Getting Better All the Time: What Deck Builders Can Teach Us About Process Improvement

I bet there’s a process at your job you could improve by just 1% today. Think that sounds small? Improve that same process by just 1% each day, and by year’s end, it won’t just be better, it will be 37 times more effective. That’s the hidden power of process improvement: not one big fix, but steady, repeatable progress.

Process Improvement takes many forms

In any business and any industry, there is always room for improvement. Toyota has long been the gold standard case study for process improvement. As an organization, they have fully embraced a culture of improvement from the C-Suite to the assembly line, where every employee is not only trained in process improvement, they are actively encouraged to speak up and drive improvements daily.

Improvements in organizations take many forms. In manufacturing, they can be as large as purchasing additional machines to increase output or building entirely new facilities with optimized floorplans and as simple as standardizing where each tool gets put away using a shadow board. In service operations, a customer service center can standardize and automate response emails, freeing up their agents’ time to handle more difficult issues for their customers. I remember the first time I went to a Chick-fil-a and had my order taken by an employee with a tablet well before I got to the usual speaker box in the drive thru because they were relentless at reducing wait times.

Process Improvement in three easy steps

While there are dozens if not hundreds of tools, theories, and methodologies you can employ to drive improvement, lean, agile, and six sigma to name a few, I want to share a very basic starting point so you don’t get lost in the sauce. At its core, there are three key steps for improving a process or workflow:

• Identify the problem or opportunity

• Make a small, targeted change

• Measure the impact and iterate

Identify the problem or opportunity

The most common driver of process improvement is pain. Someone in the organization sees something broken or inefficient, or takes complaints from the end-user and raising the need for change. Once the pain point is identified, I would encourage you to spend a little extra time digging into the problem and ensuring you address the root cause of the issue and not just the symptoms.

Make a small, targeted change

Before you throw out the old process and revamp the entire thing, start small and follow this rule of thumb: one step, one tool, or one rule. The goal here is to make small changes for two key reasons. First, think of this process like the scientific method. You are experimenting and you want to validate your results before making further changes. More on that to come in the next section. Secondly, we want to ensure these changes are sustainable, so starting small with tweaks helps limit the friction or resistance to change within an organization.

Measure the impact and iterate

As previously mentioned, process improvement at its core is experimental. You make an educated guess at what will improve the system but sometimes the results aren’t what we expect. After you review the results of the change, the work isn’t done yet. If the process hasn’t improved, go back to step 2 and try something different. If the process has improved, take a moment to celebrate your win, standardize the change into the system, and finally start again at step 1 and identify further opportunities for improvement.

Deck builders and process improvement

When I think about process improvement, there is one genre of board game that stands out: Deck builders. They come in all shapes and sizes, but most share a few core characteristics that are relevant to the topic at hand. In general, each player starts out with the same starting deck with basic cards. This deck is our system and in the beginning, it is very inefficient. Each turn, players draw a certain number of cards and use them to take actions such as moving around a game board, attacking monsters or other players, and importantly, purchasing new cards from a shared market. The buying action is the core of the improvement process.

Card buying and iterative improvement

As players purchase new cards, their subsequent turns become more impactful and often become a flywheel driving further improvement. New and upgraded cards let players take more or better actions, buy more or better cards, and score end game points. In the beginning, this process is slow but over time, as improvements compound and synergies emerge, the process ramps up significantly.

Dominion: A game of incremental improvements

For many gamers in the hobby, Dominion is one of the first deck builders they are exposed to and perhaps the most iconic. Players take on the role of the monarch of a small kingdom with large ambitions. Throughout the game, players will expand their kingdom by adding new lands, buildings, villagers, and wealth to their decks until a certain number of cards have been depleted.

As is often the case, each player starts with a basic deck of ten cards and draws a hand of five. On their turn, players may play a single action card then buy a single card from the market before discarding the rest of the unused cards from their hand and drawing back up to five. The starting deck contains 7x $1 copper coins and 3x single point victory cards. This means at the beginning of the game, there are no actions a player can take other than purchasing new cards.

The shared market always has silver and gold coins worth $2 and $3 respectively as well as additional victory point cards. Each game is slightly different in that the other action cards are randomly determined at the beginning, so each session has different options for play styles and strategies. These action cards allow players to take more effective turns by providing the ability to draw more cards, play more cards, make additional purchases each turn, and modifying the deck by upgrading or trashing cards previously bought. Together with the coin cards, these action cards represent the improvements players can make throughout the game.

Dominion and the improvement process

Let’s take a look at the three step improvement process through the lens of Dominion.

Identify the problem or opportunity

At the beginning of the game there is an obvious problem; you can’t take any actions other than buying a single card. Each action card costs between 2-6 coins and due to the makeup of the starting deck, players will average 3.5 coins per hand, meaning for the first couple of turns the most expensive cards will be out of reach. This will inevitably be the first problem to solve.

Make a small, targeted change

Despite the options being limited in the beginning, there is good news. Basically any card you buy on turn one and two will improve your system (deck) with the exception of additional victory point cards. The goal here is to ensure your future turns are more effective.

Measure the impact and iterate

Something to keep in mind is the natural lag between implementing a change and realizing the impact. When a new card is purchased, it goes to your discard pile (with some exceptions) so you won’t have the opportunity to see that card come into play for a turn or two. No matter how well you play your first two turns, on turn three you might still end up with three estates (1 VP cards) and two coppers for a terrible turn.

As the game progresses and more cards are added to the deck, start back at step 1 and identify new problems and opportunities. In systems thinking there is a concept known as emergent behavior which broadly means the output of a system is greater than or different from just being a sum of the parts. Deck builders like Dominion illustrate how small, repeatable actions create emergent complexity, a cornerstone of process improvement and systems thinking alike. It is this emergent behavior that we observe and make decisions from. Patterns will begin to emerge that you can take action on:

• Can’t afford the higher cost cards consistently? Buy higher value coins or action cards that give more card draw.

• Not able to play your entire hand each turn? Buy cards that grant more actions.

• Ending your purchase phase with unspent money? Seek out cards that provide additional purchases.

• Too many low value cards clogging up your deck? Look for ways to remove (trash) them from your deck.

The real power of this tool is the iteration. By making consistent small tweaks, the system as a whole slowly but surely becomes more efficient and streamlined. There is a caveat though. Be aware that as more cards are added or removed, unexpected negative outcomes can emerge. Let’s say a player ruthlessly trashed every copper coin out of their deck. The goal was to ensure only high quality cards were drawn every hand, however, by lowering the total number of cards in the deck, they found themselves pulling too many victory point cards each hand, lowering overall turn efficiency. This is what makes iteration so valuable. It allows for course correction when unintended consequences emerge.

What does it all mean?

The principles outlined above will set you on the right course for implementing process improvement in all areas of your life, both on and off the clock. Whenever you encounter a pain point, use that as an opportunity to run through the steps:

• Identify the problem or opportunity

• Make a small, targeted change

• Measure the impact and iterate

Just like a basic starter deck evolves into a powerful engine through deliberate upgrades, your business processes improve when you consistently refine, measure, and iterate. What’s one small, recurring pain point in your workflow you could address this week? Apply the three step cycle and see where it leads. And remember, even a small improvement (1%) when applied consistently can have a huge impact down the line.