Your Scrum Playbook: It´s Poker, Not Chess by Fabian Schwartz Voice Over Script
Preface
You can’t expect to meet the challenges of today with yesterday’s tools and expect to be
in business tomorrow.
—Anonymous
Business is often compared to a chess game. It’s complex, with lots of pieces to move, and every
move changes the story, offering new opportunities and closing off others. In theory, a chess
player can calculate every possible scenario before each move. They may sometimes think for an
hour, analyzing the situation, breaking complex problems apart, considering different scenarios,
then, finally, moving a p**n one square.
While earning my MBA, and over the course of my long career in project management, I
learned to think like a chess player. Business leaders are taught to analyze situations, break
complex problems apart, plan for different contingencies, then select the best solution and
execute it. I believed I could foresee every step if I consulted the right experts. My Gantt charts
felt like works of art—so many departments, each with so many goals, all coming together
finally in a smooth flow, a waterfall. I’ve worked on projects where the planning phase lasted
two years before we opened the dam and the actual work began.
Unfortunately, in business, you can’t see all the pieces laid out on the board, and the
moves are unlimited. Everything you do is based on the assumptions you made at the beginning,
but by the time you deliver the project, a new queen may have stepped onto the board and flicked
half the other pieces off the edge.
According to Peter Senge, founder of the Society for Organizational Learning and senior
lecturer at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, today’s problems come from yesterday’s
decisions, and business decisions are more like bets on the future than chess moves. There are
rogue queens out there: things you depended on may suddenly disappear, and pathways you
never dreamed of may become discernible in the new landscape.
Traditional project planning worked very well during the first Industrial Revolution—
the age of the steam engine. It was perfect for the second revolution, the era when Gantt charts
were invented and assembly lines created every kind of machine. In the third revolution, the age
of robotics, it proved essential. But any manager who started planning a large project in the mid-
1990s finished it in an entirely new era, one very few had foreseen.
Business decisions predicated on assumptions are difficult to track over time. Many years
may pass before a result is seen, making it nearly impossible to track that result back to the
original decision. The longer the gap is between the decision made and the results delivered, the
more difficult it will be to determine which decision delivered those results. Therefore,
minimizing the time from decision-making to decision impact should be a major goal of any
organization. Shortening the gap between making decisions and seeing the consequences makes
for more accurate future predictions and assumptions and provides immediate feedback to help
team members improve their game.
The Gantt chart was developed in 1910 and is still the preferred way to illustrate project
planning within businesses. The idea is that you break a complex problem into smaller ones,
hoping that by solving each small problem, you will have solved the big one. This approach
leads to localized optimization: each unit (person or team) remains focused on a small part of the
problem. They never have a view of the overall picture or understand their connection with the
rest of the project. Still, managers desire an exact plan that is as accurate and predictable as they
can get. Creating this chart can take months of effort, demands a high level of detail, and is not
flexible to changing environments. Since life isn’t predictable, these charts rarely, if ever, hold
true. In today’s fast-changing environment, playing chess just doesn’t work. We’re playing poker
now. The fourth industrial revolution—the Internet of Things (IoT)—and digitalization have us
hurtling through changes at warp speed. We gained access to a universe of information, which
would have been a Tower of Babel if Google hadn’t slipped it into harness. Google’s
development of Google Maps allowed Uber to change the landscape of ride-sharing,
TOP-10 Scripts from Edge Studio's Voice Over Script Library
[Skyrim opens with an Imperial wagon driving four prisoners down a snowy mountain pass. All are seated and bound; the one dressed in finery is gagged.]
Ralof: Hey, you. You’re finally awake. You were trying to cross the border, right? Walked right into that Imperial ambush, same as us, and that thief over there.
Lokir: D**n you Stormcloaks. Skyrim was fine until you came along. Empire was nice and lazy. If they hadn’t been looking for you, I could’ve stolen that horse and been half way to Hammerfell. You there. You and me — we should be here. It’s these Stormcloaks the Empire wants.
Ralof: We’re all brothers and sisters in binds now, thief.
Imperial Soldier: Shut up back there!
[Lokir looks at the gagged man.]
Lokir: And what’s wrong with him?
Ralof: Watch your tongue! You’re speaking to Ulfric Stormcloak, the true High King.
Lokir: Ulfric? The Jarl of Windhelm? You’re the leader of the rebellion. But if they captured you… Oh gods, where are they taking us?
Ralof: I don’t know where we’re going, but Sovngarde awaits.
Lokir: No, this can’t be happening. This isn’t happening.
Ralof: Hey, what village are you from, horse thief?
Lokir: Why do you care?
Ralof: A Nord’s last thoughts should be of home.
Lokir: Rorikstead. I’m…I’m from Rorikstead.
[They approach the village of Helgen. A soldier calls out to the lead wagon.]
Imperial Soldier: General Tullius, sir! The headsman is waiting!
General Tullius: Good. Let’s get this over with.
Lokir: Shor, Mara, Dibella, Kynareth, Akatosh. Divines, please help me.
Ralof: Look at him, General Tullius the Military Governor. And it looks like the Thalmor are with him. D**n elves. I bet they had something to do with this. This is Helgen. I used to be sweet on a girl from here. Wonder if Vilod is still making that mead with juniper berries mixed in. Funny…when I was a boy, Imperial walls and towers used to make me feel so safe.
[A man and son watch the prisoners pull into town.]
Haming: Who are they, daddy? Where are they going?
Torolf: You need to go inside, little cub.
Haming: Why? I want to watch the soldiers.
Torolf: Inside the house. Now.
Galadriel: (speaking partly in Elvish)
(I amar prestar aen.)
The world is changed.
(Han matho ne nen.)
I feel it in the water.
(Han mathon ned cae.)
I feel it in the earth.
(A han noston ned gwilith.)
I smell it in the air.
Much that once was is lost, for none now live who remember it.
It began with the forging of the Great Rings. Three were given to the Elves, immortal, wisest and fairest of all beings. Seven to the Dwarf-Lords, great miners and craftsmen of the mountain halls. And nine, nine rings were gifted to the race of Men, who above all else desire power. For within these rings was bound the strength and the will to govern each race. But they were all of them deceived, for another ring was made. Deep in the land of Mordor, in the Fires of Mount Doom, the Dark Lord Sauron forged a master ring, and into this ring he poured his cruelty, his malice and his will to dominate all life.
One ring to rule them all.
One by one, the free lands of Middle-Earth fell to the power of the Ring, but there were some who resisted. A last alliance of men and elves marched against the armies of Mordor, and on the very slopes of Mount Doom, they fought for the freedom of Middle-Earth. Victory was near, but the power of the ring could not be undone. It was in this moment, when all hope had faded, that Isildur, son of the king, took up his father’s sword.
Sauron, enemy of the free peoples of Middle-Earth, was defeated. The Ring passed to Isildur, who had this one chance to destroy evil forever, but the hearts of men are easily corrupted. And the ring of power has a will of its own. It betrayed Isildur, to his death.
And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost. History became legend. Legend became myth. And for two and a half thousand years, the ring passed out of all knowledge. Until, when chance came, it ensnared another bearer.
It came to the creature Gollum, who took it deep into the tunnels of the Misty Mountains. And there it consumed him. The ring gave to Gollum unnatural long life. For five hundred years it poisoned his mind, and in the gloom of Gollum’s cave, it waited. Darkness crept back into the forests of the world. Rumor grew of a shadow in the East, whispers of a nameless fear, and the Ring of Power perceived its time had come. It abandoned Gollum, but then something happened that the Ring did not intend. It was picked up by the most unlikely creature imaginable: a hobbit, Bilbo Baggins, of the Shire.
For the time will soon come when hobbits will shape the fortunes of all.
To sit in solemn silence in a dull, dark, dock,
In a pestilential prison, with a life-long lock,
Awaiting the sensation of a short, sharp, shock,
From a cheap and chippy chopper on a big black block!
Do I really look like a guy with a plan, Harvey?
I don’t have a plan …
The mob has plans. The cops have plans.
You know what I am, Harvey? I am a dog chasing cars… I wouldn’t know what to do with one if I caught it.
I just do things. I am just the wrench in the gears. I hate plans.
Yours, theirs, everyone’s. Maroni has plans. Gordon has plans.
Schemers trying to control their worlds.
I am not a schemer. I show the schemer how pathetic their attempts to control things really are.
So when I say that you and your girlfriend was nothing personal, you know I am telling the truth.
I just did what I do best. I took your plan and turned it on itself.
Look what I have done to this city with a few drums of gas and a couple of bullets.
Nobody panics when the expected people gets killed. Nobody panics when things go according to plan, even if the plan is horrifying.
If I tell the press that tomorrow a gangbanger will get shot or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics. – because it’s all part of the plan.
But when I say that one little old mayor will die, everybody lose their minds.
Introduce a little anarchy, you upset the established order and everything becomes chaos.
I am agent of chaos.
And you know the thing about chaos Harvey?
“IT is FAIR.”
Hello, ladies, look at your man, now back to me, now back at your man, now back to me. Sadly, he isn’t me, but if he stopped using ladies scented body wash and switched to Old Spice, he could smell like he’s me. Look down, back up, where are you? You’re on a boat with the man your man could smell like. What’s in your hand, back at me. I have it, it’s an oyster with two tickets to that thing you love. Look again, the tickets are now diamonds. Anything is possible when your man smells like Old Spice and not a lady. I’m on a horse.
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