Speed-running Super Mario Bros.

On September 5th, 2023, speed-runner Niftski “finished” Super Mario Bros in 4 minutes 54 seconds and 631 milliseconds, beating the previous speed-run world record by 233 milliseconds. It was epic. Here is a video (you can skip it if you don’t care)

The thing I love about speed-runners is that they don’t give a sh*t about playing the latest and greatest videogame. They just wanna challenge themselves to complete a single game faster and faster every time.

What does this have to do with Captainship Circles? Let me explain.

Yesterday we talked about captainship circles. We also discussed how the “captainship game” becomes progressively harder as your captainship circle expands to include more and more people.

Naturally, since “grown-ups like numbers”, it’s common to see some bad captains use their captainship circle’ size as a measure of a how good a captain they are. This often comes in one of these two flavors:

1. Org-size swinging. Captain 1: “What size is your org?” Bad captain: “Oh, it’s big, almost 100 people!”

2. Title-dropping. “I’m the SVP of XYZ” (implying that the Director of ABC they are talking to is clearly a worst captain than they are since they have less people in their org)

Here is how I feel about these people: 🖕🏻

Captains managers making these kind of statements forget that captainship has nothing to do with reporting lines. Just because someone reports to a certain manager it doesn’t mean they are willing to change their behavior based on the manager’s actions/words.

More importantly though, they are forgetting that some captains prefer to focus on refining the skills necessary to excel within their circle instead of learning the skills needed to operate in a different circle. Exactly like our speed-runner friend Niftski. He chooses to play Super Mario Bros. over and over trying to uncovered every single little detail and hack.

You can achieve remarkable results by focusing on refining the specific set of skills necessary to excel within a certain captainship circle.

Which brings us to the main insight from this post:

A better way of thinking about captainship circles is like different video games, each stretching slightly different skills. Some people enjoy finishing one and then picking up a new one, others enjoy diving deep into one single game. Some people prefer stretching different skills because that is the challenge they enjoy. Others prefer to focus on a single set of skills and going very deep on them. Not every captain needs to be a captains of many.

Next time you hear someone org-size swinging, title-dropping, or using captainship circle size as a proxy of how good a captain they are, don’t believe them. Ask them how many people they actually helped achieve their goals and watch them sit there in silence.

-Ale

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