In every position I’ve worked in before the current one, the path for becoming better at what I did was mostly obvious. I’ve been a soldier, a chef, a software developer, and for each of these I knew at any given time what I could do to train and improve my skills. I always had the freedom to try something new - adjust a recipe or come up with a new one, learn a new coding language, play around with the sequence, and measure the outcome in a safe space. In recent years, as I’ve made the transition from team lead to people manager, and then to senior manager, I’ve noticed a disturbing fact - the more I am expected to help direct the growth of others, the less attention is spent by others on my own growth.
It’s a terrifying realisation. To stop growing as a person or employee means to stagnate, and in today’s business world, stagnation is a very nasty word. The more thought I put into my growth path as a manager, the more bothered I am by the lack of room for experimentation, or the difficulty of it.
It was bugging me for a long time, until a casual question made a few things click in my brain and led to the birth of this publication.
I suppose every blog starts with some kind of story. This one is mine, and while this blog is about games shared with friends over a table and how they interact with my day to day work as a people manager, it starts with me alone in my room in front of a screen.
One evening, my partner walks into the room as I am playing on the PC after a long day at the office. As a brooding introvert with misanthropic tendencies, this is often how I choose to unwind at the end of day spent with people, no matter how much I care or appreciate them.
She takes a look at me and asks, “Shouldn’t you be… doing something?”
“What do you mean?” I was looking at her over my shoulder, keeping one eye on the unpaused game.
“Well, it just looks like you’re watching the game play itself.” She passed her glance over me, and I took a look and realised what she’d meant. My feet were propped on the table, chair pulled back, and my hands were busy giving the cat in my lap a vigorous belly rub. On the screen, an intense battle was taking place. The cat, my companion of 14 years, was unimpressed by the familiar scene and was doing his best to drown the sound of it with his purring.
I was playing a top down isometric role playing game, the kind where your player character gathers companions on an epic journey. My team of virtual characters numbered six, and they were busy wading through a mob of enemies, swinging swords, shooting arrows and slinging spells as they were cutting down the opposition. Occasionally I would pause the scene to give orders, instructing the use of a particular ability, or having them focus on a particular foe. Mostly, I was content with keeping an eye on them while ensuring my feline companion was happy.
I’ve had a special relationship with this type of game since I bought a copy of Baldur’s Gate, a cornerstone of the genre, with my Bar Mitzvah money in 1998. I’ve always delighted in locating all the different companions that could accompany my character on their journey through hand-crafted digital worlds. I’ve befriended, romanced or become rivals with dozens of them over the years. The draw was always the prose, the joy of exploration, and the personal stories that unfolded as one gets to know these characters, grow with them, and help them deal with their baggage.
None of that came up when I explained the scene to my partner. On the contrary. I was rambling about the amount of work that I put into building this adventuring group. How I picked the companions that would best compliment my starting character. How I developed their skills over the course of the game to create synergies and contingencies to prepare them for anything the game might throw at them. How I equipped them with the best items I could loot, scavenge, buy and craft to deal with the particular challenge they were facing at that very instant. And the scripts, providing specific instructions on which specific action they should take under certain circumstances. By the time I finished describing all of this, my troupe of virtual characters was already long done making short work of their enemies, the party members standing there, throwing impatient remarks about the futility of idling about.
“I suppose you could say a big part of how I play is aimed at making myself redundant for the progress of the game.” I told her proudly.
“So you pick your people, equip them, personalise their development, then you point and watch over them as they get the job done?” She grinned at me. “Sounds like you’re basically playing at being a manager...” I’ve often told her that in my work as both an automation engineer and a people manager, the more successful I am, the less I am necessary. It then dawned on me I had been applying this philosophy to games since before I’d started highschool.
It felt good, making that connection between hobby and professional life. I’ve been raised to think of personal and professional development separately, to view my professional persona as an alter ego I put on like a spandex suit as I make my way to the office in the morning. Recent years have made me reconsider that whole premise, and the connection my partner had so astutely observed felt like something I should further dwell on.
My partner runs a company that builds a professional development platform and spends a great deal of her time reading about, facilitating, and partnering folks for the purpose of mentorship and the study of leadership. We both have very intense jobs, and often discuss the details of our day-to-day because we learn from the challenges the other faces as we unpack them together. So it happened that we spent the next couple of hours walking our dog through the park, musing over the role games have had in preparing me and shaping me as a manager and a leader.
And so this blog was born. Later posts will attempt to make more direct connections between board games I play and the challenges I’ve encountered in my role as a manager. I have no intention to dive too deep into breaking down specific games to their tiniest pieces - plenty of others have done that before me, and done it well. Prior knowledge of the games I will explore is not required. I hope to reward an open mind, your patience and attention with some interesting insights on the nature of growth and how I achieve it in a space that makes it hard to experiment in.
I think you might find something interesting here, if at least one of the following statements apply to you:
You are interested in the internal dialogue of a manager.
You are a leader passionate about enabling and helping others grow, or a manager struggling with constant noise.
You are passionate about board games and how they interact with our lives beyond the gaming table.
You are interested in personal growth, and are curious about creative ways of achieving it.
Ludology is an interest of yours.
If you do not identify with any of the above, you’re still welcome to read on and prove that I’m fallible in my attempts at inclusivity and clarity.
Before we go down that path, I’d like to spend some time discussing what games are, and why I believe they are such a powerful tool for professional development.