Squid Game for Management Professionals — Overview
An attempt to learn about management from a Korean TV Show
Few months back, after watching Squid Game, a Korean fiction drama based on a competition among the 456 handpicked players from the lowest social class of the country with an enormous cash prize for the winner, I wondered what factors make this game particularly interesting for the watchers. Entertainment is never just entertainment — the reason anything entertains us is because we can somewhat relate to it and a good story is identified by the extent to which a viewer can assume being a part of it.
The competition that is created, as shown towards the end of the show, for the entertainment of a few extremely rich men, called the VIPs, who are basically also the investors of the competition, is thoughtfully designed to exploit the desperation of the players to live and to win the cash prize. The design of the games therefore gives us insight to how situations influence the behaviors of human beings. The representation in the show can be wrong at certain events, but the purpose again is to try and understand why the representation seems believable.
In this article, we will focus on the last game of the competition, which is also the theme of the show and understand why the game holds such an importance that the whole show revolves around it.
Squid Game
Squid Game is described in the show as a game played by kids many years ago in Korea. In this game, there is squid shaped court made in the ground. The attacker has to tap the area inside the squid’s head to secure the win while the defender has to stop the attacker from doing so by blocking their advance and force them outside of the court’s bounds in order to win.
The first challenge of the game is that the attacker has to enter the court the court from one side of the waist and go across the waist to the other end, referred to as the squid’s neck. To start with, the attacker is given a handicap — they can only hop on one foot until they cross the squid’s neck. Once the neck is crossed, the attacker has to enter the court from the lower end and reach the squid’s head at the top. Any of the players can be eliminated by pushing them out of the court’s bounds.
In the context of the show, the first challenge is the induction into the game, where ddakji — the game where a card on the floor has to be flipped by hitting it with another card. The handicap of the attacker, who is potentially going to be playing in the competition, is their poverty and misery of not being able to afford the living of themselves and those dependent on them. With this handicap, they have to cross the ddakji, call the number on the card and enter the vehicle that comes to pick them up. With this, they have cleared the first challenge.
The second challenge is the signing of the contract that officiates their admission to the competition. The series of the game is the way of the defenders, the riches, to stop the attackers from winning the cash prize.
Key Learnings
The point that the TV show has tried to prove is that humans motivated by desperation and helplessness can do unimaginable things and commit heinous acts just hoping to get what they want and cannot live without. However, what I have tried to learn and share from the series is as follows:
- How can we increase the probability of success in cases of headhunting?
- How to steer clear of ambiguity in building professional relationships with the help of contracts?
- How to stay sensible while making decisions during the times of stress?
- How to manage the lack of privilege with innovative thinking?
- How to lead the battle against the challenges that seem enormous and unwinnable?
- How to manage conflicts and win in win-lose situations?
- What to expect from humans when they are at their worst?
I hope that this effort helps whoever reads this in managing their teams and achieving greater successes. Best of luck!
