Business Jenga

The game jenga has grown quite popular in the social scene. Whether it be the center of entertainment at your family gatherings or set up for play at your local dive bar, it has become a widely adopted game. Bet you didn’t know that in recent years, it was inducted into US’s National Toy Hall of Fame. I suppose this is a big deal, but I had not idea that the US had a National Toy Hall of Fame until doing a little bit of background research about the game. So, I guess you could say, it’s a big deal.

The game of jenga represents a symbolic metaphor. Try not to roll your eyes. This is not coming from a place of ‘zen’ and I didn’t just wrap up some sun salutation, but rather after careful reflection. I work at a small start-up marketing agency that we launched in early 2018. Today, I am happy to share that we have perfected our business model and currently manage around two hand-fulls of clients.

Working closely with other businesses each day shines a light on the various kinds of company cultures that exist as well as the presence, or lack there of, of guiding internal principles, values, and morals. We are in the business of service: we serve our client’s needs and we do good business; meaning we want to see our clients win. Our goal for every new client that we take on is one of two things: either you outgrow us or we outgrow you. Until that happens, you can imagine the case studies we have witnessed take shape and evolve over the years and the lessons that we have learned in such a short span of time thus far.

One day after a particularly stressful afternoon of client management, I began to think of the game jenga and compare our client’s choices to strategic moves in a game of jenga. I know I am not the only one who has fond memories of this game. Usually, it’s a pretty aimless game and after you play it enough, it can quickly become robotic. The goal is to build a tower with a limited amount of resources (blocks) to the highest height possible without compromising it’s foundation i.e. don’t be the one who let’s it fall. Now, here is where the metaphorical perception takes ground. The blocks can represent many things. From a personal perspective, they can represent human relationships, careers, families, livelihoods, etc. From an organizational perspective, they can represent employees, services, offerings, investments, decisions, etc.

For the purposes of this article, I will focus on the organizational perspective because this topic came to mind after analyzing our client’s behavior. Before we begin to breakdown business jenga, we must first identify the player –– in this case, that is the leader: the person who holds all of the cards or in this case, all of the blocks. You may have heard the saying ‘it starts at the top’. This means that the foundation of a business, the culture of business, the direction of a business, the attitude of a business, all of it –– it starts at the top.

There is a lot of evidence to support this statement you just have to look for it. Want to know how an organization is run? Talk to the people who are customer-facing. That should tell you everything you need to know about how things are run at the top.

One good example: Home Depot
Home Depot is know for it’s smiling workers that are intentionally called ‘associates’ instead of ‘employees’. This title gives associates a greater sense of pride in their place of work and in their responsibilities to serve their customers with a valuable experience. They typically fly relatively below the press radar and in today’s world: no news is good news.

One bad example: Dominos
A few years ago, you may remember two Dominos employees filmed each other defiling customer food orders and prepping them for customer hand-off at the drive thru window. They posted these videos described as vulgar on YouTube and not before long was Dominos completely devoured by national news sources. By the time the news was done with them, the PR crisis became a commonly referred to case study in university curriculums teaching students crisis communication. I should know, I was one of those students. But what they did not address was why that happened in the first place. What could possibly make those employees think that they could get away with that kind of behavior?

It starts at the top.

It’s clear from these examples which leader kept their employee (jenga) block in the foundation of their business and held it close to chest. It is also clear which leader gambled their employee block when it was their turn to make a move.

The game of business is a lot like Jenga. There is a certain amount of risk that a leader takes with each of their decisions. Their choices must be thoughtful and their risk must be calculated in order to protect the foundation and secure the scale of their business over time.

Businesses that value profit over people typically assume the most risk, the impulsive and uncalculated kind. Those are the players you will find with a wobbly framework, leaving all but one block in each row just so they can reach new heights. The problem with that strategy is that most leaders forget to look down. What’s beneath them is a scarce and fragile business that could collapse at any given moment with the help of a soft breeze. They forget to ask themselves: what level can I afford to reach without sacrificing the sustainability of my business? In this particular case, they don’t think they just act. More often than not, their focus is on what best serves their wants.

You can tell a lot about what matters most to each leader by the choices they make and by their successes and failures. No company is built the same, but many share the common goal to grow. Growth can be tricky without a plan or a vision to guide scale. It prompts questions like: how much is one willing to risk to turn a profit? What block is one willing to sacrifice to reach new heights? Are those heights sustainable?

Here is an example of a common move in business jenga from a toxic leadership approach. For the purposes of this article, let’s call it ‘the avalanche’. The avalanche is a risky move. A leader or CEO sees an opportunity to grow their business by acquiring a new service. So, with little thought, they move their employee block with impulse from the bottom row, exposing their foundation, to the very top row. Now, they are a level higher, but just as cheap as they were at the level below. Because they now provide a new service offering, their customers are inquiring. Quick! The leader scrambles to their employee whom they just sacrificed and dumps a pile of new tasks on their task list. The employee is already drowning in a work load that doesn’t pay enough and they load continues to grow while compensation remains the same.

This is what we call the avalanche. It’s a selfish move on the leader’s part as they will sacrifice their own to taste the luxury and esteem of a new level, a new caliber, and new echelon that promises status and glory, but nothing tangible. By the time they have climbed to a new level, they don’t realize that beneath them stands a weak and brittle business. The moment that an employee does not feel valued, their work begins to decline in value, they are less likely to offer to extend a hand or take on more responsibility for the good of the business. The leader has essentially objectified their team and promoted an ‘every man for themselves’ mentality. This is a very toxic model that oftentimes results in employee sabotage. It’s only a matter of time before it all comes crashing down.

On the contrary, business leaders and decision makers who know the value of their people and invest in their people tend to play the long game. They have a vision and they make very thoughtful moves to grow the company by methodically moving blocks that are deemed as disposable or replaceable. By doing this, the leader protects the foundation of the business so that even if some blocks fall due to an act of God, an economic downturn, or just a move that did not bear fruit quite like they hoped, the foundation will never be compromised and it will not be shaken because there is a shared understanding of ‘we’ and their is a culture of trust that supports it, starting from the top down.

There’s many ways business leaders can play business jenga. I have highlighted the good and bad approaches. There are a lot of approaches that fall in between, but the general rule of thumb remains true: if you make enough good, selfless, and forward-thinking decisions in life and in business, those good decisions will compound and you, your company, your employees, your loved ones, your customers, and your stakeholders will reap those benefits far into the future.