Kobayashi Maru

"I'm not a magician, I'm just an old country doctor." Leonard McCoy

I wrote a coule of weeks ago a blog titled “Things you can learn from the sports page” where I made the statement that in business you should probably take the decisions made by professional sports owners and do the opposite.

This led a buddy to write me asking, then, how would I handle a Bret Favre situation in the business world. A well-loved but totally self-centered star performer who left on his own terms, you’ve replaced him with someone that you believe has talent but certainly can’t immediately fill the shoes and now the departed star wants to come back as if nothing happened or be blessed to go to a competitor.

My answer: Kobayashi Maru, the “No Win Scenario”.

The only way the Packers make out on this deal is if they trade Favre, get some value for him and then he suffers a career-ending injury during training camp with the new team. Or, they bring him back and he takes them to the Super Bowl. With one of these the Packers brass look like geniuses. Almost any other scenario is bad for them.

No win scenarios happen in business all the time. It can be with key employees, with customers, with competitors, with market conditions, with partners and on particularly bad days all of them at the same time.

A case in point: I was talking with a guy the other day whose company had committed to a specific Business Intelligence provider (and their strategy) two years ago. Now, however, one of their most important business partners had acquired a BI company competitive to the one being used, and to no great surprise, had convinced the owners that a change in BI direction was critical to the relationship. This guy was given 2 months to make the change and report to the board a successful transition. Kobayashi Maru.

I was once given the assignment relocate an entire development team from California to Michigan with no interruption in release schedules and no unhappy customers. Given how many of these Silicon Valley folks were jumping to relocate to Michigan...in January...Kobayashi Muru.

To beat the No Win Scenario you have to be strong of will, decisive of actions, flexible of thinking, and damned lucky. I was lucky, I had an incredible team of people who essentially brute-forced the transition to happen successfully.

Or take the Kirk way and cheat…..