Zero Sum Game originates from an idea that a win is only possible at the expense of an opponent’s lossEasiest way to identify whether a game you are playing is zero sum or not, is to look around and see the people you are playing that game with.Status is the currency of politicians, journalists, actors and oligarchs who are always trying to one-up each other. t emerges from one’s behaviour which depends on the environment you are present in, as it would effect the formation of your beliefs and notions. Author, Jim Rohn saysYou are the average of the five people you spend most time with

Avoid Zero Sum Games

Easiest way to avoid Zero Games is to identify the environment and people you are surrounded 

February 16, 2022 Engaging in Zero Sum Games emerge from one's behaviour and all behaviour is contextual 

Words Of Wisdom

How To Avoid Zero Sum Games - thingstodoclub.com

SaaS companies make disproportionately more money with Team plans:<ol><li>Deal Sizes are bigger</li><li>Retention is so much better. Once a team is collaborating in a product, no single user can easily make the decision to leave</li><li>Seat Expansion. Successful Team products have “net negative churn,” meaning that expansion from retained accounts exceeds revenue lost from churned accounts.</li></ol>Individual plans are the definition of a Leaky Bucket, with usual yearly churn rates of 50%. The Individual plan makes sense for enabling sharing and collaboration as soon as you can. But Teams are the ultimate destination.

Teams > Individuals in SaaS businesses

B2C SaaS is limited to Individuals plans. The ability to offer Team plans is a major advantage of B2B SaaS. <ul><li>With only ~50% per year retention, these B2C SaaS businesses are effectively an arbitrage on marketing CAC (customer acquisition cost). There’s no long-term business. </li><li>Netflix and Peloton are the exception as they have unique retention strategies.</li><li>Individual plans are a good business only when retention is unusually high (e.g. churn under 2% per month)</li></ul>

B2B> B2C

Team plans are where the money is. Individual plans are good for lead gen.

Workgroup

Individuals or Teams: Who’s the Better Customer for SaaS Products?

“If you don’t have a strategy, you’re part of someone else’s strategy. ”

Strategy is creating a unique, valuable position with a different set of activities.As a content creator, you can decide between three sources to create your strategic positioning: <ul><li>Serving few needs of many content consumers. </li><li>Serving broad needs of few content consumers. </li><li>Serving broad needs of many content consumers in a narrow market. </li></ul>

Create a Unique Valuable Position

Trade-offs achieve two things: <ul><li>Create the need for choice. </li><li>Protect against repositioners and straddlers.  </li></ul>Trade-offs happen when activities are incompatible. One way to think of trade-offs is that having more of one thing requires less of another.

Make Tradeoffs — Choose What Not to Do

There are three types of fit: <ul><li>The first type of fit is consistency between each activity and the overall strategy. </li><li>The second type of fit happens when activities reinforce each other. </li><li>The third type of fit goes beyond activity reinforcement to optimization of effort.  </li></ul>

Create Fit Among Your Activities

<ul><li>Producing and releasing lots of content isn't a strategy. </li><li>Increasing the quality of your content isn’t a strategy.  </li></ul>

Quality and Quantity Are Not Strategies

We simplify the most relevant insights for a content creator's strategy based on What is Strategy? by Michael E. Porter to gain a competitive advantage.

Stashed ideas

The Successful Content Creator’s Strategy

John Doerr's Measure What Matters is about the importance of setting clear goals and using metrics to back them up. Doerr argues that metrics-driven OKRs (objectives and key results) have a considerable impact. In contrast, Jerry Muller's The Tyranny of Metrics shows that measuring everything destroys our schools, hospitals, police and politics. When metrics is the most important, everyone will try to "game" the numbers. E.g., schools teach to the test rather than to educate.

The use of metrics

Organisations often waste time by pursuing conflicting goals. OKRs helps to focus united efforts as it is easy to evaluate progress when goals are tied to measurable results. However, it can be a problem when goal-setting becomes an obsession. Common pitfalls to avoid:<ul><li>Do not tie metrics to compensation.</li><li>If your metrics measure the wrong thing, be open to change it.</li><li>When quality and quantity matter, add more metrics.</li></ul>

A case for metrics

One criticism of metrics is the obsession with numbers leaves no space for qualitative assessment. Numbers present a deceptive quality of objectivity. We tend to think of data as representing objective truth, but it does not always deserve the authority we give it.<ul><li>Tracking metrics can take away from the actual work.</li><li>When pressured to reach specific numbers, people will game the system.</li><li>Tying metrics to rewards and punishments destroys intrinsic motivation.</li></ul>

The tyranny of metrics

<ul><li>We can apply metrics to different domains. Muller's critiques focus mainly on not-for-profits, where Doerr directs his attention to big business (such as tech).</li><li>Metrics inspire effort but also encourage corruption. Therefore, each metric should be considered in light of trade-offs.</li><li>Using metrics and goals can increase the effectiveness of a healthy company, but the same strategy can damage people in an unhealthy organisation.</li></ul>

Consider both sides of metrics

Hyped by Silicon Valley, data-driven is the new black. Metrics allow us to quantify and solve every problem. But that’s not the whole story.

Metrics: Useful or Evil? | Scott H Young

The tools of probing the future (strategic forecasting) include microscopic as well as macroscopic components.
Geopolitical forecasting is the study of alternate futures, taking signals from the noise of today’s stories, developments and decisions.

The Crystal Ball: Probing The Future

While providing a set of scenarios, four is a good number to showcase a rich set of plausible futures. 
<ul>
<li>They should ideally have the details of the likelihood or probability of the success or failure and be customized to fit the context.</li>
<li>Events of the past are generally unreliable indicators of the future due to a drastic change in the environment. </li>
<li>The scenarios listed should serve a purpose which is a low signal at present but has the potential to turn into a much higher signal in the future.</li>
<li>Any given field will have its own set of unique scenarios.</li>
</ul>

The Good Scenarios

It has two parts, with the first five steps, concentrating on which particular scenarios to work on, and the rest three steps towards the story, implications and indicators.
<ol>
<li>Focal Issue: identify what to focus on.</li>
<li>Key Factors: brainstorm about the various factors influencing the focal issue. There can be numerous obvious factors and further digging can discover the less obvious, hidden ones.</li>
<li>External Forces: there are always certain remote, unseen forces that operate on the focal issue, and can be geopolitical, economic, social or technological. This may result in 70 to 80 key factors/external forces.</li>
<li>Critical Uncertainties: by combining all forms of key factors by implementing a divergent process, the next step is to converge by allocating priority votes to the importance of each factor and the degree of uncertainty.</li>
<li>Scenario Logics: a decision is taken on which potential futures out of the curated list are to be developed into a detailed scenario.</li>
<li>Scenarios: the eligible (top trending) scenarios are then turned into a story by a single author.</li>
<li>Implications and Options: fact check and stress-test each of the scenarios is set up after a few weeks. </li>
<li>Early Indicators can be easily found in consumer behaviour or stock price fluctuation.</li>
</ol>

Scenario Planning: The Eight-Step Process

A strategy is always developed with a set of scenarios studied and selected. It requires common sense as well as experience.
Example: A strategy can be an aeroplane, and the scenarios can be the conditions under which it can fly, or which it can crash.

Strategy Vs Scenario

By Jay Ogilvy Strategic foresight can be gained through more than one lens. Beyond the microscope of simple budgeting and the macroscope of geopolitics lie still other tools for probing the future. As I settle into the role of contributor to this space, I want to explore multiple futures and multiple perspectives. [...]

How To Avoid Zero Sum Games - thingstodoclub.com

Individuals or Teams: Who’s the Better Customer for SaaS Products?

The Successful Content Creator’s Strategy

Metrics: Useful or Evil? | Scott H Young

Scenario Planning and Strategic Forecasting

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