While I was walking this morning, I suddenly connected 2 ideas.

To win a beautiful game. That is what I’m looking for in my career. Long-term business success is a beautiful game. And it requires:

  1. business success
  2. technology success
  3. personal success

In my career as a software developer, I focus mainly on (2) technology success. That is where many of my quests come from:

So the story about the quote goes like this: Two people are playing a board game against each other. One person is much better at the game, but plays at a ’lower level’ to make it challenging. When the other person find’s out, he says that the other person ‘has been going easy on him’. To which that person replies with:

“Why would I want to win anything other than a beautiful game?”

(Quote: win a beautiful game)

So when I apply this metaphor of a beautiful game to Model: company success = business + technology + personal success The beautiful game clearly is the company success. What would an ugly game look like?

Ugly game: lacking technology success

  • Development speed slowly grinding to a halt over 5 years time.
  • Unable to deliver on small, simple things.
  • Everyone complaining about technical debt.
  • Ending up with no other choice than a rewrite
  • More and more pressure to deliver, because delivery gets slower
  • The rewrite will either*
    • fail to get finished, ending in a massive waste of effort
    • or
    • succeed, with a crappy result not that much better than where it all started
    • because the problem: ’lack of skill in technical excellence’ is unaddressed.

That does not sound like an environment I want to work in. And the outcome ’no choice but to rewrite’, not something I’d be proud of achieving.

Ugly game: lacking business success

  • Constant cost-cutting
    • no innovation (aka ‘risk taking’
    • no budget for good equipment
    • no budget for training/learning
  • Company going bankrupt
    • People losing their jobs
    • People not getting paid
    • People fear for their jobs
  • Stressed out leaders

That does not sound like an environment I want to work in. And the outcome a ‘slow death of a company’, not something I’d be proud of achieving.

Ugly game: lacking personal success James Shore mentions

  • “people will not give it their all.”
  • “sabotaging behaviour in the worst case.”

But Simon Sinek nails it with his Quote: cynicism, paranoia, mistrust and self-interest

Leaders set the conditions for trust and cooperation.


Get those conditions wrong and the opposite will occur:
- cynicism,
- paranoia,
- mistrust and
- self-interest.

That does not sound like an environment I want to work in. And the outcome a ’toxic company culture’, not something I’d be proud of achieving.

So

“Why would I want to win anything other than a beautiful game?”

I don’t. I definitely don’t.

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