Hi Nie!

Some friends and I have a summer tradition: We play a competitive game of Axis & Allies that takes many weeks and possibly even a few months. One year, we played Axis & Allies 1942. Another year, we played Axis & Allies 1914. It took us about a month.

I played as Russia and the US along with my other Allies—France, the UK, and Italy. In the beginning of the game, the US sat out (just like in WWI), so I was only responsible for Russia and the Eastern Front.

It was immediately clear that the Eastern Front was a big challenge for Russia. My job was to hold the line as long as possible so the US could enter the war and swing things in our favor on the Western Front.

Fortunately, France and Italy played well and got pretty lucky, so things went well for us over there. We eventually prevailed, winning the war on the Western front.

The game was a lot of fun because it was a good mix of strategy, tactics, and luck.

The luck component seemed a little frustrating at first, but it was pretty true to how things actually happened in WWI.

A few countries would send a bunch of infantry to a battle front and although they might have some idea what would happen, the outcome would be uncertain until the battle actually finished. Maybe one side's tactics were stronger, or maybe the weather thwarted one side's game-plan.

In the real War, there were several battles where hundreds of thousands of soldiers were lost and nothing really changed.

The same was true in AA14 (my unofficial shorthand). We would do the math on the possible outcomes, line up a bunch of infantry and artillery, then roll the dice to see what actually happened. Sometimes there would be a big swing, and sometimes nothing would happen at all as both sides lost a lot of infantry and artillery.

It was important to have a pretty good overall strategy, but the key to the game was to adjust our tactics any time we got new information. If there was a big battle that went our way, we may have more options available to us. If we lost a big battle, we may have fewer options and it might make sense to change course or ramp up our risk tolerance.

Lately I've noticed that this is true in my business as well: I make the most progress when continually update my current plan to match the information I have and to maximize the opportunities available to me.

When I get stuck on a particular plan without incorporating new information, I often make mistakes. My business has grown and improved over the years because I'm making fewer and fewer of those mistakes—hopefully I can maintain this trend.

Choosing opportunities based on the career paths they open up

As you move throughout your career, you will often have multiple good opportunities to consider at once. One useful thing to consider when looking at those opportunities, and especially when some of those opportunities are equally appealing, is which ones offer you multiple good paths to a good outcome.

In other words, a good tiebreaker for a career move could be "Which one of these offers me the most paths to a better career down the road?" Which path offers you the most optionality?

When I switched over from electrical engineering to project management and business analysis in software, one of my primary motivations was I could see multiple paths forward that were all appealing. I could eventually become a client services director, or might be on a trajectory to CTO or COO, and there was even a path to being a CEO one day.

Of course I ended up starting my own business, which was an option even further down some of those paths than I could see at the time. But having all of those paths available is what ultimately enabled me to gather all of the skills I combined to start Fearless Salary Negotiation.

I'm glad I chose the career path with more downstream options.

Rule of thumb: When in doubt, choose the career option that gives you more long-term optionality.

Have a great week!

Josh