Toybox Politics Divide Great Teams

You're jet lagged and just spent a week trying to build something that recognizes infants on airport conveyors. By miracle and Red Bull, the team pulled it together and submitted for competition in time.

Now everyone is packed in for closing ceremonies. 

We got Carl from infrastructure on guitar and Caroline from HR belting out cover hits like she's been waiting all year for this moment.

But then you start reluctantly feeling it. The energy is doing something to you despite the toothpicks holding your eyes open.

Then an org-wide leader steps up to the mic.
Somewhere in the "yes and" leadership and bubbly fluff, you hear

"and when I talk with my boss (who is responsible for other orgs), there is just so much excitement. You guys are always the favorite toy in the toybox."

It's said with a smile and quickly followed by metrics proving how awesome things are.

Of course you do.
You just spent a week in a weird time zone fueled by Red Bull building something real.

Someone at the top noticed. The org is valued. You're valued. Yay!

It lands like a compliment. Because it was meant as one.

Different setting. Same smile. Same metrics.

And you start watching.

Some people eat it up. 
You watch them recalibrate — subtly, unconsciously — toward whatever keeps them in the favorite column. They're not wrong to. After all, the system just told them what it rewards.

Others don't notice at all.
They're still running on the energy of the week, the hack, the thing they built.

And then there are the ones who go quiet.
Not visibly. Just ... something behind the eyes.
They heard it too. And they're doing the same math you are.

What does it mean to be a toy in anyone's toybox?
And what happens to toys that stop being favorites?

Once you start unfolding it, you can't stop.

Because it's not just intellectual. It's visceral. Being called a favorite toy doesn't just reveal something about the org — it asks something of you.

To perform gratitude for being ranked above someone else.

But here's the thing about being an ecosystem thinker.
You can't be happy about being the favorite without immediately asking what that makes everyone else.

It's not that you don't want to be valued. You do.

But being valued as a favorite toy in anyone's toybox,

especially at the expense of people who need you like you need them, like David in sales or Rebecca in product,

is not value worth having.

Everyone else is playing the game you opted out of.

And you're just... seeing it all. 

Watching the ecosystem shift in real time. 
Watching people you used to collaborate with start positioning.
Watching the energy of hack week — Carl on guitar, Caroline belting covers, a week of real work — quietly get replaced by something else.

And now we shifted from what was a high-functioning set of teams to facades and siloed teams working against each other.

But you can't stand it.
The ecosystem is all off balance, the risks are mounting, the culture is souring, so you raise it.

You try to get others on board, but they're still in the mix, lost in the facade.

You try to show where we are competing instead of collaborating. You challenge the professionalism of being referred to as a toy in a toybox as a grown adult.

Refusing to adopt toybox politics.

Favorite
toy
in
the
toybox. 

Five words that divided a room full of people who flew across the world to build something real.

Not maliciously, but blindly.

Because that's what conquering a toybox looks like.