Gameboarding™: Mastering the Hidden Game of Power

In the relentless and high-stakes arenas of leadership, where pressures are immense and stakes always rising, time is a resource you can't afford to squander.

For leaders like you, operating under constant pressure and expecting nothing less than excellence, the frustration of falling short is all too real.

Defeating uncertainty is essential.

At the heart of these challenges lies the gameboard of power—a complex arena where leaders grapple with hidden forces that derail or blindside their achievements. It's not merely the magnitude of challenges that's daunting; it's the unseen barriers that thwart even the most strategic leaders.

Enter Gameboarding™—Be One Step Ahead, Always Be Essential

Gameboarding™ is your blueprint to anticipate, navigate, and master the game of power. It equips you with quick, impactful actions to resolve people issues, craft robust strategies, and transform you into a master of the gameboard. This approach isn't about just managing challenges; it’s about turning hidden forces into strategic advantages, ensuring you consistently exceed expectations.

Do you like to play games?

Your brain does, it especially likes to play the game of patterns. Games with patterns that range from buy low sell high, to one-upmanship, to building strong teams and engaging in successful international relationships.

The common myth is games are for children.

But the reality is that games are for the most successful and powerful.

What the winners have realized is they are performing on a gameboard, a field of play, and their challenge is to master the game when the stakes are high. Social dynamics underscore every decision. Consider then, that every situation, every challenge, is like a gameboard with its own set of rules and social dynamics.

Think of a game as a pattern of interactions, a story with players on a gameboard with rules, incentives, and objectives. And those patterns of interaction are where the real power lies.

Most games have outcomes of winning and losing, but what matters most on any gameboard? It feels better to win, right? Actually, the outcome that matters the most is what is most meaningful. Meaning matters.

Gameboarding™ is the strategic master key, pinpointing the critical levers of power to unlock the hidden game of patterns. To secure big wins more often and do what is most meaningful for you.

The Game Has Begun

To navigate uncertainty, our brains use a sense-making guidance system that adapts to challenges by integrating meaning, novelty, and prediction.

Your inner guidance system controls your feelings, influenced by the meaning you assign to a situation, your approach (novel or familiar), and your expectations (predictions).

There is an early warning sign of a power shift on the gameboard. It’s when the familiar is challenged, and is accompanied by a disturbance. This reactive feeling signals that the game has begun.

Most people ignore or deny this feeling. To master your game, frame the discomfort, the friction and unfamiliarity as an opportunity to elevate your performance, not a barrier.

How you interpret and respond to the situation—whether by playing small or big, being defensive or curious, struggling or excelling—will determine your outcome. Both overconfidence and doubt can be detrimental. Upgrade your guidance system to steer the game in your favor. It’s Game On.

A Big Bet

What is the origin of Gameboarding? I grew up in a world of uncertainty. My Dad didn’t want me to go into the family business. He was a Big Time Bookie in the 1940s-70s, not the type that reads books. A sports bookie sets odds and takes bets. In one game, he lost $10,000 (equivalent to $100,000 today) but won it all back and more by the end of the day. It was a nail-biting, endless roller coaster, 24/7. To be clear, Gameboarding™ is not about gambling secrets or theory.

I came to realize my upbringing was a masterclass in handling and mishandling uncertainty. And even further it was about connecting the hidden dots and excelling when uncertainty strikes in any area of your life.

Which level are you going to operate on? Mishandling, handling, or excelling.

My Dad was more than a Bookie; he was a family man and an entrepreneur, running small and large businesses. He knew what to say and when to say it to get someone to do something. When business was on the line, when a decision would determine the future, he was magic. He did it again and again. This wasn’t just my opinion; many sources—family, customers, and competitors—attested to it.

So I set out to discover how he did it. Today, I’m a Neurostrategist and executive coach, ironically in the family business, focusing on brains, games, and foes to connect the dots and resolve uncertainty. My clients include Visa, Apple, Google, and Nvidia, helping generate over $250 million and equipping leaders to 10x their impact, power, and influence. I now know how he and other First Adapters consistently excel.

This newsletter is not about me or him, but you on your gameboard.

Embrace Strategic Agility with Gameboarding™

With 40 years of experience in performance psychology and applied neuroscience, I've dedicated my career to mastering the game and teaching the art of strategic influence and decision-making in high-stakes challenges. At the heart of this is grasping the meaning of your choices.

My journey led me to develop Gameboarding™, a concept born out of my world of uncertainty and the science that brains are designed to resolve uncertainty while keeping you safe from real danger and perceived threats. Gameboarding™ equips you with Strategic Agility – a Swiss Army knife skillset to unlock hidden patterns to work in your favor.

Your Strategic Agility Toolkit uses pattern recognition, adaptation, and influence.

1. Pattern Recognition – the ability to see patterns enables us to make better predictions. And that means we’re better able to know what is going to be successful and what’s not.
2. Adaptation – once we can see what is going to happen we can adapt the patterns so they are working in our favor.
3. Influence – to frame your point of view and create meaning for your audience, because without meaning big ideas flop.

These Strategic Agility skills help you anticipate moves, understand the gameboard, and position yourself for success before the game even begins.

How Gameboarding™ Transforms Leaders

Through Gameboarding™, executives have moved from being a zero to hero, generating an additional $40 million in revenue, moving from second-class level to being invited to a seat at the executive table, having the CEO reject you 40% of the time to approve 85% of the time, resolving intractable relationship problems, getting projects stuck in the mud to rapid momentum and success, achieving big promotions, building high-performance teams and outmaneuvering palace intrigue.

To excel and master your game we must apply Elevated Thinking, Accelerated Influence and Increased Predictability.

Here’s how:

1. Spot the Game

Recognizing the game’s dynamics allows you to make decisive moves. Spotting hidden rules and incentives transforms you from a participant to a master strategist.

• Pattern Recognition: On any gameboard, there is the seen and the unseen. Identify the hidden. Ask: ‘Who can say what to whom and when?’
• Find the Rhythm: you’ll play better. Brains prefer speed, but don’t hurry. Real Speed comes from rhythm, not just pushing harder. When a team plays in rhythm, it’s hard to beat.
• Incentives: The quickest way to spot the game is to identify the players and the incentives driving their behavior. Are they playing small, avoiding conflict, or being a good soldier? Some games are more aggressive, like command and control or one-upmanship. The most challenging games repeat, like Groundhog Day or perfectionism. Change the incentives, changes behavior.

2. Bust the Pattern

Disrupt predictable patterns to adapt the game or the gameboard. Challenge the status quo. First Adapters change the patterns to change the game.

• Challenge Conventional Wisdom: Question the givens. If traditional methods have plateaued, consider novel 180-degree strategies, like Avis, “We try harder”
• Failure is an Option. Test new strategies on a small scale, fail forward, fast, before wide implementation. This allows you to experiment and learn.
• Develop a Tolerance for Calculated risks. Make decisions that can disrupt the norm but offer high rewards, like Netflix disrupted Blockbuster.

3. Set the Frame

Setting the frame is like scripting the first act of a play, controlling the narrative and steering outcomes.

A Frame is a lens, shaping what matters, creating meaning, and influencing judgment.

It sets the context. Valid arguments need to be vivid to be influential. Make your valid arguments vivid.

• Define the Future: Frame the decision, shape the conversation and win the ‘argument’ more often.
• Recognize that all leadership is framing.
• Change the frame, change the game.

Mastering Gameboarding™ Elevates You to be a First Adapter

Fortune Favors First Adapters.

They make game changing, game winning decisions.

Being a First Adapter is not about being persistent or going first, rather it’s spotting the game, busting the pattern and setting the right frame for success.

Key Questions for leaders to master your game:

• How can you shift from acting defensive to a winning mentality?
• How can you accelerate your influence and unlock big ideas?
• How can you adapt your patterns to increase your predictability?

Join the Discussion

Let’s elevate our leadership game together. Contact me to multiply your influence, amplify your results, and create a lasting positive impact on the world.

🌐 Visit my website

✉️ Email me directly steven@stevenfeinberg.com

📱 Call me at 650-279-9478

Book a call with me.

It’s Game on.

To winning on your gameboard,

Steven Feinberg, PhD

About Steven Feinberg, PhD

Steven Feinberg, PhD., is a distinguished Neurostrategist, Executive Coach, and High Performance Team Builder, renowned for enhancing the capabilities of some of America's sharpest and smartest brains and businesses. His current work is on Mastering Your Game: unlocking the hidden game of patterns to excel. With an extensive portfolio of work with CEOs, senior executives, and business founders, he has contributed to the success of organizations ranging from billion-dollar Corporate 500s to vibrant entrepreneurial startups, including notable brands such as Apple, Nvidia, Google, Oracle, LinkedIn, Wells Fargo, and Xero, ranked the Number 1 innovation startup.

For over three decades, Dr. Feinberg also served as an adjunct faculty member at the University of San Francisco School of Management. Steven guest lectured at prestigious institutions like Stanford and Cal Poly. He is the author of the highly acclaimed Amazon bestsellers, "The Advantage-Makers” and "Do What Others Say Can’t Be Done: Play The Meta-Game”

With more than 40 years of direct experience in high-pressure, high-stakes business environments. Dr. Feinberg specializes in Mastering Your Game, to excel by transforming uncertainty into opportunities for high-velocity advancement, achieving remarkable impact for both individuals and teams.