Insight Check 14 - Imperfect Information Games and C.I.A. sabotage

Sep 15, 2024 8:49 am

Insight check #14

A sometimes weekly email about decision-making, strategy, games and other observations.

Imperfect Information Games

CIA sabotage strategy

Teething

Breaking My own golden rule

Imperfect Information Games

Tabletop games have long been used to teach lessons in leadership strategy. So let's imagine:

You get three Resumes for a strategic role on your desk. In the 'Hobbies' section, you notice each one has listed a game:

One listed their Chess ELO ranking of 2000.
The second highlights their progression in rounds of the Poker World Series.
The third plays a weekly game of DnD with college friends.

So, if you were in this position, which candidate would you choose?

The standard narrative would have us believe Chess is recognised as a game of brilliant strategy. Poker champions write many business books on the reading of others, risk, and probability. However, less has been written in popular leadership literature on the importance of more freeform games like RPGs (Role-playing games).

Chess and Poker are games of complete or near-complete information with a game-theory-optimal strategic approach. Conversely, RPGs are messy, sandbox-like environments that aim to model situations and stakeholders and the complexity of a chaotic world.

RPGs are overlooked as strategy playgrounds for teaching experimentation, relationship management, complex decision-making, ethics, and uncertainty. They are also excellent at operational experience for events that are low-probability/high-impact and do not happen often in the wild.

The defence and cyber industries commonly play RPG/wargames to simulate crises, likely because of their defence-based, risk-averse mindset. However, there is a massive case that all leaders and industries should incorporate these games into their practice to improve their strategy skill sets, as they offer practical benefits in enhancing decision-making, ethics, and uncertainty management.

No doubt, practising optimal game theory enhances your critical thinking and analysis skills, but these are often skills that are usually done by robots.

In a world where managing relationships, navigating ethical dilemmas, and dealing with uncertainty and complexity are crucial, perhaps we should give more serious consideration to games that allow us to practice these skills.

CIA sabotage strategy

The CIA's game design prowess was evident even in 1944 when they created a field manual (now unclassified, albeit redacted) to teach everyday citizens the art of sabotage.

This wasn't about grand sabotage like assassinations and dismantling war machines, but rather about subtle, everyday actions that could undermine the enemy. The strategy was to disseminate this to those who worked in and opposed (then) German-occupied territories.

The most incredible part to me is the suggestions on management and business sabotage titled "General Interference with Organizations and Production" and "General Devices for Lowering Morale and Creating Confusion" (screenshots below)

They have perfectly defined and articulated the sand and grit of knowledge work that gets in the machine's gears and grinds it to a creaking halt.

It's remarkable how this 80-year-old document still holds relevance. It could be considered the anti-commandments of business management and leadership, offering insights that are as applicable today as they were in 1944.

The designers of this document perfectly understood the task and flawlessly followed many of my golden rules of game design:

Define the aim
Understand the moving pieces, levers and outcomes
Understand the motivations
Be clear in the instructions

Despite looking like director's notes for Michael Scott, This is worth printing and framing in every office.

Teething

Observing my baby teething, I can't help but marvel at the wonder of this process. Imagine living your entire life with a soft, gummy mouth, only to have hardened enamel suddenly burst forth, transforming your mouth. But fear not; in a few months, your baby will have a full set of tools to conquer the food chain.

Pointy ones to tear up flesh.

Grindy ones to mill down grain.

Incisey ones to get spinach stuck in.

Then, in 6 years, they will all fall out of your head, and you will get more. There are so many that you probably do not need a few, and we will take them out later so they don't crowd anything. The crowding only happens anyway because smaller jaws make emoting and language easier. At the same time, we invent fire to help the physical breakdown of nutrients, which makes us smarter and probably better reproducers. All that jazz happens before the crowding (evolutionarily speaking), so it has yet to be selected for. (In fact, a lot of mummies and pre-dentistry skeletons probably died from wisdom teeth abscesses and infections.)

Biology is wild.

As I watch this baby grow, I am constantly reminded that biology is a fantastic strategic library of millions of random experiments. Sometimes, trying to pry human-level learning is a mug's game, but occasionally, you can find something to wonder: what the hell is this all about?

Breaking a golden rule

As frequent readers know, I am designing a tabletop rule system for tabletop exercises. Based on playtesting feedback, it appears I broke my golden rule. I didn't clearly know what the aim was.

The v1 of the system was supposed to support tabletop enthusiasts in running more ttx at their work. As a result, I designed something that was not fun enough to be interesting, nor interesting enough to be fun. I needed to pick a lane more rather than cater to non-game players and hobby gamer GMs.

Since there is no game without GMs, I will be pivoting to design something appealing to run and easy to teach.

The book will look more like an RPG game than a business document supplement for an offsite retreat.

This makes it more fun to design and also makes me more excited about what it could become.

Stay tuned for playtest round 2.

Dr Dan