When was the last time you played Scrabble? If it’s been a few years, you may be a little rusty. How can that be? Isn’t it just spelling words? If you are a true competitor, you know that there is more to it.
The recession encouraged people to spend less on media and going out and to return to basics for entertainment. Yes – “game night” is back in vogue. NPD reported in 2009 a 10% increase in board game sales. An Ebay search returns more than 20,000 games, such as Monopoly, Scrabble and Life, being bought at auction.
No surprise that even in the media capital, Los Angeles, invitations to parties where we pull out the vintage board games have been on the rise. Most arrive with the intent to socialize and enjoy a few fun games from their childhood. Imagine the riotous night when someone showed up with the battery operated game of Operation. (You may remember this one – where you try to pick up the little plastic funny bone without touching the edge, or be buzzed into defeat?) Even trickier if the night includes a few fine bottles of wine!
There is always at least one group that arrives intent on winning. I was not in the group originally; I just wanted to have fun. But my competitive spirit soon kicked in! I realized when I was way behind in a game of Scrabble that those leading the game had a strategy. This was not simply about making a word that used most of your seven tiles at each turn.
I realized that the game is not much different from just about any competitive endeavor. Whether it is a sport, selling or competing for a new job, you need a strat plan. These were some of the top winning strategies in Scrabble:
- Keep an eye out for hooks, words which can be turned into other words. The most common hook is a word that can have different prefixes, such as “EX-” or “UN-” attached to it, or a word that can be given a new ending, such as “-ES,” “-ED,” or “-ING.”
- Try to land high-value tiles such as the X, Q, or J on a double- or triple-word score.
- Set up the board so that it is difficult for your opponent to place a word.
- Move your tiles around in your rack – words will appear that you did not see until you look at them differently.
Strategy development is big business; over 400,000 companies in America fall into the category of consulting companies who make a living by solving problems and helping other companies write and implement strategies. Take a few lessons from Scrabble to work and you, too, can be solving problems, developing strategies and moving on to the fast track.
Go to work this week and look for the single play that will help you add a simple but important value to an already successful project and allow you to claim the entire project as your success.
Play your hook – turn “win” into “winning” and score all the points.
Good ideas and a great vision are not enough to be successful today. Winners need an authoritative, convincing, articulate presentation. Fast Track Tools offers resources to help. After completing the Communicate to Win workshop, you will know how to outline your plan and how to get where you really need to go. With this complete package, you gain the tools necessary to guarantee that you have the best ideas and that you can present them confidently so you will WIN.
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