(2020-02-25) Chin To Get Good Go After The Metagame

Cedric Chin: To Get Good, Go After The Metagame. Every sufficiently interesting game has a metagame above it. This is the game about the game. It is often called ‘the meta’.

Every sufficiently interesting domain in the world has a meta associated with it.

Like simpler games, real-world metas come in roughly two flavours: ones that are defined by external changes to the rules of a game, and ones that are shaped by a dynamic equilibrium of competition within a stable system of play. Unlike games, however, real-world domains have no set rules: they are vastly more complicated and interesting, because the rules change only when someone notices the rules have changed. (game theory, real world game)

Here’s a real world example. I’ve spent the last two years working to get better at marketing... these skills are deep and context-specific. Good practitioners know the ‘best practices’ for their specific channels. The better practitioners keep up with the evolution of those best practices. The best marketers … well, the best marketers play the metagame of marketing.

The metagame of marketing emerges from the fact that all marketing channels decline in efficiency over time

Business also has a meta. Take acquisitions, for instance.

Henry Singleton, the CEO of Teledyne, famously used share issuances in the 60s to fund Teledyne’s many acquisitions

He then pioneered the use of the share buyback to purchase Teledyne stock cheaply

Much later, parts of Singleton’s capital allocation strategy was adapted to a different context by a young man named Warren Buffett, who applied it to an ailing textile manufacturing company named Berkshire Hathaway

In the late 70s, the meta changed again. A man named Mike Milken pioneered the use of an obscure financial instrument called the high-yield bond.

The meta in business changes whenever new tools or opportunities emerge in the macro environment. New tools mean new options. New options mean new viable strategies.

What is interesting about the meta is that metagames can only be played if you have mastered the basics of the domain.

The nature of the metagame demands that you play the base game well. It lives on top of the pattern-matching that comes with expertise.

because expertise is necessary to play the metagame, it is often useful to search for the meta in your domain as a north star for expertise

I have found it very useful to seek out articles or podcasts (but especially podcasts) where practitioners talk about the ways their best practices have changed

I’m not saying that I should actively pursue the meta — this is ineffective, because I am not good enough to play. I cannot execute even if I know where the puck is going. But studying the state of the metagame as it is right now often tells me what I must learn in order to get to that point.

Get to the Meta For One Skill

How do you balance between locating the meta and chasing boring fundamentals?

If you can’t master a particular skill, drop back down to its component elements and practice each of them in isolation

I’ve noticed that the ‘feel’ of improving in pursuit of a meta is strangely similar across skill trees.

I don’t know if it is identifying the meta that helps, or if there is some other deep skill transference that’s going on. But I’ve cautiously reached out to friends who have played serious competitive sports when they were younger, and many of them have had similar experiences. There seems to be something in getting good at a skill tree that helps in latter life.