer game, the victim game, the prison game, the policeman game, the soldier game, the politician game, the housewife game.

Games within games within games.

But they're all games, nothing more, nothing less.

The games of the hard.

What games do you want to play?

Which games are you playing?

Do you know the rules?

Here's an interesting idea.

What about the game of business success?

Do you want to play that game?

A lot of people don't - and then complain bitterly that they're not succeeding in hard business.

The fact is that you won't be getting a football trophy or a gold medal (or any medal, for that matter) if you walk onto the playing field, then throw yourself to the floor and cry, "I'm not playing this game! This game is stupid! Whaaaaa ..."

The very first thing you might want to do if you wish to succeed in any game is to acknowledge that a) there's a game; b) you want to take part in it; and c) you want to play the game well and you want to be a winner, at the end of the day.

When the trophies are being handed out, the medals hung around the winner necks, the pot of gold is handed over ...

That end of the day.

There is a direct cause and effect link between how much one loves the game, and how successful one is going to be at playing it.

Most games that people play have many levels, many roles.

A person might find that they are not particularly suited to being a football player; but, loving the game as they do, they find a place within it. They comment on it, become a coach, or buy their own football team.

But it is driven by the love of the game - at the end of the day.

Enough now of the simile, the metaphor.

Here's the deal.

You want to succeed in business, then you've got to say YES to the game.

YES, I WANT TO PLAY THE BUSINESS GAME!

If that's not there, you will never succeed. You can't possibly succeed.

It's like trying to have a successful relationship with someone you hate and despise and you don't want to have anything to do with them.

It's never gonna work. It's never gonna make you happy.

So what will it take for you to say YES to the game of business?

All of it - the wheeling and dealing, the strategy, the accounting, the record keeping, the price comparisons, the staff motivation, the investment finding, the hours of work it takes to play the game right, to learn the game deeply and practice until you're good enough to play in earnest ...

Business success is a relationship with the game of business.

Do you want to play that game?

On a scale of -10 to +10, how much do you want to play?

Ah - and there's the key word.

PLAY.

Not win.

You gotta play before you even have a chance of winning.

I'm not asking you how much you want to win.

Of course, everyone wants to win the lottery.

All the money now, no effort at all, there it is, on a platter.

Oh - but have you heard of those people who win the lottery, and a few years down the line, are poorer than they ever were in the first place?

They just spent until it was all gone again.

Well, at least they had a few years of money joy, right?

Sure.

Keep playing that lottery and see ya later.

Rest of us, who are doing business, who are failing at succeeding splendidly in business, we can go back to the idea that before you succeed or fail, you first need to learn to play.

That is, if you want to play in the first place.

Trying to learn something, practice something or do something you don't want to do at all, well that's just a massive snarl up of reversals and you know where those get you ...

So let's start with that.

The game of business.

Do you want to play ...?

City in the Sky - Silvia Hartmann

Take me to the perfect place in time and space

where I can experience a powerful business game

that will change my mind and change my stars ... :-)

1. What is the time of day? What is the time of year?

2. What is the weather?

3. What is the land?

4. What is the vegetation?

5. And what else is here ...?

Classic Game Questions from Infinite Creativity.