Playing to win; Playing not to lose
I watch The Traitors - a lot - inevitably, I end up thinking about work.
One behaviour fascinates me. Some Faithful players manage to remain focused on actively trying to find the Traitors. Other Faithful players become almost entirely occupied with not being identified as a Traitor themselves - this tends to happen when they are accused and the real Traitors fan the flames of doubt and keep it alive for a sustained period. For the purposes of this article and thought experiment, I’m going to use this as an illustration of playing to win in the first instance, and playing not to lose win in the second.
Playing to win, to find the traitors, requires them to look outwards: What is happening? What have I observed? What doesn't add up? What has changed? What information haven't I considered yet? What assumptions am I making? What might I have got wrong?
If I am playing to win, I look for possibility. I experiment. I develop and organise knowledge and patterns. I consider and reconsider the shape of the game itself.
Playing not to lose, to not be perceived as a traitor, turns their attention inwards: Why did they say my name? Who voted for me? How do I prove I'm a Faithful? How do I explain what I said yesterday? What does everybody think of me?
If I am playing not to lose, I look for threats. I protect what I have. I minimise mistakes. I strengthen weaknesses. I respond to things that might hurt me.
Once a player gets into that Playing-Not-To-Lose mode, it seems to change where they direct their attention. They stop investigating the game and start monitoring the threat to themselves.
Almost every new piece of information gets processed according to its relevance to their position.
Every conversation is interpreted according to whether it strengthens or threatens their own position.
They aren't really investigating the Traitors any more, they're managing the threat, and I think businesses can do exactly the same thing.
Playing not to lose narrows your field of vision. On The Traitors, playing not to lose can become strangely self-defeating. The harder someone works to protect their own position, the less attention they have available for the thing they are actually supposed to be doing.
Businesses can make the same mistake. When a business becomes preoccupied with protecting what it already has, attention naturally moves inwards.
How do we protect this revenue?
How do we preserve this way of working?
How do we stop customers leaving?
How do we make this existing thing perform harder?
None of them bad questions but they are defensive questions, and there is a danger that, like a Faithful desperately trying to prove they are Faithful, the business becomes so consumed by its immediate position that it stops properly observing the game around it. Defensiveness changes the direction of attention. Defensive questions are legitimate, but dangerous when they consume the whole field of vision. Sometimes the biggest risk isn't failing to defend what you have, it's becoming so busy defending it that you stop noticing the game has changed.
What's happening around us, and what might that mean for what we do next?
Customers are changing.
Technology is changing.
Competitors are doing different things.
People's expectations are shifting.
New possibilities are appearing.
If all your attention is occupied defending your current position, how much of that information can you actually take in? Looking for information that might change your mind, rather than information that confirms you're still safe requires a different posture.
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