the overlap between tabletop game mechanics and tech incentive structures and life in general is extremely obvious for anyone willing to notice it, thats why undertanding simple game theory can put you ahead of so many people, love your work Reid
D&D separates rules from purpose more cleanly than many organizations do. The rules make the environment legible, but the players still decide what is worth doing within it. Organizations often reverse that. They prescribe the objective while leaving the actual rules of advancement, influence, and resource allocation implicit.
That may be why a theory of the game has to include the difference between what an organization says it values and what its systems actually reward. People can share the stated mission and still be playing entirely different games because they have learned that the environment rewards something else. That difference becomes even more consequential with AI agents. They will optimize against the operational reward structure, not the mission statement.
I often joke with my team that performance reviews, QBRs, major presentations etc. are all a game. Understand the rules, figure out your advantages, understand the other players and their motivation, and play to win. I feel like this whole article captures that well.
"HEROES WORKING TOGETHER ACCOMPLISH INCREDIBLE FEATS: I have always believed that people working together can achieve a kind of emergent intelligence that far outstrips the sum of its parts."
I've been ferreting out brilliant people here, who aren't household names but who could be, to think together. Here's a good quote to go with that:
"Seek, above all, for a game worth playing. Such is the advice of the oracle to modern man. Having found the game, play it with intensity – play as if your life and sanity depended on it. (They do depend on it.) Follow the example of the French existentialists and flourish a banner bearing the word “engagement.” Though nothing means anything and all roads are marked “NO EXIT," yet move as if your movements had some purpose. If life does not seem to offer a game worth playing, then invent one. For it must be clear, even to the most clouded intelligence, that any game is better than no game." Robert de Ropp from "The Master Game"
D&D as a leadership training ground is a better analogy than most business books manage.
The ‘theory of the game’ idea holds up outside tech too - it feels like half the leaders I talk to have never actually written down what game they think they’re playing, they’ve just inherited someone else’s rulebook
I keep coming back to a tension in your argument. A good theory of the game must be concrete enough to be wrong and continuously pressure-tested, while a strong shared mission creates the identity and coherence that keep people playing the same game.
But what if the second gradually weakens the organization’s ability to do the first?
The problem may start even before interpreting contradictory evidence. Strong alignment can influence what people notice, which information they bring into the room, and whether dissenting observations are voiced at all. The theory can therefore remain formally falsifiable while the group becomes progressively less capable of producing the evidence that would falsify it.
1. So how would you design a mission-driven organization ex ante so that increasing alignment does not simultaneously reduce its capacity for collective doubt?
2. And what observable evidence would convince you that coherence has crossed the line from enabling coordinated action to suppressing the variation in judgment needed to discover that the game itself has changed?
This brought back the leadership game I remember most vividly from college.
Each player received a set of cards that had to be placed into one shared team schedule. The schedule appeared too small to accommodate everyone’s cards, and any player who failed to place their full set would lose.
Predictably, we began by protecting our own interests and competing for the available slots. Some players filled their schedules; others were pushed out.
The hidden insight was that several of our cards were duplicates. If we had shown one another our hands and consolidated the overlapping commitments, a single entry in the shared schedule could satisfy several players at once. Everyone could win, but only if we stopped treating the problem as zero-sum.
It was poker in reverse: your advantage came not from concealing your cards, but from revealing them so the group could assemble the winning combination together.
I have seen the same dynamic repeatedly in large organizations. Internal competition encourages teams to optimize for their own budgets, headcount, credit and KPIs, even when collective success requires someone to give up a local optimum.
One nuance I would add from my experience: a shared mission is not always the strongest coordination mechanism, neither is a leader. An external threat is often more effective. It makes the loss condition concrete, exposes interdependence and turns several competing internal games into one shared quest. The Facebook “Red Team” example in this piece captures that beautifully.
Interesting. Prior to your Linkedin era, my programmers were playing D&D on our new VAX after hours. There were no personal computers then. I didn't know what they were learning, but I didn't stop them, as we had plenty of nighttime compute cycles. I had no idea it was teaching them all these innovative ideas, and how to work together in the future world.
That is a damn fine piece! I never played D&D, but the description of the game and the lessons you drew from it bring to life the essential elements of game theory and the value of purpose —a brilliant pairing that I seldom, if ever, see.
the overlap between tabletop game mechanics and tech incentive structures and life in general is extremely obvious for anyone willing to notice it, thats why undertanding simple game theory can put you ahead of so many people, love your work Reid
D&D separates rules from purpose more cleanly than many organizations do. The rules make the environment legible, but the players still decide what is worth doing within it. Organizations often reverse that. They prescribe the objective while leaving the actual rules of advancement, influence, and resource allocation implicit.
That may be why a theory of the game has to include the difference between what an organization says it values and what its systems actually reward. People can share the stated mission and still be playing entirely different games because they have learned that the environment rewards something else. That difference becomes even more consequential with AI agents. They will optimize against the operational reward structure, not the mission statement.
I often joke with my team that performance reviews, QBRs, major presentations etc. are all a game. Understand the rules, figure out your advantages, understand the other players and their motivation, and play to win. I feel like this whole article captures that well.
"HEROES WORKING TOGETHER ACCOMPLISH INCREDIBLE FEATS: I have always believed that people working together can achieve a kind of emergent intelligence that far outstrips the sum of its parts."
I've been ferreting out brilliant people here, who aren't household names but who could be, to think together. Here's a good quote to go with that:
"Seek, above all, for a game worth playing. Such is the advice of the oracle to modern man. Having found the game, play it with intensity – play as if your life and sanity depended on it. (They do depend on it.) Follow the example of the French existentialists and flourish a banner bearing the word “engagement.” Though nothing means anything and all roads are marked “NO EXIT," yet move as if your movements had some purpose. If life does not seem to offer a game worth playing, then invent one. For it must be clear, even to the most clouded intelligence, that any game is better than no game." Robert de Ropp from "The Master Game"
D&D as a leadership training ground is a better analogy than most business books manage.
The ‘theory of the game’ idea holds up outside tech too - it feels like half the leaders I talk to have never actually written down what game they think they’re playing, they’ve just inherited someone else’s rulebook
Thank you, Reid
I keep coming back to a tension in your argument. A good theory of the game must be concrete enough to be wrong and continuously pressure-tested, while a strong shared mission creates the identity and coherence that keep people playing the same game.
But what if the second gradually weakens the organization’s ability to do the first?
The problem may start even before interpreting contradictory evidence. Strong alignment can influence what people notice, which information they bring into the room, and whether dissenting observations are voiced at all. The theory can therefore remain formally falsifiable while the group becomes progressively less capable of producing the evidence that would falsify it.
1. So how would you design a mission-driven organization ex ante so that increasing alignment does not simultaneously reduce its capacity for collective doubt?
2. And what observable evidence would convince you that coherence has crossed the line from enabling coordinated action to suppressing the variation in judgment needed to discover that the game itself has changed?
This brought back the leadership game I remember most vividly from college.
Each player received a set of cards that had to be placed into one shared team schedule. The schedule appeared too small to accommodate everyone’s cards, and any player who failed to place their full set would lose.
Predictably, we began by protecting our own interests and competing for the available slots. Some players filled their schedules; others were pushed out.
The hidden insight was that several of our cards were duplicates. If we had shown one another our hands and consolidated the overlapping commitments, a single entry in the shared schedule could satisfy several players at once. Everyone could win, but only if we stopped treating the problem as zero-sum.
It was poker in reverse: your advantage came not from concealing your cards, but from revealing them so the group could assemble the winning combination together.
I have seen the same dynamic repeatedly in large organizations. Internal competition encourages teams to optimize for their own budgets, headcount, credit and KPIs, even when collective success requires someone to give up a local optimum.
One nuance I would add from my experience: a shared mission is not always the strongest coordination mechanism, neither is a leader. An external threat is often more effective. It makes the loss condition concrete, exposes interdependence and turns several competing internal games into one shared quest. The Facebook “Red Team” example in this piece captures that beautifully.
I really like this thread. Its similar to my studio pieces.
We have an opportunity to play the game like never before but need to shed some of the old theory of what professionalism means.
Interesting. Prior to your Linkedin era, my programmers were playing D&D on our new VAX after hours. There were no personal computers then. I didn't know what they were learning, but I didn't stop them, as we had plenty of nighttime compute cycles. I had no idea it was teaching them all these innovative ideas, and how to work together in the future world.
That is a damn fine piece! I never played D&D, but the description of the game and the lessons you drew from it bring to life the essential elements of game theory and the value of purpose —a brilliant pairing that I seldom, if ever, see.