Get the Game

Stilling anxiety and making decisions we are comfortable with can revolve around building agreements. Managing expectations through commitments to each other that are understood. An ability to build driven by confidence in intended consequences, and capacity to absorb and adjust to unintended consequences. A calm and inspired sense of general direction. 

If you feel like you “get the game” so you can apply yourself and get rewarded, and have a transparent understanding of the cost of breaking agreements. A world where there is consensual agreement making. Yes means yes, and no means no. 

People feel like they are honest with each other and themselves about what their needs are. Where people find other people who willingly and enthusiastically want to be part of each other’s lives. Where no one is forced to act against their will. 

The challenge is tolerance. We don’t live in isolation. Independent decision-making is very attractive. In your world, what do you think you should do? That results in multiple, very detached realities, that sit separately from the shared world and aren’t a part of it. That has consequences. 

A difference between an investor who makes independent decisions and an operational decision-maker, is operations have momentum and they have mojo (the morale of people). Changing an investment decision affects no one. Changing an operational decision has consequences, and you can never get momentum and start compounding if you are constantly changing your mind.

Do you get the game?

Behind the Curtain

“Equality of opportunity is a political ideal that is opposed to caste hierarchy but not to hierarchy per se” https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/equal-opportunity/. To maintain the little man behind the curtain in the Wizard of Oz, you need to create the illusion that the hierarchy is both there, and deserved. The reality is, that even if you caste your hereditary privilege eyes wider than the family and eldest son, there are still limited opportunities. Both in time and space. Roles become vacant only when people leave or die. Teams have limited sizes. Team dynamics make it awkward when someone from the outside is picked (loyalty vs meritocracy). Problems are not defined by how many people want to solve them. They are just priced that way. It is well known that there are plenty of diamonds in storage. The price is high because of controlled supply and manipulative marketing. Give them enough to keep them hungry. It becomes a Game of Thrones when there is only one seat at the head of the table. When you fight for opportunity, only because you want that seat. A seat that does not get relinquished. For equal opportunity, you need more opportunities. For that, you need to be genuinely interested in solving problems. Not focused on keeping your throne warm and diamond-encrusted.

Shifting Focus

You may not realise it, but you have a problem. I can solve that problem. There is no one else who can. Manufactured inadequacy. Projected confidence. Illusionary exclusivity. There is a reason why wealth is a team sport created in bubbles. If you genuinely care about the person, and your lives are connected, then creating a problem to extract wealth makes no sense. If you have a relationship with a person, it becomes impossible to hide that you are as confused and incompetent at most things as the rest of us. That you are just doing your best. If you care about someone, you stop looking for someone “better” to replace them, because the key is time spent. The person matters. Nepotism, Hereditary Privilege, Patronage, Clubs, and other forms of anti-Meritocracy are incentives. They shift the performance spotlight to a group bigger than ourselves. They make room for vulnerability. Family, children, friends, and community. They also have unintended consequences. I don’t know the answer, but the question is how to see real problems, be honest about our ignorance, and see the strengths in others that are not ours.

"American Progress" John Gast (1872)

Team Sport

Money making is not about you. Hand-to-mouth living is all about you. “What do you want to be when you grow up?” is all about you. Meritocracy, performance attribution, annual reviews, bonuses, status symbols and conspicuous consumption can become all about you. About being good enough. Being worthy. Leading a successful life. Being a really big deal. Capitalism done well is a team sport. A sport in which there is competition, but players and managers switch teams and everyone meets in the bar afterwards. No company exists without suppliers, customers, regulators, alternatives and complex knock on effects. If you want to understand money, stop thinking about yourself. The song is not about you. Start thinking about the needs of communities. Start looking at every business you come across. “How is money made?” is a question so much more powerful than “How can I make money?” that it can release you to change the What to a Who. Who (not what) do you want to be? Let Capital set our Labour free. Build Capital.

Sport, Players and Teams

As part of Continuing Professional Development (CPD), I used to go to the Actuarial Conferences in South Africa each year. It was a quick way to get all the required annual CPD points. More than that, it felt like I was connected to something bigger than my company. My second role in the Corporate world was as a Marketing Actuary. That involved Competitor Comparison. It could get quite nasty listing the pros and cons of the competitors (who were all trying to provide for clients). It becomes a little like sport. Gradually you see players transfer. Senior members moving to other companies. Companies treating employees badly. A little like patriotism. I leaned deep into Rainbow Nation South African patriotism till the 2008 Xenophobic attacks. You don’t owe your company any loyalty. “They” won’t show it to you. Your team will change. You will develop loyalty with certain individuals and beef with others. Take the countries and companies we are a part of with a pinch of salt. There is something bigger we are all a part of. Institutions serve us, not the other way around.

Players Move

Team Player

The harder you hold onto something, the more likely you are to lose it. I am a Scatterling of Africa. A Soutie. A Vagabond. One who has no fixed home. There were 147 boys in my Matric class. A group of them had been with me for 12 years. Not by choice. Some were very glad to see the back of others they had been trapped with. I was at University for 4 years, and at the three companies I worked at for 4.5 years, 5 years, and a year respectively. I was always a “Team Player”. Throwing myself in wholeheartedly and enthusiastically. But cynicism has grown to replace my romantic side. I am wary of Trusts, Legal People, and groups who we use the language of Ordinary People for. Speaking of Countries, Companies, and Teams as if they are a flesh and blood someone we owe our allegiance to. Teams change. Those groups I was at, no longer exist. The real group we owe our allegiance to is bigger. And smaller. To the real people we meet. The real people who move. To the expansion. To the connection. Time is a one-way door. I can’t move home. It does not exist. Yet I am home. If I loosen my grip.

Class 1 - 1986