Leer en español Patrick Hruby

A board game is a tiny universe: The rules are the laws of physics or social norms, the board is the physical environment, cards often function as resources or catalysts, dice provide a dollop of randomness. And those little pawns? They’re you and me.

I’m gonna stick it to you, make you bleed, and… “Hey, can you get me a beer while you’re up?”

Good games are consuming and challenging because they’re never the same twice. Sometimes I think they serve an almost primal need as well. If we were worried about finding shelter, hunting for food, or protecting our families from enemies or predators, we’d be playing far fewer games. But in the context of modern life, these tabletop pursuits help us feel excitement and sometimes even danger. We can behave despicably, grow immensely wealthy—or fail miserably—and then pack up the box and return to normal life.

“A better capitalist board game…would be one in which players competed…to produce better-quality, lower-priced goods while government regulated or abolished monopolies.”

Mary Pilon, The Monopolists

As a maker of games (when I’m not creating new products for Harvard Business Review), I’m also interested in the lessons they offer us. Can they help us build the skills we need to operate effectively in the real world? Beyond the traditional emphasis on competitive spirit and resilience in the face of bad luck, what more is there to explore?

Take one of the most popular board games of all time and the one most commonly associated with big business—Monopoly. As Mary Pilon’s new book, The Monopolists: Obsession, Fury, and the Scandal Behind the World’s Favorite Board Game, reveals, the game was intended to be a teaching tool. The initial version, known as the Landlord’s Game, was invented by Elizabeth Magie in the early 1900s to teach players about the evils of monopolies and private land ownership. Over time, as the game spread through word of mouth (with people often creating their own localized boards), its focus shifted away from those progressive political roots. Its central theme became creating monopolies and bankrupting opponents. That’s the game that Charles Darrow, and later Parker Brothers, turned into the juggernaut we all know today.

What can we learn from the modern version of Monopoly? Certainly ROI figures prominently. So does the art of the deal: Rarely can you roll your way to a monopoly; instead you must buy up the properties you land on and then negotiate with other players to strengthen your position on the board. These are valuable lessons, of course. But so many more skills need to be taught. What about creativity, innovation, teamwork, empathy, and resource management? In fact many inventive games not only center on those themes but also emphasize outcomes more closely resembling the collaborative wins that have become so desirable within and between organizations.

Further Reading (and Games) The Monopolists

Mary Pilon

Bloomsbury USA, Morphology

Morphology Games

2010 Forbidden Island

Gamewright

2010 The Extraordinaires

The Creativity Hub

2013 Power Grid

Rio Grande Games

2004

Among well-known games, Pictionary comes to mind as clearly requiring observational and empathy-based skills: What can you quickly draw that your teammates will immediately understand? Clue’s whodunit helps sharpen our deductive-reasoning skills. The message of Cranium is that everyone has unique strengths; it’s fun because it gives each player a chance to put his or her best foot forward. Even Trivial Pursuit, especially when played with teams, can teach us the value of diverse knowledge sets. But let me steer you to some games that are perhaps less well known.

Morphology is a sort of Pictionary with props that challenges players to communicate ideas by manipulating blocks of wood, string, marbles, and Popsicle sticks. Sure, it might be easy to get someone to guess the word “dog” with the materials provided. But what about successfully communicating “sleep,” or “itchiness”? That requires some serious creativity.

In Forbidden Island, four people join forces to play against the game rather than one another. Each player takes on a specific role with a particular set of abilities but accepts input from the others, hoping to arrive at the best decision for the group. If everyone works together, you just might win. But if your team fails to collect all the treasures before the island sinks, you all lose.

The Extraordinaires is an even less traditional game. Instead of moving pawns around a board, players find themselves in a product-design studio. They receive cards portraying wildly different fictional characters—an angsty teenage vampire, a yo-yo obsessed robot, an athletic merman who works at an underwater sushi bar—and are tasked with designing products for these “customers” using classic design-thinking principles. The Extraordinaires also provides a great opportunity for iterative thinking. Once you come up with your product concept, how can you make it better?

Power Grid puts an inspiring spin on the business-oriented board game by focusing on the delicate balance between maintaining your power station’s current infrastructure and investing in newer, more efficient technologies as they emerge over the course of the game. You’re still aiming to outperform your opponents, but the subtleties here are far richer than what you might encounter in Monopoly.

Are these games more fun than that old standby? Perhaps I’m the wrong person to ask. Growing up, I never liked Monopoly’s antagonistic, winner-take-all ethos. (Also, my cousin always won.) But I’ve played hundreds of games in my life (research!), and my answer is emphatically yes. By forcing us into the spotlight, making us communicate in unusual and uncomfortable ways, or encouraging us to take giant lateral leaps in thinking, games can immerse us in hilarity, strengthen our connections with friends and family, and significantly stretch our minds.

Monopoly may be the world’s favorite business-themed game, one that satisfies a certain kill-or-be-killed urge. But it’s not necessarily the best one to hone your management skills or teach you what you need to win in business today.