Last week, we had a lecture as part of our MMS curriculum on entrepreneurship. While the initial part was the regular theoretical discussion, the professor suggested playing a game. He claimed that this game is played at Harvard, Stanford, IIMs, and all the best B schools in the world. Irrespective of the game being fun, it made us realise we don’t know our strengths. What is this game all about? What does it have to do with our strengths? Let us explore them.

The prep

Even before people could arrive for the lecture, the faculty walked in excited. His excitement knew no bounds as he randomly picked up the wastepaper basket (WPB) as the goalpost. Then he asked two of us to draw a square around it, followed by marking 7 positions (7 being the farthest and 1 being the nearest). The methodology of playing the game was evident. Each of us should be standing in a position and try to put something into the WPB.

Game time

He gathered three coins from his pocket, asked all of us to fill the board with our names, and drew three columns marking attempts and scores for each attempt. He instructed us, “There will be three chances for each attempt. The first two will be considered as practice, and the last one will be counted as your score. The farther you stand, the higher your score will be. We will go in an ascending order followed by vice versa for the other two attempts.”

One after the other, all of us tried. A few took the farthest position, and some took the mid position. Some got it right in the practice and missed the last chance, thereby losing the attempt. Some got all three right and scored well in two attempts at least, thereby topping the charts. Some of us chose different positions, i.e., the first attempt in three, the second attempt in four, and the last in five.

Gamblers…

The professor was all smiles, making comments during the activity. But once it was over, his expression changed. He just said, “You all are gamblers. None of you understand your best position and strengths. You were just standing in different positions and trying to play, but none of you had the foresight, which is your position, to take the winning shot.

This was a hard realisation. The hall was filled with pin-drop silence. The professor grabbed the coin from a student and said, “4 is my position. Now see how I get all three right.”

And he did as he said. Then he claimed, “Now I may do the same with 5 as a position.” He tried only to fail in the first attempt.

He announced, “I will never stand in 5, as it is not my strength yet.” After a small pep talk, he again tried from 5, and this time he got everything right without fail.

What is this game?

The professor finally declared, “This game is called the Coin Theory. All major business schools play this game, and so did we today. Those positions represent the level of risk one would take to achieve desired results. He further claimed, “Someone stood at 1, which is not a risk at all; rather, you could’ve bent a little bit standing in 3 or 2 and done the same thing.”

The one who stood at position 1 was me!

“Anyway, good job, everyone,” he said and closed the lecture.

Learnings

That mere position we stood in represented our strength and the level of risk that we could absorb. The professor was right; we just looked at it as an activity, not as an opportunity to understand ourselves. This is the number one reason why most of us fail, and it is high time that we address it if we are serious about moving ahead.