I have spent some time in a cross functional team over the last year and noticed that in order to get stuff done you need to have everyone on the same page all the time. There needs to be, at least in my mind, some consensus on what the deeper meaning, goal and value of the whole project is. Of course you could say “It’s you job and you do what you are supposed to do, that’s what you get paid for after all” but in this day and age many people want something more out of a job than just the paycheck. There is the notion of mastering something and learning new interesting things along the way. Contributing your own ideas and executing on them. We want to “ownership” of the the things we do and not be just a small cog in the wheel.
Also you need alot of glue services like wikis, todo lists and so on to keep everyone in the loop and to cooperate well. A huge problem is collecting all the ideas in peoples heads, spreading them, iterating on them and making them come true in some shape or form. Usually what you will find is that project teams will use all sorts of softwares and services to build a good enough environment to get all the conditions right to be successful and effective. To make the right decisions and to keep everybody aligned with the greater picture.
The ting is: this is all very nice and it works good enough for most teams, but to be honest all that management-, collaboration- and productivity services are mostly kind of boring. There is no place where people can virtually hang out and kick around ideas. If you have a brilliant idea and you are not in the position to code it yourself, your idea will die a horrible death going through all the instances and layers of management. If you are lucky your idea will come out alive, but you can’t even recognize your baby anymore because committees have deluted your original vision. So if you want your idea to succeed you should go covert and pick some people to just do it. If you fail you can always apologize later. But chances are that, if your idea is really that good, your initiative will be highly appriciated.
I assume that most companies want people who think and take the initiative. If you fail sometimes that’s part of the deal. At least you and your company have learned something. So every time you do a project or task you should have learned something new or improved your skills in some way. Well, if you are a gamer this should sound familiar, level up! But most of the timethere is no reward – no instant gratification like in games. Why is that? Would it not be nice to be rewarded on your quest to mastery?
Would it not be fun, if work was actually fun? I have been interested in gaming and game mechanics for some time now and there is now a huuuge trend implementing game mechanics in everything. With the rise of games on social networks and mobile devices people are now used to rewards for their actions. The trend is swapping into mainstream and there is not sign of slowing down. Of course people will eventually get tired of the same old same old points mechanics, but when done right I am convinced that these kind of mechanics can go a long way with increasing productivity and overall fun at the workplace and dealing with projects in general.
If you are interested in this kind of thing I can point you to some great talks on the subject in general:
- Ted Talk: Jane McGonigal – Gaming can make a better world
- Dice Conference: Jesse Schell – Design out of the box
- Google TechTalk: Amy Jo Kim – Putting the Fun in Functional: Applying Game Mechanics to Functional Software
There are also very interesting presentations on slideshare:
What do you think? Could your projects be more fun? Do you invent games in your workplace?
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