Not It!
Playgrounds, Kegs, and Conference Rooms
I was recently sitting in a conference room with my team listening to my boss drone on about this, that and something else. At one point she started getting excited about sales opportunities and needing to get better engagement with our partners and sellers.
“Who can write up a case study of last month’s big win?” she asked.
That got my attention. I looked up and placed my finger on my nose before anyone else in the room moved.
Playground Lessons
I can still hear the voices and sounds. Kids talking, shouting, laughing. I enjoyed recess – especially just after it rained. Cool air combined with the smell of the moisture starting to evaporate in the post-rain spring sunshine. How about some kickball?
“One-two-three… NOT IT!” and echoes from others. Then the game is on and the chase begins. Was it freeze tag? Tag you’re it? Did it matter? It was all in good fun.
Later at home, my mom asked my siblings and me, “Someone needs to take out the trash.”
As the youngest child – which means I was the smartest, most handsome and fastest… Of course I was first to yell, “Not it!”
You can imagine the look on mom’s face and then the look on my face as I trudged with the trash down the cold, snow-covered driveway.
Nose Goes 101
Why do people play drinking games? Isn’t the alcoholic beverage itself good enough on its own? Maybe, but during my younger years I had the opportunity to participate in a few contests.
There was one common game within the game – or pretty much any activity. An adult version of Not it!
A college version… The keg kicks and it’s a PITA to change it out…
1-2-3… That final pour that is never a full beer and ends with air and foam, quickly followed by fingers touching noses. In fact, once that first air foam blast hits the scene, the experienced drinkers already have their fingers on their noses mid-gulp.
I learned pretty quickly to hide my lock grips inside the keg-o-rator. Kegs need to be changed with care not carelessness. So I opted out.
Organizational Games
Have you noticed that some people don’t opt out? They keep on playing. So much so that some teams and organizations seem to embody and even encourage it. When I encounter a team that has not just adopted but mastered organizational “Not it!”, I’m reminded of a saying about monkeys and a football.
I’m also reminded of IBM’s near-death experience in the 1990’s. I’ve heard stories about the early days when Lou Gerstner first took over. I don’t know how much is true.
One particular story was about the business reviews one of Gerstner’s executive leaders performed with some of the product teams. In the mid 1990’s people still used overhead transparencies for presentations. “Foils”.
Imagine you spend days, or even weeks preparing for your business review. You have all your foils. You’ve done the prework interlocking with other managers in your group. You’re ready.
And at the end of the presentation, the executive leader says, “That was interesting, but there is no market or customer point of view in what you just presented. So… you’re either lying to me or you’re incompetent. Which is it?”
Brutal? Absolutely. But I suspect no one left the room wondering who owned the results.
Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. No “Not it!”.
As children, “Not it!” was a game. As adults, it sometimes becomes an operating model. The rules don’t change but the stakes do.
New Players. Same Games.
30 years later and AI promises to change the game.
Maybe this time things will be different. Will it be a small start-up that cracks the code? Or will one of the old tech titans figure it out first? Or maybe it’s just different monkeys and the same old football.
Regardless, I can’t help but imagine meetings in large, bureaucratic organizations around the world… “Brainstorming” the next big AI project. Somewhere in a conference room, someone is asking who wants to lead the next strategic AI initiative.
And almost immediately a dozen fingers are moving toward a dozen noses.
Playgrounds, colleges, companies, footballs…
I feel like there’s a song here.
