Playing To Win
Playing To Win/Practitioner Insights Milestone
The Series Hits 1 Million Views
I know it is extraordinary for me to post a Playing to Win/Practitioner Insights (PTW/PI) piece midweek rather than the usual Monday morning (eastern time), but I wanted to celebrate PTW/PI just clicking over the 1 million view mark — a happy occasion.
That having been said, I must keep this a bit in perspective. Zach King’s Harry Potter illusion has 2.2 billion views on TikTok. And a photo of an egg — yes, just an egg — has 57.5 million likes on Instagram. And all Kylie Jenner had to do to garner 2.5 million Instagram views was post one photo of her new piercings (I will leave it to you to guess the body part). Against this competition, PTW/PI’s one million views are a rounding error. Nonetheless, it feels good to have accumulated 1 million views of serious content that takes six-eight minutes to read.
And for that, I say a big and heartfelt thank you to all of you — the readers of this series. You are the cause of the celebration. Your numbers have grown from zero to the current 172,000 followers in under three years. Thanks for all your encouragement, your comments, and your suggestions. I try to respond to as many comments as possible. And probably one quarter of the posts in the series are written on subjects requested by readers.
The series started 135 weeks ago on October 5, 2020 with The Role of Management Systems in Strategy. At the time, I had no idea what it would become — or even that I would do a series. But I kept writing every week, except the three weeks I skipped between the end of the 1st year and the start of the 2nd year. In each of the other 132 Mondays, including May 1, 2023, with Jobs to be Done & Playing to Win, I have posted a new piece in the series. Happily, this latest one is headed to becoming (at minimum) the 4th most viewed post in the whole series to date. Readers seem to like the linking of models — in this case PTW & JTBD. Based on the response, I will do more of that, maybe PTW & Business Model Canvas and/or PTW & Blue Ocean Strategy.
For those of you newer to the series who may not know this, for your easy access I also post the entire series on my website here.
The series has become quite a huge volume of writing output. The 132 pieces have totaled 217,000 words. For comparison, the original 2013 Playing to Win book was 67,000 words. That means I have written three-and-a-quarter books in a two-and-a-half-year span. I would have never guessed that when I started out. But it has been a fun way to write — again made more fun by the interaction with readers. It does have me thinking about the form of my future writing. In the modern world, it feels hard for folks to carve out the time to read an entire business book — it is an intimidating commitment. But it seems much easier to contemplate reading six-to-eight minutes on a subject of interest. Maybe this is — pun intended — the best medium!
Again, thanks for your support for both PTW/PI and me. It is greatly appreciated at this celebratory moment.
