Monopoly Money

In a recent interview with three heads of Xbox one of the stories shared was how as an exercise in launching the Xbox 360 the managers were all given fake $100,000,000 bills to play a game with.  They were to move the money around the table (game board).  That money could be spent on hardware, on marketing, on acquiring and/or developing video games for the system, etc..

The purpose of the game was for the team to decide on the right balance of where to put their resources for the launch of this huge living room initiative for Microsoft.  The hundred million dollar bills had as much emotional attachment to the individuals in the room as the rainbow hued Monopoly Money has to the countless people who play that game every year.

It’s all Monopoly Money.. I’ve heard this again and again.  What it means is that for the PIC, is that the money is not emotional for the business manager.   It’s just a resource, a chess piece.   The problem is that for the I in PIC, the Individual, money is very personal.  It’s reliable transportation, it’s baby food, it’s  time with your loved ones, it’s having enough space in your house to get away from the kids.   It’s all these things and countless other personal real world impacts on your life.  Because of this we get stuck on the details of the money.   We are worried about asking for too much or too little when we interview.  We go out of our way to get certifications and degrees to try and achieve that next level of income.

In doing this we classify ourselves into having as much value as a computer chip or a stapler.  After all the business manager who is  making a decision on a ‘coordinator’ or an ‘estimator’ or an ‘engineer’ or whatever your P is, then there is a number associated with it.   Engineers are 100K / year.  Bob the engineer who has a special needs kid and has $25K in additional expenses relating to that child’s care doesn’t enter into the picture when it comes to deciding Bob’s salary.

The key to this is to understand that if you make a personal connection with a hiring manager and they like you, Someone like Bob can get that extra $25K/year on top of the $100K they would usually make.. the money will just be taking from another part of the board.  The thing to keep in mind is that someone else is most likely playing that game too, and they may want to reset the pieces to restart the game.