ARTICLES

PLAY TO WIN

"To be continually successful in the new era will require us, whether we are employees or entrepreneurs, to use all of our creativity, intellectual ability, and courage. We will each need to play to win - to go as far as we can using everything we have in order to thrive." Ken Blanchard

The play to win attitude is the basic building block of success in the rapidly changing workplace. Success for the individual, and success for the organisation.

A play to win attitude has at its core emotional and spiritual growth. When we examine theories of organisational learning and knowledge management, we see that they are not about intranet software and flashy technology. They are in essence about people like you and me. The current management theory is all about knowledge creating people as assets. Tom Peters talks of a ‘white collar revolution’ taking place. The belief is that white collar work as we know it will change beyond recognition within the next ten years. And that the individual needs to become a ‘brand’ espousing the right attitude towards life and work. This attitude is that of playing to win.

At the personal level one needs to be equipped with the right attitude towards life, change, learning, and the notions of success, to be at one with the developments taking place. Tayfun Demiroz provides training with the stated aim of creating effcetive individuals with a 'Brand You' approach to life and work.

Forget esoteric titles that are meaningless. What is it that you are actually contributing to the organisation, society in general, and to yourself? That is the question in the new economy. As Gary Hamel argues, we are in an era of discontinuous and abrubt change: "For the first time in history we can work backward from our imagination rather than forward from our past". For this we need to redefine our mental models to create new value.

The illustration below from Wilson and Wilson's 'Play to Win' gives the general idea as to the typical responses of a play to win philosophy.