My life has a theme song. It’s called Victory, by a group called Two Steps from Hell. The music is, in itself, fantastic. But for me, it means something much more because it is deeply associated with an event that shouldn’t have meant that much, but did, for me.
That music was used to accompany a recording of a State of Survival Reservoir Raid finals match between my alliance WNT (We Need Therapy—a very apt description of everyone in the alliance, actually) and another alliance LSD (which doesn’t stand for whatever it is you think it stands for.)
It was a one-hour match. WNT had trailed the entire game, and with 7:30 minutes left in the match, WNT was behind by 30,000 points. It wasn’t a normal or comfortable situation for us. WNT was used to winning on pure strength alone. (One didn’t get to the finals by being wimpy.)
At that point, the alliance ran the play we had practiced the entire season.
By the 6:30 minute mark, WNT was leading by 40,000 points.
The game ended with WNT 80,000 points ahead.
It was an outstanding victory, and that song is permanently seared into my psyche. Whenever I hear it, it brings back all the associations with that one Reservoir Raid match.
It wasn’t just a game.
We didn’t win because we were stronger, or because we had a secret strategy. By the end of the season, our strategy wasn’t a secret. We’d played the same strategy in every match leading up to the finals.
We won because:
Everyone in the team knew their roles, from the rally leaders, to the rally joiners, to the little minnow accounts (like mine).
We had practiced tirelessly for the entire season. People showed up from multiple timezones, across several continents, at often ridiculous hours to play together. You can’t fake dedication. Yes, it’s just a game, but we had dedication in SPADES.
We trusted each other. Trust comes from consistent exposure to people who show up when they say they’re going to, and who do their best each time.
We had a plan, and we stuck to the plan. Nobody lost their shit and panicked when we were behind.
We didn’t get comfortable. Even after we took the lead, we played full out, stuck to the plan, and dominated the game to win by 80,000 points.
We had an outstanding leader. He wasn’t our biggest account. He wasn’t our fastest player. But his vision to be the Reservoir Raid champion brought us together, and he was the calm voice in the room when we were 30,000 points behind. He called the shots, and knew that we would follow. We put our egos aside, put our wallets to work, and poured into the game and into each other more commitment and collaboration than I’ve seen at most workplaces.
And we won.
The formula is not complicated, but it’s not easy. I know because I’ve seen it NOT work at work where the stakes are infinitely higher than the temporal fame of winning the Reservoir Raid championship.
So what was the difference and how do we replicate it in professional settings?
Well, let’s start with all the ways the SITUATION was different.
It was time-bound. It was a dream at least two years in the making, but there was clear finish line: the Reservoir Raid championship. Our careers, on the other hand, are usually not time-bound. Our role as head of a team or division leader or company executive rarely comes with a countdown.
People really wanted to be there, and it had nothing to do with being paid for their time. Heck, we were PAYING to be there, sinking in real money earned from real jobs, to build our game accounts. (The entire concept still boggles my husband’s mind. He has never paid real money for in-game currency ever before, unlike, well, me.)
More importantly, our stakes were shared. All of us spent money; some more than others. In most workplaces, however, risk isn’t evenly distributed, and often, front-line employees have the most to lose.
The hierarchy was earned, not assigned. Our alliance leader possessed the vision, and enough emotional intelligence and social savvy to recruit and unite the strong and the quick. We followed him because he had earned our respect and demonstrated judgement under pressure, not because of tenure, title, or politics, and certainly not because HR said so.
There was no ambiguity about what winning meant. We could have won by one point, or 80,000. Regardless, it would have been a win. In most professional organizations, however, “winning” is a moving target. Sales goals shift. EBITDA targets move all the time. Definitions of success are renegotiated at each planning off-site. The clarity of a scoreboard is something workplaces almost never replicate.
Failure was visible in real-time. When WNT was down 30,000 points, the entire alliance (and the other alliance, and anyone watching the live-stream) knew it simultaneously. No one was managing the information or softening the message. Not so in professional settings, where bad news is filtered and travels slowly. By the time the person who needs to make a hard shift sees the real picture, the window for action has often already closed.
There was no bureaucracy between the decision and the execution. Our leader called the play; the team ran it. There was no committee approval or stakeholder alignment meeting or a CYA reply-all email chain. The gap between decision and action was effectively zero.
After the win, there was a natural off-ramp. The season was over. We won. People dispersed (except not really.) WNT merged with LSD, and then went on to win the NEXT season of Reservoir Raid. In professional settings, however, teams rarely get clean endings. Success creates more work, more responsibility, and in large organizations, more political complexity.
The “SO WHAT” for Leaders and Executives
Define the scoreboard before the game starts, and build the information channels
Do this before the work begins. What does winning mean, specifically? When you look at the scoreboard, how do you know you’ve won?
And then build the information infrastructure that gets bad news to the right person fast, unfiltered, and early enough to matter. When WNT was down 30,000 points, everyone knew it at the same moment. Nobody was managing the message. Most organizations spend enormous energy doing exactly that, and then wonder why they're always reacting instead of adjusting.
Your org chart tells you who has the title, but it does not tell you who the team will follow when under pressure. (That person might actually be in another department….) Before any significant initiative, figure out which people in the room have earned the right to be followed, and which ones are operating on borrowed authority.
That gap doesn't close itself. Either you give earned-authority players the formal power to match, or you acknowledge that the titled leader hasn't built the credibility yet to call plays under pressure. Either way is workable as long as we don’t pretend the gap doesn’t exist.
Design decision speed into the structure, not into the people.
Fast organizations aren't full of faster thinkers. They have cleaner decision rights. Before an initiative launches, define what gets decided at the team level, what needs one escalation, and what actually requires the sponsor. Design decision is an architecture problem that must be built before the season starts.
The “SO WHAT” for Individual Professionals
Know your role and play it all the way.
I was a minnow account. Small, easily crushed in a straight-out fight, but faster than most, and if deployed under the right conditions, an absolute tide-turner. Minnow accounts doing our job at full capacity turned a 30,000-point deficit into a 40,000-point lead in under a minute. The professional equivalent: stop waiting for a bigger title before you contribute at full capacity. Know what your role actually is in any given initiative and then go full out. Partial commitment from small accounts loses championships.
Build trust before you need it.
The trust that held WNT together during those final seven minutes wasn't built during the finals. It was built over an entire season of people showing up across time zones, at ridiculous hours, consistently. Trust is a lagging indicator. You cannot manufacture it when the pressure arrives. You build it in the ordinary moments, long before anyone is 30,000 points down.
Stay in the plan when it feels like it's failing.
This is the hardest one. When the scoreboard is against you, the instinct is to improvise, escalate, or panic. WNT did none of those things. Nobody lost their nerve. Nobody abandoned the play. The most underrated professional skill is the ability to hold discipline on a sound strategy when the results haven't shown up yet.
Maybe if we all worked like we played Reservoir Raid championship finals, our workplaces might actually function better. At the very least, they’ll probably be way more fun.
Now, back to my State of Survival game, and some amazing accompanying music.
About Amelia Waters
Amelia Waters is the Managing Partner of EDSO Edge, a strategic growth and operations consulting firm serving PE-backed healthcare education and EdTech companies. Her background spans BCG, a decade at Kaplan, and COO roles at PE-backed companies. She writes Ideas from the Edge for executives and high-performers on systems thinking, leadership, and the operating principles she finds in everyday life.
Learn more at edso-edge.com.