April 9, 2021

I’ve been playing a lot of Monopoly. 

My 5-year-old was recently gifted the kid version, and Small Child Logic (SCL) says your newest toy is immediately your most favorite. The one you play on loop, endlessly.  

Sleep is cool but have you played Monopoly at 5:43 a.m. on a Saturday? 

Board games are a big deal in our house, and Monopoly has been fun to explore. He calls properties like Boardwalk and The Museum “probablys,” and it took him a minute to understand why he's handed money when I land on a probably he owns. 

Now that he’s mastered capitalism, he’s focusing more on strategy, deciding when to scoop up another probably and when he should wait or avoid something altogether. His eyes dart between the bills in his hand and the board, and he’ll shout, “NOPE, don’t want it” or “YES, MINE” after he does the math.  

He knows his dollars are limited. He has to allocate them wisely.  

What he doesn’t know is he’ll be doing these mental Olympics the rest of his life.  

The Real Talk of the matter is that we all do this every day. You decide what matters, where your resources are best spent, and what can wait and what can’t. The way you play Monopoly likely mirrors how you make important business decisions, maybe more so than you want to admit.

Here’s how I prioritize and how I play Monopoly. 

My kid.

1.  Ditch Do-Everything & Buy-Everythingism

You can’t go all-in on everything without going broke fast. Broke financially, but also mentally, physically, emotionally. In the children’s version of Monopoly, you start with just $20. How, when, and why you allocate these funds directly impacts how far you’ll go and what you can accomplish. 

To be successful and to focus, we need to say no to almost everything else.

Somehow, this lesson is far easier to learn in Monopoly than in real life. 

[Let’s start thinking of our Monopoly dollars as coins. Stay with me.] 

In real life, we spread our coins too thin. We see ALL the opportunities and ALL the possibilities in front of us and decide we can’t afford to miss out by saying no to something shiny or that we want to do.   

We craft marketing plans that outline 20 initiatives to attack in a quarter. Doing the math, 20 campaigns with Monopoly’s $20 means everything is equal in importance, and nothing gets the resources, attention, or energy it deserves. 

We need to be strategic with the choices we make--the big decisions and especially the smaller day-to-day ones. That takes being okay with leaving something for our next time around the board (after we pass Go and collect more coins) and acting as guardians of our time. 

We start to realize coins aren’t just dollars. Coins represent attention.  

2.  Focus on What Drives Growth & Revenue

My kid has figured out what works for him and which groups of properties are bound to trip me up. Instead of buying things here and there, he groups them so that he owns an entire side of the board and all but guarantees I’ll get tripped up within the matter of a few turns. I’ll roll a lousy hand and owe him half my loot.  It’s pretty clever.

In business, we look to take a similar approach. To plot the best strategy and invest in the smartest tools, tactics, and resources to support what we’re focused on. 

It’s more difficult to buy up half the market, but we can ask ourselves questions to unlock where our coins are best spent.  

• What are the three most important things we should focus on? 
• What will drive revenue for the organization?
• What will cement our differentiator?
• What can I do today to foster growth tomorrow?

Identify what those items are and set specific and measurable goals around them to ensure they happen.   

This is an excellent place to work with a marketing or business consultant who can identify these priorities without bias. An outsider can paint your whole house in the time it takes your internal team to agree on paint colors (no judgment, we do it, too.). Even if you have the resources to implement internally, get help plotting where you’re going. 

3.  Allocate Coins to Priorities 

This is where it gets tricky, I think. The stuff that drives business growth isn’t always the most fun. In fact, it’s usually not fun or the stuff we prefer to do. That’s why change is hard because it’s about being disciplined enough each day to say no to what sounds momentarily exciting to focus on what matters. 

But we can choose to hold ourselves accountable and to do things differently. 

You’ve established your top three priorities. Now give yourself 20 coins and start thinking about the allocation. Dropping coins into buckets to represent the resources each will get.  

Recruitment gets 5 coins. 

Building a new marketing stack gets 10.

Content gets 4.

New creative gets 6.

Now we can visualize: 

• How well our coin allocation reflects our priorities 
• If we have too many coins in one bucket or not enough
• If we have too many buckets and what that means to the attention each will earn 
• The coin tax of managing multiple buckets 

We also see how specific actions are aligned across the organization, like LEGOs building upon each other. If workforce development is a key area this quarter, how do your different buckets work together to support that? If getting a new content initiative off the ground is where your focus lies, what buckets do you need to ensure success? 

These are the choices that direct our attention and, in return, our business. They can be hard to make, but it's our job to make them.

I can feel the struggle when my kid has to pass up a property he wants because he knows he has to save his coins. Drawing that line in the sand or saying “no” to something feels not fun. 

But I kinda like it.

Saying no is exciting because it’s you fully committing to the "stuff" you've already said YES to. The factors that will build your business and a potentially bigger reward. When you focus on buying up half the board, you can't lose. The coins are in your favor.  

What can you say no to next week to give the stuff that matters more space?

Thanks for reading and sharing.  Chat in two weeks or drop me an email or connect on Twitter or LinkedIn or wherever else you hang out.