Game On: Are You Clear About the Game You’ve Agreed to Play?

It’s not uncommon to think of business as a game. Consider this reflection from an influential leader:

“Business is a game, the greatest game in the world if you know how to play it.”
– Thomas J. Watson, early IBM leader

In any game, there are agreements to participate.

We make countless agreements each day simply to operate within the online environment. Most of us rarely stop to notice them. A short list includes:

• Subscribe: free tiers include fine print about data use, content visibility, and ad exposure.
• Advertising: choosing not to subscribe (or subscribing at a low tier) includes agreeing to receive ads.
• Subscription fees: automatic recurring billing, often with minimal reminders.
• Unsubscribe: finding the link, offering reasons, and navigating each platform’s rules.
• Opting out: legally possible for email, though the ease varies widely.
• Being added to groups: inclusion may happen without permission, requiring manual opt-out.
• Format of participation: platforms define character limits, video length, file types, and external linking.
• Community participation: unspoken expectations around presence, contribution, and engagement.

These agreements shape how we play the game. We often move through them on autopilot, agreeing by default until something meaningful prompts a renegotiation. They can lead to subtle forms of disenfranchisement, where someone is technically included yet internally stepping out of the game. (mentally, emotionally)

Data privacy, unsubscribe practices, and platform norms have changed only because people began paying attention. Still, many of the agreements in our digital lives remain buried in the fine print.

Now extend this metaphor to business.

Are we present to the agreements we make in business?

When you enter a company at any level—employee, employer, entrepreneur, owner, C-suite—you agree to participate in the game of that organization. Consider your agreements around roles, culture, time and availability, performance, compensation, ethics, career development, innovation, creativity, technology, and AI. These agreements exist whether or not anyone names them, and each comes with its own degree of freedom.

At the CEO level, the agreements intensify. Agreements to uphold Board or shareholder interests can cut close to the core, especially when conscience points in a different direction.

A worthwhile question emerges:

Do you have the freedom you need to make decisions in your stewardship of the role, without anticipating censorship from the level above you?

There is also another kind of agreement to participate: the moment you say Game On.

This moment signals ignition, energy, and direction. Game On suggests that this is a remarkable time to be in business – because of the challenges, not despite them.

When you say Game On, are you clear about what that agreement includes? It may mean asking for what you need in order to contribute fully. It may involve negotiating the architecture around your role so your made-to-measure decisions have room to live.

There was a time, at Google, when employees had 20% of their time dedicated to projects aligned with their own interests. Today, this is increasingly rare as AI systems take over aspects of the human workload.

So how do we meet this moment, when the rules of the game and the agreements to participate are shifting?

Consider bringing your life mission into the conversation.

When your life mission enters the field, you gain clarity about the agreements you’re making. Is there space for why you are here, what you are called to do, and who you are called to become? If not, what does that signal? What would it mean to create a game that includes your life mission from the beginning?

If you haven’t taken the time to build the skill of asking why you are here, and you are still saying Game On to something, what will it mean that you didn’t include a life mission conversation?

When applying for roles or stepping into new opportunities, have you explored your deeper reason for being here? Without that, resignation or compartmentalization can take root, and your calling becomes an avocation rather than a vocation.

Being present to your life mission inside your Game On brings forward your unique signature, something AI cannot replicate. AI can take on tasks; it cannot replicate the singular architecture of your presence.

Taking the time to understand what you are agreeing to in the game of business, including the space required for your made-to-measure contributions, may be the element that moves us into a new era of work. One where the game itself becomes something worth saying yes to.