The Use of Games In Corporate World

During recent years the use of Gamification in corporate settings has become more common, and companies have begun to use games to improve employee morale, productivity and innovation.  As an employer, you could have this line of reasoning:   if people spend countless hours on social networks like Facebook, why not try to ue that time more productively?  Additionally, recent studies have shown that video games improve your thinking, so why not try something along those lines?

I recently attended a webinar introducing Keas, a leading online game platform that aims to promote health behaviors among employees.  It is similar to Facebook, and allows employees to create individual profiles and teams.   Team members define their particular health goals, and if achieved, both the team member and team get points.   For example, if a team member has the goal of working out for 1 hour in the gym, and they achieved it, they would be earning points for themselves and their teams, and the more points you have, the better chance of winning prizes and recognition by the company.

After the webinar, I received a follow up call for feedback, and I asked the person how a company could ensure that team members don't cheat, just to get the points and win the prizes.   The company representative was in awe of my question, saying that it usually boils down to trust.    I am not saying employees should not be trusted, but in some company settings employees try to "game the system" just to get results and recognition.   As Dr. Deming used to say, this behavior is almost always a consequence of inadequate management, but gaming the system is common when trying to meet sales targets, production targets or inventory targets.

So what do you think?  Should we Gamify the workplace?  What obstacles need to be overcome to do so?

Quality Health Care is an Oxymoron

I recently saw a video of a lecture given by Dr. John Toussant about all the continuous improvement work he has led as CEO of the Thedacare Medical Center in Wisconsin.  In a system where the ultimate mistake is death, and that has around 100,000 mistake caused deaths of patients, continuous improvement makes a big difference.   

Dr. Toussant discusses some of the tools he has used to improve defects, ranging from A3s, Checklists and Standardization.   He also talks about how to sustain continuous improvement efforts, which is one of the biggest obstacles that change agents run into, showing a change framework he developed based on John Kotter's methodology for change.

It is inspiring to see that some CEOs of health care institutions in the US really get it.  Let's hope this thinking spreads as fast as possible.

KM Meets Speed Dating - Spindows.com

Charlie Green, the Trusted Advisor, recently interviewed Clay Hebert, the founder of Spindows, a new Knowledge Management (KM) start up company that uses a "speed dating" approach to collect organization knowledge.

According to Hebert, there are three big issues with the traditional approach to knowledge management:

1. Quality, as KM is usually considered a clerical task and is not given major importance
2. Speed, as knowledge gathering usually happens at the end of projects, not during the actual execution where lessons learned are fresh in people's minds
3. Search, as some knowledge management search features are lacking and if available, they are not very effective

Although  Spindows is still not available to the public, it's a good idea to subscribe to their waiting list and test their platform once they go live.

Questions No One Knows The Answers To

TED Curator Chris Anderson released an educational video that encourages us to always stay curious, as children usually are.  He shows us how to maintain curious by trying to answer two mind boggling questions about the universe.

When comparing ourselves to the vast and infinite universe, you may conclude that some of the things that trouble us today, are simply not important at all.

The No Ass@&%# Rule Decision Tree

Bob Sutton, Stanford professor and author of the bestseller The No Asshole Rule, published a decision tree constructed by his students, of how to deal in a simple way with employees that are just "certified jerks".

So how do you deal with jerks in your company?

The Life Of An Analyst

Elisabeth Fosslien, has shared a fantastic set of diagrams describing the life of an analyst.

See the other great diagrams she has built here.

Employee Buys And Saves Company

Bill Waddell shared this great video recently about a manufacturing employee that was able to purchase a plant that was closing its operations, and now has become profitable.

Like Steve Denning talks about in his Radical Management book, when companies focus on delighting customers, it's no coincidence that they become successful in the long run.