70 Ducere Est Servire: THE LEADERSHIP JOURNAL OF DALLAS BAPTIST UNIVERSITY for an innovative solution, and hacks the computer program in order to rewrite the scenario so that a win becomes possible. He is awarded full marks for “original thinking,”28 and rightfully so, because he has the presence of mind to recognize that the boundaries as presented to him are false. In games and at work, boundaries are essential, but unlike games, the workplace is not the closed system it often appears to be. For this reason, Kouzes and Posner’s advice for developing innovative habits demands a constant and intentional broadening of perspective: “exercise outsight,”29 “look outside of your experience,”30 “listen to and promote diverse perspectives,”31 etc. The board is bigger than it appears and the pieces more numerous, and somewhere there’s an extra deck of cards that’s only stacked against you if you don’t go and shuffle them first. Do not throw out the rulebook, but rather write a new and improved edition, one which clearly defines the field of play available to team members so that they can move freely and with confidence within the boundary lines without fear of toppling over the edge. Only with the necessary tools in hand and the essential rules spelled out can teams “transform challenge into an exploration, uncertainty into a sense of adventure, fear into resolve, and risk into reward.”32 Third, players require agency. Player actions must measurably affect the game’s outcome. Rosewater gives the example of Tic-Tac-Toe as a game without agency (i.e., not a game at all). In the 1983 film WarGames, the supercomputer at the center of the plot learns to equate nuclear war with this children’s game: “You don’t know exactly how the game will start […] but very quickly the responses become preordained,”33 and the players’ decisions cease to have any meaningful effect on the process. No matter who starts the game/war, the process inevitably ends in a stalemate, and therefore, “the only winning move is not to play.”34 Individual agency is a satisfying experience in and of itself (and one admittedly lacking in many workplaces), but McGonigal points out that games provide the unique and thrilling experience of shared agency, the opportunity and ability to pursue and achieve goals cooperatively, in community. The communal agency of gaming systems can “make us a part of something bigger and give epic meaning to our actions,”35 “help us band together and create powerful communities,”36 and allow us to
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