Distinctive Leadership Characteristics from Games Will be Relevant in Tomorrow's Business Environment

I want to dive a little deeper into the HBR article I wrote about last week. The authors conducted a study on leadership in MMORPGs trying to gain insight into business environments of the future. Today I want to dive into their first conclusion: Distinctive leadership characteristics from games will be relevant in
tomorrow's business environment. These characteristics are:

• Leadership demands speed


• Risk taking is encouraged


• Leadership roles are often temporary.

Let's break them down.

Leadership Demands Speed: Leaders will continue to need to make decisions based on rapidly changing and often incomplete data. This is already happening. Corporate culture will have to adapt. Planning is nice. Contingency planning is nice. But we are going to have to prepare ourselves to change direction quickly.

Risk Taking Is Encouraged: Leaders will be forced to meet risk with a high degree of calmness. Failure in games is a CONSTANT. Yes, yes, I know...if you make a mistake in a game and die you can always start over. Lighten up. OF COURSE it is not the same in business. HOWEVER, balance will have to be found between mitigating risk and tolerating failure. Something we don't do so well.

Leadership Roles Are Often Temporary: Leadership in games is a TASK. "Not an identity." I love the profoundness of this statement. I am a full blown Type A, high D, aggressive, whatever you want to call it/label it. But I play a very flexible character in Warcraft that can take on leadership roles in certain situations. This is COMPLETELY contrary to how corporate America approaches leadership development. We try to identify "potentials" early and then begin moving them up the hierarchy. As the world changes, it will be IMPOSSIBLE for a single "leader" to be an expert in every area of the business.

Next time we will look at the authors' other conclusion in more depth.