I have a nerdy secret: I'm really into board games.
I have always enjoyed board games but until recently when I thought about them, it was always the classics from my childhood that came to mind; Monopoly, Scrabble, Kerplunk. As a teenager I fell in love in Cluedo but as an adult, board games faded out of my day to day life for the simple reason that my ex didn't like them. It's hard to enjoy board games when the only other person in your life (let's not dwell on that for too long!) has an active disliking of them. And so my love of games was saved for Christmas and not every Christmas at that.
Like most couples, each year there was that classic Where Will We Be Spending Christmas? debate and although in hindsight we never actually spent a single Christmas with my ex's family (for various reasons), there were some Christmases that we spent alone, just the two of us. Frankly, those Christmases were the worst. I'm digressing (Christmas has a way of doing way to me), anyway the point is that on my favourite Christmases, the ones spent with my family, board games were a prominent feature, along with a big Christmas morning dog walk with a picnic of homemade sausage rolls and pecan pie halfway through. Ahh Christmas; insert wistful sigh here. During those Christmases, there were 8-10 of us and I was the youngest. Sometimes we would all play together and other times just us 'kids' would play and as the years went on, my board game repertoire slowly expanded as my sister and her husband introduced me to new and different games.
Now, before I continue it's worth pointing out that my sister and her husband are a couple that I really look up to. I love their relationship because it has so many of the qualities that I want for myself one day and watching them play games together has always stirred up feelings of "I want that too!" #relationshipgoals
Enter Watson.
It was over New Year that I told Watson that I didn't necessarily want what we had to just be 'something casual' anymore and he met me at that level by telling me about his own aspirational couple that he is friends with. Watson is really into video games and I'm really not. His friends share that dynamic, but in an attempt to share in the hobby, they found a game that they would both enjoy - a mystery solving game - one that he could 'drive' as it were, while she told him what to do. All the fun of working together with none of the hand-eye coordination required - I was sold. And so Watson and I began playing a Sherlock Holmes game together (hence the nicknames) and when we completed it, we began looking for something else to play. It was then that I uttered a sentence that would change the course of our relationship forever: "I quite like the idea of us playing physical board games together too..." Now it was Watson's turn to get on board (no pun intended) and boy, did he!
By the next day we were sharing a subscription to a board game rental company which, for a monthly fee, sends you out games to play and when you want to try something new, you send them back and get new ones. We created a wish list of games we liked the look of and fully intended on trying lots of different ones but that's not what happened. Our first game arrived and we were hooked. By chance, we happened to put what just so happens to be a very popular game with it's own cult following at the top of our wish list without realising just how popular it is or how good it would be. When we set up our first game of Everdell, there was a great deal of squealing and cooing over how impossibly delightful it is and not just from me I might add. After playing for close to two hours we then spent another hour discussing at length what we enjoyed most about it and what we would do differently next time. This, I'm happy to tell you, is a practice that continues to this day. After every single game, there is still an extensive post-game analysis. The creators very recently released a digital app version too which we both bought immediately and after our first digital game I found myself really missing having Watson there to talk to about what had happened, so I rang him. This too has now become a staple of every digital game that we play. That first night there were three games and three phone calls.
But after many many games, there was one thing about playing Everdell with Watson which both of us were becoming a little bit tired of. He always wins. During one of our matches I was watching him very carefully plan out his turns and asked him if he'd ever played chess. It was then that I learned that indeed, not only did he used to play chess in school, but he was also captain of the chess team... That's my clownfish ladies. (If you know, you know.)
Anyway, after losing to Watson for the umpteenth time I did something somewhat uncharacteristic for me. I asked for help.
I think it says quite a lot about our relationship (or rather, about my previous relationships and the work that I've done to get to where I am now) that I was able to acknowledge that asking for help made me feel uncomfortable but that I knew that Watson wouldn't be a d!£# about it. And so I asked if during our next game, instead of playing against each other, we could play open hands and work together so that he could talk me through his thought processes and help me improve my game. I was right that he wasn't a d!£# about it and in fact, playing that game is one of my favourite times that we've spent together. Due to our work schedules after that, our next game that we played wasn't until the digital version was released and of the three games that we played that night (we're much quicker online than we are in person), we drew the first game and I won the second two. My online record is far superior to my physical one. For some reason, I am much better at playing online and Watson is still much better than me in person. It's an odd thing but I do like the balance that it brings to the relationship.
But you might be wondering what all this has to do with running a business and how on earth could playing a board game have any transferable skills that translate into better business behaviour.
Well, during our shared game where Watson taught me how to play like him, one of the main lessons I learned was "is this the best time to make this move?" Before, I was making moves and taking actions as soon as I saw them. I could plan ahead a few moves at a time, but I never stopped to consider if I would be better off waiting to make that move until a more beneficial time. Watson helped me consider when the best time was to make each of my moves and quite often I was better off holding back and waiting until I had more resources. This was probably why he kept beating me and is also why our in-person games take so long. Watson will agonise over his turns and spend ages working out what to do next and more importantly, what to save until later. Now I'm more thoughtful about my own turns and can see the potential benefits of waiting before making a move and making sure that I have all the resources I need in order to maximise a turn.
How I see this way of thinking creep into the way I run my business is that now when facing a decision, I remember to ask myself "is this the best time to make this move?" Of course the decisions I'm talking about are usually around when to respond to questions from my clients or when to announce certain things or when to do certain tasks and not 'should I discard this skunk from my hand or save it until later and give it to Watson?' but that way of thinking still applies. Maybe it seems obvious, maybe I'm late to the party, or maybe I have been thinking about my business this way all along and I've only just become aware of it, but I have become aware of it and knowledge is power.
The more Watson and I play games together, the more I'm using different parts of my brain to problem solve and quickly make decisions to course-correct on the fly because of something he's done and these are valuable skills when you run your own business. The mental agility involved in looking after numerous clients whilst simultaneously trying to acquire new ones all while still doing the actual day-job work is exhausting and it's easy to fall into the trap of 'I'll just reply to this email now and then it's done'. But working in the moment like that, whilst getting the job done, is rarely the best use of our mental capacity and in my case, often leads to moments of 'I wish I'd waited to reply to x because now y has asked me this'.
Remembering to pause and ask myself "is now the best time?" has helped me reconnect with myself and run my business from a more mindful place. When I'm rushing around, trying to get everything done, I'm not working from a place of love and abundance, I'm working from a place of scarcity and lack - usually a feeling of a lack of time. Taking a moment to consider all of my options and all of the moving pieces means that I'm not taking a step for the sake of making a move, but instead making more meaningful choices and working with intention, hopefully with better outcomes for all involved. And that is how board games are improving my business game.
Oh and if you were wondering what happened with the board game subscription and if we're still renting a second hand copy of Everdell for £18 a month, the company went bust and Watson bought a collectors edition for £100. We've since placed a joint order for all five expansions, surmounting to £200...
Comments