Strategy Lessons from Lemmings

When I was a teenager, personal computers were just coming in, so not every household had one, and even schools often had a single computer which was shared between classes.

The games that we played had pretty clunky graphics, but it didn't matter What mattered was that we could play them - Pacman, pong, Battleships... Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog was truly revolutionary.

Recently, I discovered that one of my all-time favourite games - Lemmings - has been reenvisioned for the modern mobile. And, yes, it's just as satisfying now as it was all those years ago. As I was playing, I realised that playing Lemmings (and indeed many other games), requires strategy and problem solving.

So here goes...

Six lessons in Strategy from playing Lemmings:

1. Safety first

When a project is first starting out, it's important to understand where people are at: which direction are they're going in, and are they're in a 'safe space'?

Once that door opens and the project goes live, will they free-fall to disaster, or will they hit the ground running? And are they walking in the direction we think they are? Are they walking straight towards danger?

We need to understand where our people are at, and we need to ensure that they're on board with us.

2. Identify the risks

Now that we're confident that our team are 'safe' - for now, we need to understand the risks that lie ahead. What are the pitfalls that we may come across as we journey through? Some are immediately obvious (such as acid lakes, cliff edge drops), others are more subtle (rotating blades that drop down, or spikes that pop up), Some are frequent, others, such as crumbling bolders, are occassional.

We must understand where the risks lie, and assess whether we can avoid, disable or chance them. Can we dig under, build over, disable or simply take a different path? What are our options here to avoid danger?

3. Where are we going?

Every journey needs a clear destination. So, before we set out, we need to know where we're going.

If we don't understand where we're going, we can waste time and resource wandering about aimlessly and risk failure or loss in our team.

4. How do we get there?

Lemmings game

So we know that our people are safe, we know where we want to go, and we've identified the risks... but how are we going to get there? What does the journey look like and what resources do we need?

We need to undertand what resources we have available to us and what timeframes we're working to. The routes laid out ahead of us all have different costs - should we use five builders v one digger? Is one path more time effective or riskier than another?

Sometimes limited resources force us in a particular direction. Sometimes we need quick rather than elegant.

5. Expect the unexpected

Once the journey has begun and our project is live, we need to understand that sometimes people go off piste. They take a turn that we haven't prepared for. It might be that we haven't correctly assessed a risk and suddenly they're free-falling. We need to respond quickly to avoid catestophic failure and try to recover our position.

6. Acceptable losses?

Every level on Lemmings has a Lemming save target. If your losses become too great, the level is failed.

On a project, we may need to accept that we may lose some people along the way. There may be some people who refuse to listen or who we simply don't catch in time. But does loss mean failure? Often not - but sometimes yes. Sometimes success comes at a price.

In conclusion...

Everything that we do leads to learning - whether we immediately recognise it or not. I was surprised to find lessons in strategy amongst Lemmings. I'm sure there are other things from childhood that have lessons for business.

Did you play games as a teen? What lessons did you learn? Do you think that the games that we play now are different from those early days games?