Remember those childhood days spent lost in play? Building forts, strategizing in board games, or scoring the winning goal – we might not have realized it then, but those games were teaching us valuable lessons that would shape how we approach challenges, teamwork, and even leadership. When I was growing up there was a computer game released in the late 90’s called Age of Empires. For those who don’t know, it was a real time strategy game where a player was tasked to build a civilization, starting with just a few “units” that were hunter-gatherer villagers, with the goal of building your empire and taking over the map by defeating competing empires. I fondly recall spending many evenings and rainy days at the family Gateway computer in the corner of the living room, having no idea I was learning skills that would help me later in life. I can draw a few key lessons from that game that parallel experiences I’ve had firsthand running an organization and also witnessed while consulting other leaders.
1. Align actions with a strategy
In the game, some players would attack immediately with whatever they had while the other empires were weak and undeveloped, others would build walls and defend as they grew their armies to attack at a later time. Any who didn’t have a strategy in mind would perish almost immediately. The same goes for business, your operations must be aligned with a strategy or time and resources will be wasted with unfocused effort. One business example of taking two paths would be having Core Values that state you put the customer first but operationally every process and incentive program is designed to sell as much as possible at all costs. You could imagine the confusion and this lack of clarity in direction would cause. A good example of the classic saying one thing and doing another.
2. Idle resources = lost opportunity
When I first began playing I would become too focused on watching units in action after I set them on a path. While this was entertaining, it kept me from ensuring all units and resources were being utilized. As I got better at quickly pivoting from action to action, I became much better at the game. It was very rare for any of my units to sit idle or my resources to build up to excessive amounts (unless deliberately to use them for something big). This applies to business as well, when an owner is overly focused in one area of the business, the other areas are at risk. In contracting, I’ve seen this happen time and time again when a surge of sales causes the owner to focus solely on production, only to be followed by a major lull in sales because nobody was at the helm.
3. Running the empire requires as much attention as any of the jobs within the empire
In the game, you’re constantly looking to add more units, ensure resources are being brought in efficiently, upgrade your units, identify opportunities to seize territory, form alliances and so on. In business great leaders are always looking to add great people, ensuring the business model is running well, growing their people, identifying new opportunities for growth and forming alliances. So I ask you a question, are you an upgraded unit within your empire, or are you running the empire?
I encourage you to reflect on these lessons I’ve shared with you and evaluate how well you’re running your empire, just a few small adjustments in leadership habits can make a tremendous difference in your business results.