What do I mean by the word engagement?

If you look this word up in a thesaurus it has several meanings – a pledge to marry, a confrontation on a battlefield, an appointment in a diary, a friendship or alliance – all of which have an overlapping meaning of coming together.

But I mean engagement in terms of our total attention to some activity, or being enthralled by something.

So why the Engagement Game…

I want to introduce you to the concept of Gamification (not an elegant word, sorry!)

Gamification is the process of incorporating game mechanics into the workplace in order to motivate.

For those of us born before the Nintendo generation – I am talking computer games and the psychology behind gaming.

Gamification is all about harnessing the addictive qualities of gaming and applying these to qualities to, what we might consider more constructive activities – like paid employment or full time education.

How many of us can genuinely say that our occupations excite and enthrall us,

How many of us can genuinely say we leap out of bed on a cold wintry Monday morning,

How many of us can genuinely say we feel INSPIRED to go into the office and face another day of budgets, reports and meetings.

There has been a lot of research done into what truly motivates us. Check out this great cartoon on Youtube by Dan Pink entitled “The Surprising Truth about what Motivates Us”.

His point is that once you take the money factor off the table and once you are talking about non-mechanical skills – creative and innovative thinking and reasoning, or ideas generation – then money is no longer the motivating factor. In fact exactly the opposite – money becomes a demotivator.

Dan Pink’s theory is that we are motivated by 3 things:

1. Autonomy – the ability to be self directing,

2. Mastery – getting really good at something,

3. Purpose – doing something for the greater good or which contributes to the world rather than purely for profit.

So what has this got to do with the addictive nature of games?

In the gaming world we are our own masters – we can choose which way to turn, we can make our own decisions, pick our own weapons, even our own personas – we have complete autonomy.

In the gaming world we are constantly improving our gaming selves – our increasing mastery is recognised by levelling up – so we are constantly “working” at a level suitable for our skills, just a little challenging but not overwhelmingly out of reach.

In the gaming world we have a purpose – in computer games we are always “working” to solve problems on an epic scale – usually saving the world or some such venture.

So can we realistically apply these addictive qualities of gaming – to our real world, working lives…??

Let me take you into my world – the world of project management.

Projects are a perfect environment in which to implement a gaming type motivation system.

Projects are time bounded, they are about delivering something new and unique, they requirecreativity, co-operation and collaboration. They are usually delivered by a temporary coming together of experts.

And there is always a pattern in the levels of motivation for a project team – we always start highly motivated, excited by the challenges of the new but then as with all jobs the reality sets in – the excitement wears off and the motivation dips.

I was introduced to gamification by a group of young project managers – their project was to research the idea of applying gamification in a project environment – so they decided they should practice what they preach.

They found that to apply the concepts in reality you need to keep it simple and start small.

Here are some of the techniques they used and they worked…

They introduced league tables but cleverly each league recognised a different type of champion.

From most tasks completed to greatest challenge overcome;

From most creative idea to most supportive team member.

And what rewards did our champions receive?…

Recognising that money is not the motivator, the team came up with an ingenious idea – each member of the team offered a personal reward – maybe making tea for the champion for a week, or lending a sought after book or gadget for a month, and one reward was to play with a Labrador puppy for an hour …

Brilliant, creative, individual rewards – for a new and exciting system of motivation!

Whatever your view might be of our young gaming generation – they are the future and maybe we can learn a few things from them,

So… …let the engagement games begin…

For more information check out the Gamification wiki