If You Want To Make An Omlette...
“You can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs.” The Joker, as played by Jack Nicholson, Batman
Today I returned from my first ever board game design retreat. It was just myself and my design partner, Neil. He lives in Iowa and I live in Michigan, so we met in the near middle in Illinois. It was a fun location to visit and also a great place to get some work done.
So what do people do at a board game design retreat? As you might suspect, a large amount of our time was spent designing and playtesting games with one another. We are currently working on several different games in various stages, and our goal was to get two games either ready for testing with the public or if possible, ready to pitch to game publishers. The good news is that we were able to achieve those goals with two of our games and were also able to advance several other ideas as well.
We did all that in about 24 hours of actual work time. I am pretty proud of that result. The secret to our successful productivity is pretty simple. Neil and I have a really solid working relationship that is based on a couple important things. First, we both understand what each of our strengths are regarding game design. It’s something we are frank and honest about with one another. During the design process, either of us has been known to say something to the effect of, “This specific piece of the design is more in your wheelhouse than mine, so why don’t you take the lead.” That honesty saves us a lot of time that can be lost to being prideful and having an inability to say that you need help.
The second part is all based on one word: flexibility. Honestly, without flexibility, the first part wouldn’t work on its own. It doesn’t matter if Neil has the skills to help on a design if I am not willing to be flexible and use his ideas.
A perfect example of this flexibility in action happened within a couple hours of us starting the weekend. We were playtesting a design. Neil had done most of the work on this one and it was my first time seeing the game. At the end of the first playtest, I told Neil that I could see what he was trying to do but something wasn’t quite clicking for me and I feared that the audience for this game would be confused.
I then suggested a big change that kept the core of the game the same but would change the fundamental way in which you scored points and won the game. Without hesitation, Neil said, “Let’s give it a try.” After quickly redoing the cards, we tried the game again and boom— there it was. Everything was working like we needed.
Here’s the best part of all of it. My great idea for the game didn’t save us. No, we were saved by the fact that Neil wasn’t worried about his own ego and instead was flexible and agreed that my idea was worth trying — even though the idea felt counter to how he wanted the game to work.
If he had said no to the change, I would have yielded to his opinion and we would have been left with a game that didn’t work as well as it could work. Truth be told, we would have gotten there eventually, but the time wasted during our short retreat would have hampered our ability to make the progress we had hoped to make.
This isn’t any different than working with others at your day job. It’s not even that different from leading a team of people. Understanding where your coworkers and team members excel is key to the success of the team and the company. Even more important, being able to be flexible with those around you is absolutely crucial for that same success.
As the Joker teaches us in the quote at the start of this article, you do have to break some eggs to make an omelette. When those eggs are your ideas, and the project is the omelette, it can be hard to let that coworker break them for the good of the project. Many times we can find ourselves believing that our ideas are so good that we become unwilling to change them for anything. That can very well spell failure for your project or team.
In my experience, most ideas and projects that succeed do so because the team has the ability to share ideas and be flexible. I’ve also seen numerous projects fail when flexibility was shut down. As a leader, it’s important to help foster an environment where ideas can flow freely. And to encourage people to not only be open and accepting of those ideas, but to also be willing to have tough discussions about the project when the need arises.
Even if you are not a leader of people you can absolutely be part of the solution by encouraging others and being flexible. Now get out there and take your turn at trying out your flexibility!
-Jason