How to become a successful CEO
Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke credits his success to computer games.
Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke has said that playing computer games helped him become CEO of Shopify. In his younger years, he played the StarCraft game a lot and it’s the games in this genre that he has most in mind when he makes this claim.
StarCraft is about aliens and humanoids battling in a remote part of the universe. But it’s focus is not on the battlefield. It’s mostly about how the combatants have to gather and allocate resources to build up their economies and armies. And most of the resource-management decisions are balancing acts between competing priorities: for example, current versus future needs, macro versus micro requirements, defense versus offence and so on.
StarCraft players thus receive an abundance of training and practise, Lütke asserts, in the CEO role. They learn how to allocate their attention within a fast-paced world full of imperfect information, to then decide in a timely manner what choices have to be made to compete and win. Moreover, such games are a better preparation, he adds, than the traditional approach of teaching through case studies at MBA schools.
To see his logic, consider why Brazilian footballers are widely recognized to be the best in the world. They grew up playing football on small lots, which gave them more touches on the ball than the pitches in Europe and elsewhere. Similarly, Starcraft and other games like poker, chess or bridge provided “more touches on the ball” than business case studies. An MBA may have 2 or 3 such case studies relating to the CEO task whereas one evening alone of Starcraft or the other games provides dozens situations where CEO-like skills are practised. Over many evenings, these rounds add up and lead to a feel for CEO skills that can be applied to the real world realm.
It’s an interesting thesis to take under consideration. But as a parent myself, I would remain rather uncertain about letting my sons play computers games as much as Tobi did (he competed in tournaments). Still, many CEOs of tech companies were avid gamers in their youth.