When I was young, we used to play this game of Snakes and ladders. It was one of the best pastimes I had.
So, I look at it with a lot of fond memories. Yesterday, I stumbled onto this version of the game and it made me think a lot about how insightful the game was at multiple levels.
The game offered insightful glimpses into life, risk and a lot more. As I have mentioned before, as humans, we are meaning making creatures.
As leaders, we would all do really well to make our own meaning of this game and if you would allow me, maybe even indulge me, here is my meaning and lessons from this game:
1. Life is random.
There is no one out there to get us, as much as there is no one to help us. It is all a matter of our own meaning making. We make them all up in our minds.
So, as leaders, it is our responsibility to not let the chaos around us disturb or distract us. We just need to accept that it just is and work through it, as best we can.
2. Ups and Downs:
Just like the game, there are times when we stumble onto something that seems to help us and sometimes we stumble onto things that seems to bring us down. What is important is to not allow them to affect us and keep playing and moving forward. We will eventually finish the game and reach our destination.
As leaders, it is important for us to realise that either of them is ok and to expect these ups and downs. Sooner than later, we will go through these ups and downs. So, it is better to let our teams be mentally prepared for them both.
3. Life is finite.
We start at some point and we will reach our end sooner or later. Some reach it sooner and some later. The important thing is to know that this is a game and enjoy the game, while we are still on the board.
As leaders, it is important to realise that our terms as leaders is also finite. While the term we have here is finite, we need to play an infinite game, assuming that there will be someone else who might be playing the game after us. The game goes on.
4. Life is simple.
Just like this game, life in reality is very simple. We just need to make decisions and act. The actions will move us forward and sometimes faster and sometimes backwards. We just need to keep taking the decisions and keep acting on them.
As leaders, it is in our interest to keep things simple as well. We act based on our best interpretation of the inputs we have, the resources and constraints that we have with us and keep moving. Not moving forward is not an option. Being stuck is probably the worst thing for us and our teams.
5. Risk and Planning
If we look at any project that we embark upon, we will do well to think of the same as this game. There will be some good and some bad surprises.
The question is, can we imagine what these could be? What could trip us closer to our start? What could spur us on? What could trip us in the middle phase? What could spur us on? What could trip us at the final phase? What could spur us on? Do we even know what the end looks and feels like, just so that we know that we have reached there?
As leaders, it is our responsibility to find answers to these questions.
In conclusion
In conclusion, as I said at the beginning of this post, we are meaning making creatures. We can always find a way to make meaning from anything that we want to. Sometimes, this is a good things and sometimes it trips us up.
As leaders, it becomes our responsibility to try and use this capacity for meaning making to make things easier on us and the teams we lead rather than allow it to bog us down.
