GuruOnline - The Game
A 10,000 square feet office. A conference room surrounded by seaview. A path with the actual road signs on the floor that I could ride a bike on. I take the road from beginning to end, 200+ youngsters are in my sight. They are my colleagues. They laugh. They sing. Sometimes they even dance. What are they doing? They are playing a game that I have been playing for 3+ years.
I love to play. Fun and playfulness are always what I want - both in work and in life. They drove me to set foot in this company 3 years ago. Today, I take a seat in a room, that is equipped with glass walls. You can see my back through the walls. You can find me talking to a person. He is talking about the game he created 7 years ago. Every word that comes out of his mouth puts an intense weight over me. I feel the intensity from the bottom of his heart.
“Where does the intensity come from?” asking myself. ““Is it passion? Conviction? Or enthusiasm?”
“Why did you create this company 7 years ago?” I ask, “you’re living a decent life. You worked at a regional director’s room that was even larger than our entire office at the initial stage.”
He answers without a second thought,
“I saw the potential in the internet.”
"I saw the potential in the digital marketing industry.”
“I saw the potential in youngsters.”
“Can you tell me what your core beliefs are?” I see the fire burning in his eyes when he is talking, “I wonder what they are and how they drive the fire burning inside your eyes.”
“There is a story I find very insightful.” He’s going to tell me a story.
Once upon a time, there was a doctor. When he started his career, he did what every doctor does - to cure people’s illnesses. A few years passed by, he found cosmetic surgery could make him a billionaire. So he became a cosmetic surgery doctor. He succeeded and became a billionaire. He bought a mansion. He bought a Ferrari. He bought everything he wanted. He fulfilled all the material desires. However, one day, he was diagnosed with fatal cancer. Reaching the end of his life, he wrote a testament that included this incident that had happened to him during the Chinese Lunar New Year. He drove the Ferrari to his relatives’ house. He thought that the attention and eyeballs to his Ferrari would make him happy. But he didn’t feel happy. Instead, he realized that, deep down inside his bones, he just wanted people to care for him enough to give him a hug.
I asked him, “Can you highlight the lessons in your story?” to help me understand the anecdote.
“Most people think they need a lot of money. But money is only a necessity that makes you happy to a certain extent. My belief is that we all should value ourselves in terms of how good you treat people, so as how good people treat you back.”
His message and belief trigger a chain of thoughts in my head, “it reminds me that Warren Buffet used to share similar thoughts. In a press conference, Warren talked to a reporter saying that you’ll realize the so-called fortune and fame are not the most important thing in your life. But how many people treat you well is.”
“That’s true.” He replied.
The man speaking of Warren Buffet’s wisdom is Alan Yip; The founder of GuruOnline. He created the game 7 years ago.
“Why do we have a conference room, full of Lego and Mario?” I keep digging the wisdom out of his head, “is this your idea?”
“Sort of. I wanted to have a Lego wall in the room. And some of our colleagues raised some other wonderful ideas too. That was when Mario became part of us. The conference room turned out to look very playful. It aligned with everything. The office. The culture. The people. So does my philosophy to run this company.”
“What is the philosophy, the backbone of our company?” I was intrigued.
“Any company should be game-like. Most of us, including you and me, have been growing up in a playful culture. Sports games. Card games. Video games. No matter which game you’re going for, we play either as an individual or as a team member. My thoughts on modern companies is that we all work like Mario. In order to let you win, I would set rules where you could get your mushroom and get big, or turn white. Nevertheless, I would also have rules in place that you would receive a pink slip, in case you jump in the dark hole which would kill you.”
“In the next 3 months, I’ll be a full time student again to learn programming. That’s the reason I’m going to leave the company,” I was asking for more wisdom, “do you think it’s a wise choice?”
“Interesting. I’m learning the same subject by myself too.” He handed me a book that sat on the table inch away.
“Personal development and continuous learning are essential in everyone’s life.” “You made a good choice to leave, so you can learn.”
GuruOnline is a game surviving in the sense of corporate world. Corporate is supposed to be about hierarchy; but I am having a casual talk with the CEO. Corporate is supposed to be about money-making; but the CEO talks about personal development and continuous learning.
Corporate is supposed to run like a gigantic factory, but the employees party like college students.
All of us work just like Mario.
Do you want to become a Mario in the workplace, to learn, to grow, and most important of all, to have a lot of fun at the same time? If you do believe all these can be a combination of your work life. Be my guest.
You’ll go through a proven recipe which I worked all the way up to be an Assistant Project Manager.
Read the next chapter: The Letter of Failure
Or table of contents: The Game