Playing Field
Do you know yours?
(6 minute read)
When I created my spatial resume in 2008, I called it my Playing Field. It was two pages. It was a mash-up borrowed from Tony Buzan’s The Mind Map Book and the A3 presentations I learned while working with Toyota. [Note, that Toyota still uses A3’s to present its business efforts internally].
The idea was to present a concept on one page, so we would all be on the same page. In this case, the A3 (copier tray size) was for 11 x 17 paper, not your standard issue 8 ½ x 11 paper. Toyota uses an A3 for auto launches and or country updates. Imagine giving a country update on one page. Or launching a new $1B vehicle on one page.
At the time, I learned about the A3, Toyota was my largest account. In strategic selling, it is your job to understand nomenclature, ideas, and workflows so you can integrate your solutions into a company’s language and way of thinking. In this case, I was inspired to incorporate the A3 approach into our lexicon and approach.
The A3 approach became a way of life at Time Inc. Later AOL. Many disciples of this approach took the concept with them to other media companies. It became a way of expressing complex ideas into simple iconographic solutions. It took the unconventional size of paper (11 x 17) and turned it into a placemat. And, it folded nicely into an 8 ½ x 11 conventional size document.
I remember looking at 60-page decks and thinking, how can we say this in one page? It was thought to be impossible until it wasn’t. If Toyota could launch a new Camry or a new infotainment system with the clarity of one page, why couldn’t we do the same thing trying to sell in multi-million dollar concepts?
Toyota’s approach to their A3 is extremely rigorous and has a logical flow to it. Yet, it is also spatial in its design. I wanted to lean into the “spatial” aspects of the presentation because my team worked in big idea concepts and we were presenting non-linear thinking.
The beauty of creating an A3 presentation was that it had no beginning, middle, or end. It was a holistic story that was interconnected. It was taking the potential of thousands of components and distilling them down to a simple illustration of a concept that shifted the playing field.
It required a spatial thinking approach, one that incorporated a vision, supported by numbers and data. But, more importantly - it eliminated the dreaded multi-page deck that people inevitably moved ahead on to get to the point. It changed the conversation and shifted the ownership to the client - who now had the remote.
The Definition of Playing Field
I turned to my trusty knowledge companion Perplexity to provide some additional context for the term playing field:
“A playing field refers to a ground designated for playing games or sports, often marked out for specific activities. It can also symbolize a basis for competition or negotiation, typically characterized by its fairness to all parties involved.
The term "playing field" has a historical origin dating back to the late 16th century. It has evolved to represent physical spaces for games and metaphorical contexts where competition, fairness, and equal opportunities are essential elements.
The playing field concept has expanded beyond sports to encompass various areas of competition and interaction, emphasizing the importance of equitable conditions for all participants.”
The Evolution of Playing Field
When I work with clients today, I like to understand their playing field. What do they see as their playing field? How do they define their playing field?
When you ask that question across a spatial landscape of leadership, front line, middle managers, customers, and stakeholders - you instantly start to see where alignment frays and understanding of a playing field is not consistent.
Knowing who you compete with and who is not even on your radar is a beginning point. Understanding where a market fit, product fit, and story fit land is another point.
The pace of change and impact with GAI and LLM’s coming on strong is going to change everyone’s playing field. The ability to adapt to adopt the swiftness of change is going to impose a significant strain on an organization, not to mention the humans who need to drive this change across the organization.
A playing field used for sports has boundaries and rules to follow. Yet, coaches draw up plays and sophisticated alignments to change the dynamics and flow of the game. New formations, new placements, and new wrinkles are attempted to shift the balance of the playing field every game.
Similar to the game of business and livelihoods, we go to school to learn the boundaries and rules of the playing field. The art and science of competition is predicated on learning the rules, so you can break them (a lovely Pablo Picasso quote) or use them to your advantage. The quest to level the playing field is fraught with both consequences and unintended consequences as we continue to witness.
The reason I am so excited about 2024 is that our playing field is no longer defined by conventional reason. We are entering into a new set of boundaries and to-be-determined rules that may not look like the rules of traditional games played before today. There will be winners and losers and there will be inclinations to level the playing field to make actions fair and just.
What is your playing field?
NOW (How you are realizing this today)
How have you defined your playing field?
Is that definition still valid?
Where are your inputs coming from?
NEW (How you will realize this tomorrow)
Will you define your playing field quarterly from here out?
Will you address how you adapt to adopt AI into your everyday practices by the end of Q2 or a set date in time?
Will you seek new inputs to shape your playing field by the end of Q2?
NEXT (I see a world in which)
I see a world in which your playing field will become a fluid state of existence over the next decade. It will be evolving and waiting for no one to catch up.
The Payoff
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man person who points out how the strong man person stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man person who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood."
~ Theodore Roosevelt (modified for modern times)
Follow me on LinkedIn. Or DM at tobin@spatialshift.com for more information.
If you are curious to bring a thoroughbred thinker into your planning process, give me a call. I relish the opportunity to help you define your playing field.
This way of describing one's life in "the arena" is very useful, but not because it playing fields are stable with rules that one can count upon and competitors who will follow them. The utility of Tobin's construct is that it calls attention to our assumptions about the playing field we work and life in/on. Tobin is challenging us to look carefully at what boundaries, spaces, rules, scoring, and implements of play, are becoming more or less relevant than they were even a couple years ago. Not to mention that there are more players who disregard the "rules of the game" entirely to win at the expense of others. They do it because they can with few consequences. Carrying this line of thinking forward, one will need to hone skills in critical thinking and assumption busting to detect new forms of play and see the cheaters cheating. Likewise, we'll need to cultivate communities who can agree on the form, rules, and boundaries of play that are wholesome for economy, ecology, and society. Not to mention the referees needed to manage the commons that makes up the field of play.