Have you ever played the party game Codenames? Here’s how it goes:

You provide a 1-word clue which, by its various meanings and connotations, you hope your teammates will be able to connect to 2 or more other words from a given word bank.

The more words your team guesses, the more points you all get, but if they incorrectly connect your clue to a word you didn’t intend, then your turn is over.

I think the game is a fascinating microcosm of the interplay between value and risk in any kind of communication.

The more words you try to connect to your single-word clue, the more potential points (value) your team stands to gain, but at the same time you are raising the risk of miscommunicating and losing out on the points you might have gained from a safer clue.

The correlation between value and risk is a pretty common theme in economic studies, but I think it’s worth bearing in mind for our communication strategies as well.

You can see this principle play out in art as the condensing of meaning through words—into a form like poetry, for instance—can at the same time increase the emotional impact on someone who can connect to the depth of the form, but it also runs the risk of falling flat if the audience can’t discover the underlying connections.

The key to a game like Codenames, however, is that the more in-tune you are with the way of thinking of the specific people on your team (i.e. your audience or customers), the greater your chances are for gaining points (i.e. creating value).