What Works EP 424: How the Game We Play Changes Our Work
— Ed Zitron, “Absentee Capitalism”
This might sound weird—but most companies today aren’t in the business it appears they’re in. Netflix isn’t really in the content business. Facebook isn’t in the social media business. Etsy isn’t in the handmade marketplace business. Instead, companies are in the growth business.
And this impacts all of us, tying how we work not to the production of valuable products and services but to the potential for capital growth. Even for independent workers and small businesses, the capital growth game sets the rules and obstacles for the game we play.
Today’s episode is about gaming the system—how the game we play dictates the decisions we make and the actions we perform. After all, you have to know what game you’re playing to know how to win. And you also need to decide whether that’s the game you want to play.
Footnotes:
- Games: The Art of Agency by C. Thi Nguyen
- “Bent but Not Broken: The History of the Rules” via NFL Operations
- CBS Sports: “Results of 2023 Rule Change Proposals”
- MSNBC: “BuzzFeed News to shut down”
- “Absentee Capitalism” by Ed Zitron
- "Amazon's Trickle-Down Monopoly" by Moira Weigel
- “The Valuable Business of Maintenance Work” by Tara McMullin
- What Works: A Comprehensive Framework to Change the Way We Approach Goal-Setting by Tara McMullin
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- (00:00) - EP 424: How the Game We Play Changes Our Work
- (02:59) - What does it mean to "game a system?"
- (06:12) - The Business of Rule Changes
- (09:08) - The Profit-Growth Game
- (14:40) - Creating Loopholes
- (18:30) - A Rebuilding Year