Running a business can be a rather complex task. The perfect manager is usually described as someone who has a set of soft skills and hard skills that make them able to plan, solve problems, manage budgets, mitigate risks and manage time. All of that on top of, of course, being communicative, conciliatory, empathetic, adaptable and knowing how to negotiate.
It is a big and even intimidating challenge. Finding someone with so many qualities is extremely rare. Professionals like these tend to be especially valued by the job market.
Fortunately, these skills are largely trainable, whether through courses, reading or even games.
Video games have always been criticized for supposedly influencing a range of social problems, from young people’s sedentary lifestyles to acts of violence. However, those who look at the subject beyond the superficial soon realize that not only are these accusations unfounded, but also that games bring countless benefits to those who play them.
Many studies prove the effective role of games in improving cognitive abilities such as focus, attention, reasoning and memory. These are characteristics that matter in a good manager.
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World of Warcraft and its relationship to business management
World of Warcraft is one of the most popular games in the world. The MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) developed by Blizzard Entertainment has millions of players around the planet.
Leading a raid is a lot like running a business
On entering the game, these players must choose a character and control it through an extremely large world full of activities and events. One of these events is the famous “raids.”
A raid in the gaming world, especially in MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games), is a group mission or activity in which players join forces to defeat powerful enemies or complete complex challenges. Raids are regarded as coordinated incursions or attacks carried out by a team that generally require strategy, leadership and a high level of execution skill, in order to obtain valuable rewards.
In the World of Warcraft universe, a raid is an event in which a group of players (usually between 5, the minimum number, and 40 people) gather to defeat certain bosses. What does this have to do with business administration? A lot. Every raid has a leader, and the skills put into practice in this kind of situation are very similar to those a manager uses day to day.
Such video game “raids” have some interesting similarities in the business context, such as strategies and dynamics in the business world.
Below are some points where these activities resemble the business environment:
Planning
Most raids involve players having to follow a series of tactics to have a better chance of winning. This plan is almost always created and presented by the leader before the raid begins. Within a company, the planning process unfolds basically the same way.
In the business world, the success of projects or the launch of new products also depends on strategic planning and careful analysis of the market and the competition.
Problem solving
During a raid, problems must be solved quickly and with the leader’s head cool and immune to the heat of the moment. In the corporate game, irrationality also tends not to produce positive results.
The most admired managers are precisely those who manage to find the perfect balance between speed and rationality in their decision-making.
Scheduling
Although the image of the gamer who spends all day at home in front of a monitor is a stereotype idealized by many, World of Warcraft players are ordinary people with ordinary lives.
This means that, besides playing, their routines involve activities such as work, study and time with family and friends. For that reason, it is essential that a raid leader be someone who knows how to plan the event so that all members of the group fit the team’s schedule.
The same thing often happens in the business environment. Employees have individual and team commitments, and it is up to each member to take care of their priorities so that the team’s performance and communication stay within the expected level.
Planning, calculating risks, forming strategies. The parallels between the fantasy world and the real world are extremely tangible.
Team management and leadership
The group carrying out a raid often finds itself in situations that threaten the success of its endeavor. The leader’s role is to assess these risks and make the smartest possible decision to overcome them. A raid leader usually knows how to organize and make use of each member’s competencies and abilities.
Corporate routines are also full of risks and uncertain situations that demand meticulous analysis from managers. Raids require team coordination and effective leadership to overcome complex challenges, just as in the business environment, where teamwork and strong leadership are crucial to the success of projects and to reaching business goals.
Being a raid leader in the game can be valuable training for dealing with these decisive moments in real life.
Time management
The time players can devote to a raid varies a lot and can be short at many moments. To get the best out of their team, the leader must sharpen their time management skills. Making sure that what needs to be done is done at the right time and setting breaks for rest are some of the duties related to this skill.
In the business world, time is money. Because of this maxim, the time management skill is highly sought after by the market. Like a raid leader, a manager must always be ready to use time in their favor, and not the other way around.
Communication: essential in the game and in business.
Communication
Group communication usually makes the difference between success and failure, and this applies both to a World of Warcraft raid and to the work routine at a company.
Players are very familiar with collaborative communication. They generally use voice communication software, such as Discord, TeamSpeak or Ventrilo, to facilitate real-time communication. Such software is very similar to, and perhaps even better than, corporate software like MS Teams and Slack.
This allows such members, while working as a team at a company, to share information instantly, coordinate actions and react to unexpected events more effectively than through text-based communication.
The better the communication between a leader and their team (whether real or virtual), the greater the chances that everyone will reach the proposed goal.
Leadership
From the previous sections, it is already clear that the ability to lead is extremely important in a raid. People who take part in these events invariably turn to their leader for advice and direction.
In the real world, raids are the challenges, difficulties and insecurities that professionals face every day. And just like in the game, companies need a leader able to support and guide their team clearly and precisely.
Adaptation
Even the best plans sometimes do not work out as well as imagined. Surprises and unforeseen events happen all the time in life, whether real or virtual. A good manager, of raids or companies, must have the intelligence and tact needed to react to these circumstances quickly and, at the same time, cautiously and efficiently.
In both raids and the business world, the ability to adapt to unexpected situations and be flexible in the face of challenges is fundamental. Strategies may need to be adjusted quickly in response to new information or changes in the environment.
Leadership and sense of community
The most advanced World of Warcraft raiders usually run raids together with other members of their guild, which is a group of players who ally in a community with the intention of overcoming the game’s hardest challenges together.
Most guilds are made up of players from different places, each with their own abilities and personality traits. A good guild and raid leader knows how to recognize this and use each member’s strengths and weaknesses in favor of the group’s goals.
You can tell that the type of leadership found in a multiplayer game is the same as in the corporate world, right? Leading a group of players is practically equivalent to training to develop skills such as:
- Empathy: a leader must seek to understand how their team feels and keep them motivated to give their best;
- Negotiation: a successful raid generates loot (reward packages) for the team. At those moments, a leader must have the wisdom to negotiate while the items are distributed among the entire team;
- Conflict resolution: since guilds are made up of a large number of people, it is inevitable that conflicts will arise here and there. Being impartial and knowing how to resolve them in a way that is satisfactory to everyone is a basic leadership skill.
Any resemblance between these situations and the day-to-day of a company is no mere coincidence. However fanciful they may seem, games use countless elements of real life to create their worlds.
Learning these business skills through World of Warcraft has two big advantages. The first is the playful, fun and light factor that accompanies the learning. The second is that, unlike real life, there are no real risks in a game. The goal of a raid may not be achieved at times, and that, of course, has consequences inside the game, but it does not harm our lives off-screen.
Taking risks in an environment like this is an extremely valuable experience for a manager. The games we play, the movies we watch and the books we read are part of our baggage, which is fundamental in many aspects of life, including the professional one. So how about starting a new game of World of Warcraft right now?
