At its core, the core strategy of RPG players partly rests on a perfected entrance, a calculated series of subsequent actions, and some adaptation skills. Great players follow their blueprint until a shift in thinking is needed based on their observations of the game. In this game of resource management, winning is mostly about collecting enough resources to keep production going while not sitting on an abundance of it at any given time. It’s like stretching to the limits and maintaining that tightness, the intensity at its local maximum.

It’s a lot similar to slack-lining: too loose of a rope, you can not walk on it. Too tight, the vibrations can easily tip your balance off. The road to success, walking from tree A to tree B, lies within the sweet bandwidth of tightness. In other words, a winning strategy is in correlation with how close you can be within your limits while executing. If you accumulate a lot and get slower executing, sometimes by not choice but because of external distractions, you lose the game to someone who invades you with a handful of skirmishes. If you put everything into producing something specific early on, then again you lose, because you end up having no edge. So, it’s a constant resource allocation practice, in fact, deciding what to collect, and where to allocate while wandering around, approaching to the line but not crossing it. Doing this for an extended period with the same level of intensity naturally allows you to surpass your rivals.

Early-stage startups are supposed to behave similarly, like good RPG players, operating on a certain intensity level. With scarce resources and a not-yet-revealed map, they strive to make winning bets, from product to distribution and also need to figure out from where they’ll find resources at every turn as it gets a bit more complicated gradually. The oscillations in intensity could prove lethal, allowing competitors to catch up or their talent to lose focus. So, it’s imperative to meticulously monitoring the O2 supply so as not to squander it while providing a breathable atmosphere for the teams. Even if you slip briefly it all goes downhill.

To be good at resource allocation, first you need to have an absolute take on how low you can go. With some intuition and trial-error, it’s always a good idea to get a good sense of your limits by pushing a bit extensively, especially in the early stages. Like muscle fibers need extreme pressure for growth, you should take early chances to identify which resources are life-critical, and loss of which may be palpable but not detrimental. From your investors to your team, the more you discover about your limits, the better you become at resource allocation, figuring out who or what needs the resources at any given time. And also how much you can push.

Pushing limits, especially of your teams, or expecting too much from them may quickly become a problem, on the other hand, having the potential to derail your allocation strategy, and eventually game plans. To avoid such a scenario, you, first and foremost, should demonstrate what you expect by doing it first. Leading by example, you do both: showing what you’re expecting is indeed achievable, and your expectations are within the limits of reality. On top of that, perhaps more importantly, fairness becomes more of a critical notion in dire times. People get extra concentrated on weighing things, comparing each other when they are under stress. In these times -actually, in all times- you must be super straightforward about how you reward success and how you view mistakes. To do that, responsibilities should be shared clearly, and you, no matter what, deliver the same, uninterested approach when rewarding or punishing. Escalation in expectations of fairness demands clearer information flow too, as people become more inquisitive. Like in a speeding car, an otherwise harmless little rock on a road may derail you easily. When you’re operating close to your limits, every tiny overlooked detail, materially or mentally, could easily become a problem and may hinder your plans unexpectedly.

Lastly, resource allocation may also go awry when done in a centralised manner. As the distance from the point where the resources are put in place stretches further, issues start to multiply. Being present with teams usually reveals otherwise unknown or unimaginable aspects of any operation, therefore regularly spending time at the workbenches always seems like a sensible thing to do to master your allocation skills. It is simple but works due to changing optics. Surprising to many, the things that a player sees on a pitch greatly differ from what their coach sees from the side as it is always dramatically different from what’s seen from where fans sit. Fans can easily see the whole pitch, how each node interacts with each other and how a team moves as a whole, but coaches see things flat. In the same way, fans do not know anything about what a certain player’s experience on the pitch. What they need or lack. So going atomic, seeing how things pan out in the field and then climbing back to a vantage point, opens up new perspectives for planning and execution, equipping one with a more realistic view of the limits, which is paramount to pushing boundaries.

Map is loaded and you start on the corner of it with limited resources. The rest of the map is unknown to you at the beginning. If you played on it before, that’s good. Otherwise you have no idea, just an intuition about where the resources sit, and how to go there. The only thing you can choose is your team with a certain set of skills and traits. And their limits while going at full speed. Yet, no matter you played it before or not, your grand strategy is quite simple: find the right intensity setting for your team and hold it persistent, keep finding resources and allocate them accordingly while being unbiased and staying close to the action. If you do this, you’ll probably see the dialogue box that shows up on the screen declaring your victory or losing the game gracefully.