Winning Bananagrams strategies for career success

Whenever I play the game Bananagrams, I am reminded of how winning in this game requires some key tactics that also happen to be critical to building success and fulfillment in our work. If you're playing to win in your career, you'll want to incorporate these four lessons into your strategy immediately.

Yes, you can build something great out of a seemingly random collection of inputs. In the game you’re building words from randomly selected letter tiles; in your career you're building success out of experiences, relationships, knowledge, that may seem random and not useful. What's the same in either case is that the opportunities, tools, materials, or options that lie before you may immediately apply. In the game, some of your letter tiles are clearly usable, others, not so much. Similarly, some of what lies before you in your professional path may be meaningful, and supportive of your vision, others will seem like barriers or dead ends. The key here is that it takes a breadth of resources to both get you started AND keep you in motion. As you proceed you can discern what is or is not useful. Apply what makes sense and leave out what doesn't. But keep going.

If you can't use something, take the option to put it back into the bigger pile of what's available and  pick up something else in trade. In the game, if you decide to trade in one tile you have to take three new letters. In the process of creating success on your terms, you must constantly and often rapidly assess options and approaches and then put some aside.  Not doing so could lead to the proverbial "analysis paralysis." Don’t stop entirely just because you don’t know what to do with one set of options or circumstances. Trade them out. Seek alternatives. Gain new information and new options while shedding what's not needed, all the while maintaining momentum, adapting, and assimilating along the way.

 What you once discarded may come back to you and be immensely useful later. In the game, as you build words, some letters that were previously unusable can come back to you and fit nicely into your board. As you’re building career success, you may find that a strength or skill that you previously hadn't been able to apply could rise to the surface and prove necessary later. Stepping into a new role, for example, could reveal that your truest talents (even those you thought were dormant) will be your performance and achievement advantage. What was previously set aside then becomes a crucial factor in your success.

To keep moving forward you may have to rework what you've already built. No matter how great a set of words might be in Bananagrams, sometimes the only way to continue to thrive in the game will be to dismantle what you've got and rebuild. The same is true in your pursuit of success. Sometimes you have to shake things up and shift. Even in the midst of achievement, when things are going great, what has worked well in the past and which you are so proud of may have to be abandoned, deconstructed, and reworked to allow you to continue to be successful.

So go on, play! Create something great no matter how random your resources and experiences may seem. Bravely let go of what's not working and trade it for new perspective and new opportunities. If something didn’t work in the past, entertain it again under different circumstances. Be willing to boldly dismantle and rework what you've created and challenge yourself to grow and achieve beyond what you thought possible. After all, you can't win if you don't play the game!