Funny how being a loser has become such a bad thing. My Dad, a competitive phys ed teacher, taught me it was ok to lose if I gave it my all. In fact, if I was winning too much he told me I needed to find harder opponents. That way I'd improve faster.
So I learned that there where 2 types of losers. The first consciously plays a bigger game knowing they might lose, play anyway, take responsibility for the loss and move forward. They play to win and many times do. The other doesn't try very hard, loses and takes no responsibility for the loss. They never win.
Bigger games involve the unknown. With the unknown comes the feeling of fear or apprehension. It's that little voice that keeps trying to push you down, trying to keep you safe. One day I discovered that the fear didn't go away. I had a choice: choose not to play or play with the fear.
Increasingly, I am listening to business people react to the changes the Internet has unleashed on their businesses I can hear the fear and apprehension in their voice. Some are choosing to move through the fear and discover new business models or new ways of doing business. Others simply dismiss the Internet like an old Grandparent refusing to use the telephone when it first came out.
In an increasingly Internet-connected world one needs to play a bigger game, move into the unknown, lose a few and learn. Otherwise businesses can find themselves irrelavent pretty quickly.
How the Internet is used constantly changes. New tools like iPhones, iPads and new services like Twitter and Facebook appear overnight and take the world by storm. It's new all the time. Yes you will be apprehensive. But the new successful businesses are constantly in creating mode. They live in a new world of business creating new products and services and finding new solutions to old problems. So the question is, are you ready to play a bigger game?