The Chomp #048

Lessons From Sled Dogs, Business as a Game, and More...

Hey Everyone,

Welcome back to The Chomp—your weekly dose of the best strategic thinking content and top emerging business trends from the internet and beyond. If you’ve been sent this email and you’re not a subscriber, you can join by clicking on the blue button below. With that, let’s dive into it.

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Quick Bite

What My Sled Dogs Taught Me About Planning for the Unknown: Sled dogs can run farther, in a shorter time, than almost any other animal. But they only think as far ahead as they can see, hear and smell. They catch the scent of a deer; they see a curve in the trail. It is, in its way, that simple. If the team meets an unexpected challenge, if they come to a steep mountain or take shelter in a storm, they’re better off for their restraint. Because they’re healthy, content; they have what they need, and they have each other. There’s no stronger way to meet the unknown.

To confess, I haven’t spent much time (any at all) in the past thinking about the lessons one could learn from sled dogs. But after reading this eye-opening piece in the NYT, I certainly will in the future. The parallels that Blair Braverman draws out in her essay on sled dogs are a perfect case of the right words for the right time.

As we head towards the winter, amidst a pandemic that shows no signs of letting up, uncertainty is a common feeling amongst humans. Coupled with an election in the US that could lead to all sorts of chaos, clarity for the future is trading at a premium today. 2020 has been a year where many feel like they're running towards a horizon that never gets any closer. It’s like we’re in a race and have no clue how far the finish line is.

For a sled dog, this is what their entire life is like. As Blair highlights, every time they hit the trail they run at full force and give it everything they have. But they never know how far they are going. “Asking sled dogs to pace themselves, to slow it down, is like asking a retriever to only fetch one ball out of three: It goes against their every instinct.”

Working with sled dogs led Blair to realize that she couldn’t be a dedicated planner. In her words, the only thing worse than not having a plan is the stress of having one and constantly breaking it. The wilderness throws too many variables at you to make a plan worth anything more than a sketch.

To ensure sled dogs make it through a long race, a musher (the human driver of the sled) needs to front-load rest for the dogs. By resting the dogs at pre-determined intervals—even if they aren’t tired and want to keep running—you ensure they’ll actually need less rest at the end of the race. By preventing fatigue the dogs never need to recover from it later.

Resting the dogs at measured intervals helps to build trust. The dogs learn that when they get hungry, there will be food. When they get tired, there will be rest. When they are thirsty, there will be water waiting. The dogs learn that you have their back, and in turn will want to run for as long as a journey as you’ll take them.

Tying this back to our present circumstances, we can take quite a bit away from a sled dog’s journey. Namely, as Blair concludes, that we can’t plan to take care of ourselves later. We should both support others and ask for support before we need it. In a race where you don’t know how far you’re going, your best bet is to act like it will go on forever.

That’s not to say that we should expect to live out our days in a pandemic—not at all. We can, and should, expect better days ahead. Yet, with the future uncertain, we can take measured steps to ensure we have what we need today. Sled dogs, with the support of their musher, face—and overcome—the unknown on nearly every journey. Through restraint, and with a focus on ensuring we’re healthy and content today, we too will be ready to take on the unknown.

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Deeper Dive

Secure the BaaG: Over time, more and more businesses will be able to be run as if they’re games, from real estate to SaaS and even to large-scale manufacturing. As robots replace labor (each robot replaces 3.3 human jobs according to MIT), more business is run via software, and complexity is continually abstracted away, there are very few businesses that won’t be able to be run as if they’re games.

The explosion of growth in video games is a topic I’ve discussed in this newsletter a few different times. Gaming is an incredibly lucrative market, and one that I enjoy learning more about. As the market has grown larger, we've seen gaming become intertwined with a host of different industries.

For example, Fortnite has become synonymous with live entertainment as it’s ramped up the number of live concerts performed in the game. Over 12 million people tuned into Travis Scott’s ‘Astronomical’ event on the platform back in April. Next week, international superstar J Balvin will headline a Halloween concert on Fortnite that’s expected to draw similar numbers.

Beyond live entertainment, Nike has recently made sneakers in collaboration with PlayStation, and Taco Bell has partnered with Microsoft on the launch of the Xbox Series X. The list of industries now tied in with the broader gaming market goes on and on. The opportunities for partnerships and brand collaborations appear to be endless.

But, what if this is just the start of something much bigger? What if we haven’t even scratched the surface of what gaming can become? Is it possible, that running a business itself actually turns into some version of playing a video game?

According to Packy McCormick, it is entirely possible—and even likely. And after reading his excellent new essay on the concept of Business as a Game (BaaG), I don’t think he’s wrong. It’s not too crazy to imagine running a business via a video game in the not too distant future.

In fact, we’re not too far off from there today. When I last discussed one of Packy’s essays, which focused on Shopify, I wrote about how a multitude of new plug-and-play tools has made it exponentially easier to launch a direct to consumer company. By building an online site on Shopify, accepting payments through Stripe, and running ads on Facebook/Instagram/Google you can have a business up and running in under a day.

If you think about it, using these tools is already like a game in many ways. Through Facebook’s ads dashboard you can see the success ads are having in real time and can easily tweak a few settings to change results. The difference between a digital dashboard and a video game interface isn’t all that much.

That gap will only get narrower as time goes on. And as gaming continues to become more prevalent in society, the idea of running a business through a screen and with a keyboard or controller will become less far fetched. As technology continues to improve, it will be easier to abstract ourselves away from many of the manual tasks we still do today.

We might not see any Fortune 500 companies run through a video game in the next few years, but it’s probably closer than you might think. Packy’s essay explores this idea in much, much deeper detail, and is definitely worth a read to learn why.

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Chum Bucket

• Twitter, Responsibility, and Accountability (Stratechery)

• How Tesla is Winning From the U.S.-China Trade War (The Information)

• 40th Semi-Annual Taking Stock With Teens® Survey, Fall 2020 (Piper Sandler)

• How a Malaysian Immigrant in Idaho Became the Go-To Expert on Podcasting (Marker)

• The Mad, Mad World of Niche Sports Among Ivy League–Obsessed Parents (The Atlantic)

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Tweet of the Week

Jeremy Heer, CFA, CAIA @MonocleMan1

Mind blown dot gif

Song of the Week

Apple Music Link

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Books

Currently Reading

Recently Read

• The Book of Five Rings was mentioned frequently throughout Certain to Win (which I recently read) as one of John Boyd’s favorite books. Miyamoto Musashi’s writing had a large influence on how John Boyd approached his own strategic thinking. While the book is singularly focused on the way of the sword, it’s lessons expand to cover all aspects of life. If you give Musashi’s words the attention they deserve, this is the type of book that can have a profound impact on your thinking. (5/5)

Parting Thoughts

This Week in History

• On October 22, 1991, I was born. This week I turned 29 and set sail on the sunset cruise to my third decade here on planet Earth.

“Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.”

— Marcus Aurelius

If you found something that piqued your interest this week, please help me out in expanding the reach of The Chomp by forwarding it along to a friend or sharing it with others in your network. Until next week.

-CM

This newsletter is created and authored by Cody McCauley and is published and provided for informational purposes only. The information in the newsletter solely constitutes Cody’s own opinions. None of the information contained in the newsletter constitutes—or should be construed as—investment advice.