No one wakes up in the morning, dresses up, and says to themselves, “Let me go mess up my workplace by being lazy and mediocre.” Our intentions are right yet we are measured by performance.
Are you playing to win or playing not to lose? Imagine watching a sports game between two teams. You are unfamiliar with both teams but decide to enjoy the game anyway. After a short while, you realize that one team is stalling, playing defensively, and afraid of taking risks. The second team, on the other hand, plays with urgency, is on the offensive, and attacks whenever possible. One team is playing not to lose, while the other is playing to win.
This distinction is very important: Our natural instinct is to be attracted to the team that is playing to win. What’s true for sports is true for organizations and individuals. When Uber arrived on the scene, the default reaction of most existing taxi companies was law fare—using legal strategies to bar this upstart from entering the market- especially in Europe. They were playing not to lose. Ironically, when one taxi company decided to go on strike to protest Uber, it provided a boon for Uber to attract many new clients.
A typical situation of a leader playing not to lose is when they are “hijacked.” Not long ago, a client lamented the glaring under performance of a sales executive. She confessed that firing him would mean risking his key customers leaving with him. That’s when it hit me: She was a hijacked leader. Hijacked leaders have the formal authority to make tough decisions but are shackled in decision-making by their own people.
How do you spot a hijacked leader? First, underperformance isn’t just visible—it’s glaring, yet mysteriously tolerated. Second, rule-breaking runs rampant without objection. What is most curious is that hijacked leaders have built a mental prison of their own making. The fear of facing the negative consequences of a tough decision means they are playing not to lose, instead of playing to win. The only solution to this situation is to have the courage to bite the bullet and strategically minimize its downside. My client decided to jump into the mouth of the tiger. The sales executive was let go. Some key clients drifted away, but the business didn’t just survive— it sailed toward unprecedented success with its captain back in control.
How do you ensure your team plays to win? Sometimes it’s tempting to apply a cheat code, which video gamers refer to as God Mode. It means you’re invulnerable, have unlimited resources, and can dominate the gameplay. I once played the game “Ludo” in God Mode. At first, it was magnificent to “stride the battlefield like a Titan.” But very quickly, it became … boring. There was no challenge, no excitement, and no fun. I have never played in God Mode again. In life, we need challenges, setbacks, and disappointments to appreciate victories and achievements. Nothing could be blander than a work environment that is totally predictable, uneventful, and lacks volatility.
Let’s stop trying to operate in God Mode and challenge ourselves and our team to break the good and create the better. Life’s excitement, progress, and innovation are driven by pushing against constraints. If a dysfunctional team plays in God Mode and is consistently rewarded with more resources, the Pavlovian response is to create more dysfunction to obtain even more resources.
