What began two years ago as a ’stunt’ in Sydney, Australia, where the local World Wildlife Fund members rallied citizens, politicians, businesses and civic organizations to get lights turned off in Sydney Harbor for an hour, an event they called ‘Earth Hour‘, this year on March 28 grew into a worldwide event with over 1,800 cites around the world and an estimated one billion people participating.

The nature of games is that we do not know the outcomes.  What we know is that the playing of the game will result in communication, learning, and ultimately, transformation.  Through the playing of the game, we gain a better understanding of ourselves, our team, and our place in the larger world.

For GameChangers, playing the ‘Earth Hour game’ in Los Angeles yielded the following results:

- My guitar teacher, Lonnie ‘Meganut’ Marshall, formed the Life Drum Core, consisting of a dozen kids playing drums on recycled plastic buckets.  They performed at the Earth Hour L.A. event downtown.  While they were rehearsing last Wednesday, the USC football coach, Pete Carroll, who happened to be passing by, saw them and came over to say hello and get his picture taken with them.  He invited them to come to a USC football practice and play on the sidelines.

- Relationships with people in the City of L.A., AEG, the World Wildlife Fund and many others involved in the sustainability business.  We are having business conversations we would not otherwise be having.

- Two new GameChangers clients.

- The opportunity to get involved in education programs for L.A.’s public schools using sustainability as the basis for cross-disciplinary learning.  The first game will be an ‘e-Waste Race’ between Santee and Roosevelt High Schools, to see which school can collect the most e-Waste (old laptops, mobile phones, adaptors, etc.) during two weeks in April.  The winning school will get an Eco-Lab consisting of six laptops donated by Asus Computers, solar education kits donated by GoGreenSolar and books about Water and Energy donated by the Los Angeles DWP.  The core teams at the winning schools will get field-level seats to a Dodgers game, and get recognized on the Jumbotron screen during the game.  Jordan Farmar of the Lakers will announce the event at both schools.

- Revival of a four-years-dormant business relationship with The Walt Disney Company via its new Disneynature film label.

- Support from city councilman Tom LaBonge for my efforts to Solar Panel the Hollywood Sign, itself a game I launched several weeks ago on Facebook.

- The Groundlings improv group is creating a comedy pilot based on a video that they produced for Earth Hour, and have asked me to stay involved.

- Publicity for my home theater, I. O. West, which performed a ‘Bat Harold’ (a show done in complete darkness) during Earth Hour.   The Upright Citizens Brigade also participated, so the improv community came out strong in support of the game.  Which was only natural.  They got the game immediately.  They saw its potential.

-  Ron Roecker, head of PR for Earth Hour in L.A., has suggested future collaborations that involve GameChangers.  We like what he’s saying.

And this is just me.  Scale this activity over a billion people and you can imagine all the doors that opened, and all the new conversations that are happening today, because people played the Earth Hour game.

For businesses and brands operating in the networked world, an understanding of what we call ‘the productive game’ is vital.  Most of these games will not be as wide open and unstructured as the Earth Hour game, they will be much more oriented to specific business objectives, but the principles will be exactly the same.

Savvy managers in the new organizational models will know how to quickly identify and nurture productive games while just as quickly editing and eliminating unproductive ones.   Like all good improvisers, these players will know that the outcomes do not have to be known for the results to be predictable and productive.

Some of the clean-up work is so vast in scope, the banking industry shitstorm that shows so sign of abating , for example, or our crippling dependence on fossil fuels, that nothing short of a federal government strategy can begin to dig us out of it.

Every one of us, however, can find ways to support the clean-up work on a personal and practical level.  Cleaning house presents us with opportunities.   A chance to evaluate inventory, and eliminate waste.  It can be the impetus for a much-needed remodeling.

Here’s a GameChangers checklist for what to Toss and what to Keep as we clean up and remodel an economy that has been Skulled and Boned into the pathetic shape it’s in today:

TOSS:  Status games.  Business meetings and processes that are all about establishing who’s boss, who’s the Decider, about who has the last word or about stroking someone’s ego, should be sent to the dumpster.

KEEP:  Teamwork.  Meetings and processes that focus on ideas and objectives, in which players support one another and seek agreement instead of dominance, are needed across the business spectrum to rebuild this mess.

TOSS:   Cosmetic transactions.  When money is made by slicing up and repackaging debt without anything tangible getting produced in the process, the product is bad meat that would make even Bluto Blutarsky sick to eat it.  Get rid of the notion that manipulating data is a contribution to your community.  It’s not.

KEEP:  Emotional transactions.   Transactions that connect data to meaningful, emotionally resonant activity like education, energy independence, health care, or even getting people to sing or laugh, belong back up on the mantle.

TOSS:  Excess Consumption.  Having something may be a symbol of achievement, but it is no achievement.  Lots of people have things they did not earn.  Lots of people take more than they need.  Lots of people eat too much.   It’s time to take our focus elsewhere.

KEEP:  Production.  What one builds with what one has is a far better measurement of achievement than what one has.  What you build, not what you own, is how you make your mark in this new world.

TOSS:  Specific outcomes.  Locking into a specific outcome for a process will deny you and your team all the possibilities afforded by the endless matrices of the Networked World.  Burn your expectations and assumptions before they burn you.

KEEP:  Predictable results.  Business success demands a reliable, consistent performance in the marketplace, just as it always has.  the difference is that brands built for the new economy will focus on getting results, not outcomes.  Focusing on results instead of outcomes gives you and your brand exponentially more opportunities for success.

TOSS:  Preaching.  This housecleaning exposes the crooked preachers, biased pundits and smiling Ponzi schemers of the world.  Their word is not gospel, and the gospel is not their word.  Word.

KEEP:  Conversation.  Conversations, especially with people who see a situation from a different perspective than our own, result in the kinds of new ideas it will take to fix the new problems we face together.  From juicy conversations, juicy possibilities flow.

TOSS:  Rigidity.   How could we have kept it around so long?   It’s so ugly.  So poorly designed.  So stiff and uncomfortable.  Get rid of it!

KEEP:  Fluidity.  Ahh.  It fits every situation so perfectly.  It’s relaxing.  We’re so free to move.  Can’t live without it!

TOSS:  Scripting.  The script, along with the hoary concept of the scripted brand narrative, ran out of gas with the  ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ and ‘Mission Accomplished’ scenarios scripted by the Bush-Cheney team.  No script can keep pace with the fast flow of events in the Networked economy.

KEEP:  Improvisation.  In the Networked economy successful brand strategies don’t stick to a script, they align with themes.  By inviting players and audience alike to improvise (e.g. act entrepreneurially) on those themes, brands can build a consistently compelling narrative.

TOSS:  Dogma.  Believing that’s there’s only one way to look at a situation or solve a problem, or insisting that everyone on your team see the world the way you do, is deadly to the process and eliminates a lot of the potential for solving the problem.

KEEP:  Faith.  Every scene you’re in has the potential for greatness.  Believe it.  See it.  Live it.

A gamechanger identifies and plays a productive game. Focuses on preparation more than planning. Is more concerned with getting results than in producing specific outcomes. Seddiqui could not be playing this game if he hadn’t prepared. And he could not have imagined a particular outcome. (Note that his ‘50/50/50 objective’ for the game is different from its ‘business outcomes’.) What Seddiqui trusted was that he was initiating a game that would produce results, and cause positive things to happen. New relationships would form. There’d be new experiences had. Skills learned. Insights gained. Possibilities awakened.

He is not sitting at home living the inevitable bad economy cliche, sending out job applications and getting rejected. Instead he created a game that generates acceptance in massive doses. David Seddiqui is creating a narrative in which he gets 50 job offers–and he’s going to accept all of them! Good story.

In Living the Map, Daniel Seddiqui is sending a three great big, important messages to the world:

1) All work is honorable. We should not judge a person by what it is they do, but by how they do it. Respect the work, respect the worker.

2) So what if you have 50 different jobs in your life? That’s a goal. Working in one place, at one job forever is drudgery. This is one generation telling another that it can stick the gold watch up its ass.

3) There’s work, lots of it, that needs doing. But you’ve got get out and find it, player. It is not going to find you.